'You know, people say that after a loved one dies you emerge as a new person, but there's nothing good about it. It's devastating," says Jay Bakker. "For me, it's horrific."
It's the end of June, and the son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, the televangelists famous for their fortune and subsequent ruin in the eighties, is anticipating the death of his mother.
A month later, on July 20, Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, who remarried following her divorce from her first husband in 1992, succumbed at the age of 65 to cancer that began in her colon and spread to her spine and lungs.
Beneath all his camouflage - heavy black glasses, a baseball cap, a lip ring, full sleeves of tattoos on both arms, more on the back of his neck and on the skin that can be seen at his ankles - Mr. Bakker's vulnerability about his mother's decline is obvious.
He is like her in that way. Crying on camera, with her heavy makeup and big dyed hair, rivers of black mascara streaming down her cheeks, was her trademark. She presented an intriguing combination of physical artifice and emotional transparency to the world.
Mr. Bakker, the youngest of two children born to the notorious televangelists, was not returning phone calls last week after news of his mother's death. On the website for his alternative church, Revolutionnyc.com, he wrote that she had "a very peaceful death" and announced that a public ceremony to celebrate her life has been planned for the near future.
Talking in the lobby of a downtown hotel a month ago, Mr. Bakker is unafraid to speak about his feelings. "No, we're not sure how long she will last," he says meekly. "It's really tough." At 4 feet 11 inches, "she weighs 60 pounds."
A founding pastor of Revolution, based in Brooklyn, N.Y., he was in Toronto - for the first time - as a guest speaker at the IdeaCity conference.
"She's a freight train," Mr. Bakker says. "She just keeps going. She's on liquid morphine and is sometimes confused," he acknowledges.
"We talk about heaven and hell. We don't talk about death," he says, when asked about his relationship with his mother, who has been gravely ill for some time.
"I just love my Mom," he says, unprompted, as he looks out the window to the busy Toronto street. "We're very close. You know, she always had a room for me in her house."
He shifts uncomfortably in his chair and stares at his hands. "It scares me," he says of her impending death, adding that his faith is being tested by the ordeal. "One minute, I'm closer to God because Mom is dying, and in the next, I'm screaming at Him."
That Mr. Bakker exudes an emotional fragility is understandable, given the history of his 31 tumultuous years.
The Bakkers founded their Praise the Lord (PTL) ministry in 1974, and it quickly grew in popularity and fortune. It was said that the Christian theme park, Heritage USA, built by the couple in South Carolina on 2,500 acres, was the third most popular tourist attraction in the country. At its peak, over six million visitors a year came through its gates and the PTL broadcasts entered nearly four million households in the United States. The faithful were generous: $1-million a day flowed into the ministry.
But it all came crashing down in 1987, when it was revealed that Jim Bakker had tried to cover up a sexual encounter in 1980 with Jessica Hahn, a dewy church helper. As a result, he was excommunicated from his ministry. Later, he was convicted on fraud charges for taking $3.7-million to pad his and his wife's lifestyle.
The Bakkers were forced to shut down the PTL, and Heritage USA was later lost through bankruptcy.
