Happy New Year

I love the New Year. The freshness of what may be; the thought of infinite possibility; the idea that I am another year older. Okay, that last one I don't like so much, but since, as I tell my sister who thinks I never look any older, The Gays aren't allowed to age, I don't mind the extra year under the belt.

But I do look forward to doing more, and learning more, thinking more, reading more, loving more, laughing more. These aren't resolutions, as I don't make resolutions because when I do, my resolutions last about as long as it takes me to say resolution. These are promises and wishes, hopes and dreams.

So, I'll leave you all to have a good day, with a repost of a previous New Years Day thoughts:

The more things change :::blibbety blah blay bloo touch me::: the more they remain the same:  I am a believer in happiness. I believe that happiness is all we really get in life, and that everything else follows. 

Things don't make us happy, at least not for long. And you can't expect people to make you happy either; you either have it to begin with, and others add to it, or you don't.

If you don't believe that, just look around at all the sad, angry, lonely faces you pass on the street. Happiness is something you possess, that you give out, and get back. We're responsible for our own happiness, each and all of us; responsible to find it, to hold on to it; to nurture it and share it.

Without happiness in ourselves, for being ourselves, how can we expect to live fully and completely. We suffer loss every day; I've had my share and, sad to say, I know there's more to come, but I feel happy in the memories I have of those who've gone on ahead.

I know it's hard to be happy when times are hard. It's near impossible to think that things will get better, but they will; it might not be the better you were thinking it would be, but I have learned that it will get better. 

I have learned, from my Father the Teacher, never to stop learning and reading and speaking and, well, ranting; the more you learn, the more you grow, and understand, the more happiness you can accept. 

I have learned, from my Mother the Nurturer, to care for things, for people, for animals, for life; to make each day better for those around us, and to make it better for ourselves in the end. 

I have learned, from my Sister the Temper, to speak up; why sit quietly and let things happen to you? Stand up and demand the things you want, the happiness you want. Don't settle. 

I have learned, from my Brother the Father, to hold close to family; never let them go; whether it's the family you were born into, or the family you created out of necessity; hold on to them, and protect them, and love them. 

I have learned, from my Husband ... my Husband ... the Optimist, how to actually let go and be in love and damn the torpedoes; how to be open and honest and know that it won't hurt; how to love yourself, and everyone around you. 

So, I once again realize that I have learned to be happy; I've earned happiness. And I am responsible for it. It is, after all, all you really get in life.

Some day

When we are wiser
When the world's older

When we have learned

I pray

Someday we may yet live

To live and let live

Someday

Life will be fairer

Need will be rarer

Greed will not pay

God speed

This bright millennium

On its way

Let it come

Someday

Someday

Our fight will be won then

We'll stand in the sun then

That bright afternoon

Till then

On days when the sun is gone

We'll hang on

Wish upon the moon

Change will come

There are some days dark and bitter

Seems we haven't got a prayer

But a prayer for someday better

Is the one thing we all share

Someday

Life will be fairer

Need will be rarer

Greed will not pay

God speed

This bright millennium

Let it come

Wish upon the moon

Change will come

One day

Someday

Soon.

Give. Thanks.

I first posted this back in Ott-Eight,  and decided to edit it a bit and repost it today, to kind of remind me of where I was then, what I thought then, and what I wanted out of life; the more things change the more they stay the same.

Not to brag, but I've been told that I am an extremely polite person. I was raised on Please and Thank You, Yes Ma'am, No Sir, and I still act that way today.

True story: I was selected for jury duty back when we lived in Miami and when they were questioning us in the courtroom, it was my turn to stand. Well, it was a narrow aisle, so I put my hands behind my back, and as the judge and the lawyers began to ask their questions, I always answered Yes sir, No Sir.

The judge stopped for a second and smiled. "Are you in the military?" he asked.

"No, sir" I said. "I was raised by a military man and a Southern woman."

True story: A few years before that, while living in California, I was in a grocery store buying a birthday cake for a co-worker. I asked if I may please order a cake. May I please have a name iced onto it? I pleased and thank you'd my way through the ordering process and finally the girl left to go in the back and finish my order. But then, just before disappearing to that back room, she turned around and said to me, "I think you are the most polite person I've ever waited on."

I smiled and said, "Could you just shut up and ice my damn cake!"

When all else fails slip into sarcasm. That's my motto. But I digress.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, probably because there are no gifts involved, except for the gift of time; time spent with loved ones and friends; the gift of thanks. This is a day of thanks for Americans; a truly American holiday, like 4th of July, but one we celebrate not with picnics and beer, firecrackers and sparklers, but with a meal we share with loved ones, friends and family.

I have so much to be thankful for this year.

Yes, the usual family and friends and health and happiness, blah blah blah, everyone says that. But I am also thankful that we are an America on the verge of a new day, when we are all, even those of us under the LGBT balloon, considered more equal than we have been in the past.

Fourteen years ago, Carlos and I couldn’t be legally married anywhere in this country, and here we are now, married, legally, in South Carolina and 34 other states and the District of Columbia. I never saw that coming, but I am so thankful for that.

I am thankful for the years I had with my sister — and missing her every single day — because of the things she taught me, and continues to teach me. I am thankful that I could see her, and feel her, alongside my Mom as Carlos and I stood in a courtroom and said, “I do.” I could feel all that love, and for that I am always thankful.

I am grateful to her four daughters, all of whom she raised so well that when Carlos and I told them we were getting married, they all responded, “Now he really is our Uncle.”

I am thankful for my Dad. He didn’t ask for a gay son, but he got one; he didn’t know what to do with a gay son, but he did the best he could. And, when the time came to marry Carlos, and we decided to go west to Washington to do it, it made my Dad’s day. I think he was more excited than we were, more proud that we were doing it. I wish every gay person could have a Dad like mine, who sees that change is good, and sees that not everyone is the same — even in your own family — but who loves you all just the same.

I am thankful for cold mornings and blue skies.

I am thankful for small dogs and cats because, well, I'm bigger than them and I will always beat them. Just channeling Joan Crawford and Christina at the pool.

I am thankful for......Carlos. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about how lucky I am to have him; even the days when he makes me insane …. More insane? … I realize I’d rather be driven nuts by him than not to have him at all. I am thankful for the smirk he gives me; I am thankful for the look of horror on his face when I bust out in a showtune; I am just plain thankful. I don’t know where I’d be, or who I’d be, if I hadn’t met him all those years ago.

I am thankful to my Mom, especially today. Thanksgiving was always her holiday; cooking for her family was my mother’s greatest joy and a great gift to all of us. I am thankful that I can keep that tradition alive, and can see my Mom in that.

I am thankful for leaves changing color and drifting to the ground on a breeze.

I am thankful for music and pets and soft blankets and breathing and speaking, and having a voice when I speak.

I am thankful for thinking being feeling loving living.

For Life.

And all it encompasses.

To Life.

Thanks.

Transgender Lives Matter

One of my favorite quotes is from Maya Angelou:

The ache for home lives in all of us, that safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

As gay people, sometimes we cannot go home, because we are questioned, we are disowned, we are denied. And because of that, we often create a new family — because our birth families have shunned us — out of a group of friends, gay or straight.

I was lucky, though. While I believe that my parents may have a hard time realizing they had a gay son, it didn’t take them long to realize that a gay son was still their son, still to be loved, still to be family.

That didn’t happen for Jennifer Gable. Not in life, and most certainly not in death.

Jennifer Gable was a 32-year-old transgender woman who lived in Idaho and worked at a Wells Fargo bank. Although born a man, she had been living as a female, her true self, for the past few years and, last month, while at work, she suffered an aneurysm and died on the job.

That’s heartbreaking; what happened next was disgusting.

When her friends and co-workers attended Jennifer’s funeral, they were stunned to find an open casket, with Jennifer presented as a man – dressed in a suit, with her long cut off.

In fact, the funeral wasn’t for their friend; it was for Geoffrey Charles Gable. That’s the name in the obituary that Jennifer’s family sent to the local paper:

Geoffrey Charles Gable, 32, Boise, passed away suddenly on October 9, 2014 while at his job at Wells Fargo Bank.

He was born in Twin Falls on January 27, 1982 to Anthony Clark Gable and Lori Ann Walton.

Geoff and his brother, Steven, were raised from toddlers by their maternal grandparents, George and Joan Walton.

He attended Morningside Elementary School, O’Leary Junior High and graduated from Twin Falls High School in the year 2000.

He was married to Ann Arthurs in 2005 in Hawaii. They were later divorced.

Geoff grew up as a member of the Twin Falls First Christian Church, where he was baptized in 1996.

She was erased. There was no Jennifer; there was Geoffrey and there was ‘he’ in the obituary and ‘him’ in the obituary and ‘his’ in the obituary.

Meghan Stabler, a board member of Human Rights Campaign who had assisted Gable when she transitioned called it an “erosion’:

“Just erosion of her identity and an old photograph of how the father perceived her to be. I only knew her online. She reached out to me a couple of years ago when she was in transition. The usual: What do I need to worry about at work? Am I going to be OK? Is life going to be better? Can you assure me everything is going to be OK?”

And everything was okay until Jennifer passed away, and then her family made her out to be what they wanted her to be, a man, and not who Jennifer was: Jennifer.

“She had done what she needed to do legally to be seen as her authentic self. Her father erased her identity either though ignorance or arrogance.” — Meghan Stabler

Even the death certificate listed Jennifer Gable as male. But she wasn’t male, she was female, and no matter what her ‘family’ — the one into which she was born — wants to think, she will be Jennifer Gable in the hearts and minds of the family that truly loved her, and knew her, and wanted her.

RIP Jennifer Gable.

source

Thoughts on Life and Death and Dying

I don't think this is as maudlin as the title suggests, but give it a read and you be the judge ....

We have had three deaths in our little circle of friends this past month, and, as happens, it’s gotten me thinking — not always a good thing, sometimes, as I tend to think too much — about death, and dying. And when you toss into the mix the fact that my mother’s birthday was September 27 and that always makes me ‘what if’ and ‘I wonder,’ and that my sister’s birthday, the first since she passed, was October 1, well, it’s been death-a-palooza up in here for me.

One of my very best, very best, friends in the world, Laura, lost her husband a few weeks back. Bob had been diagnosed with Non Hodgkins Lymphoma in 2009 and struggled and fought so valiantly; he got better, he was better, and then came a setback and he was back in the hospital where he passed away, with Laura at his side, last month.

I cannot imagine how it feels to lose the love of your life; I’ve lost friends and relatives, parents, a sister, but this has got to be the hardest of all. It sinks me to places I don’t want to go to, making me think about what would happen if I lost Carlos; how would I survive; would I survive. But then, scarier for me, is what might happen to Carlos if I died; I so don’t want him to be alone.

But then I realized you have to take what life gives you and move on as best you can, one foot in front of the other, and hope that, while it won’t get easier, it will get better. You have to wake up; you have to get out of bed; you have to continue on because that’s what Bob would want for Laura; that’s what those who’ve gone on would want for us, those left behind.

We had cocktails Bob and Laura last August when we were in California and visiting my sister, who had her own battle with cancer. And the one thing that struck me about Bob was this: he’d always been friendly to Carlos and me; nice, and friendly, and just a lovely, lovely man. But this time, as we were saying out goodbyes, he grabbed each one of us and hugged us Goodbye.

It was a few weeks later we learned that he was sick again, and I thought about that hug. At first I thought maybe Bob knew that he was getting sick again, and maybe this was his own personal Goodbye to us; but then I thought that maybe, because of all he’d gone through for over five years — tests and treatments and procedures and hospitalizations — that he knew you had to cherish each and every moment because you don’t know if you’ll ever get that moment again.

So he hugged you so that you knew how he felt about you in case he never got the chance again.

A few days after Bob passed, our friend Cody had suffered a massive heart attack in his sleep. His partner Bruce woke up and tried to revive him, but Cody died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. They had been together 42 years; forty.two.years.

And again I wondered, how do you survive after losing your love; what do you do to carry on. How do you wake up in an empty bed for the first time in four decades?

You just do, I learned. We attended a memorial service for Cody, and spoke with Bruce, who, as most people who lose a loved one do, seemed more intent on easing our grief, our sense of sorrow, than allowing us to help him.

And so I realized  that you go on because, yes, you had your partner, spouse, husband, wife, for years and years, but you also have your family — your biological family, and the family you’ve made for yourself out of friends. You carry on because you have those other people in your life that can light the way when you feel as though you’re slipping into the darkness.

Then Carlos learned that one of his former co-workers was in the hospital. His name was Carlos, too, Carlos S. He and my Carlos worked as a team for a local healthcare company a few years ago. That Carlos was a black man, and since he and his teammate shared the same first name, people at the office took to calling them Salt-and-Pepper, or Black Cloud and White Smoke.

My Carlos visited that other Carlos, who was unconscious in the hospital, and he chatted with him for a while; said his piece, so to speak; and then he left. Carlos S. passed away that same afternoon, alone. He seemed to have no one; no one to claim the body; no family that Carlos could find. I was thinking about what that might be like, to die alone, no family, a handful of friends, or even less, who didn’t know that you’d gotten sick.

But my Carlos wasn’t having that; he called people; he checked in with people; he did some research. He found the estranged son of Carlos S., who wanted nothing to do with his father, even after death; but then he found more friends, neighbors, former co-workers; he found that Carlos S. had been in the military and because of that he could be buried with a military funeral at Fort Jackson herein Columbia.

Carlos, my Carlos, and a couple of others, made some arrangements with Fort Jackson; my Carlos wrote a beautiful eulogy for his friend that he posted to Facebook, and friends of Carlos S. found it and responded to it.

This tiny group, tied together because they knew this man who died alone, attended the service even if no one else could, or would. But then people did; other co-workers, friends, and even his estranged son paid their respects; the flag that draped the coffin was folded into that ceremonial triangle and given to his survivors. Carlos S. may have died alone, with scarcely anyone knowing anything about him, but he was buried in honor, with friends, and even family, at his side.

And so I realized that, while it may seem that sometimes we die alone, we don’t. There are those who remember, those who visit as you lay dying, and those who pay their final respects.

And even when you think that, after death, people are forgotten, they aren’t; you remember the soup your mother made on cold winter days and you smile; you remember the trouble you got into with your sister, and you smile. You remember that last hug from a friend; that last joke; that last time you saw them, and you smile.

And you go on ….

Happy Birthday Jeri

Life is strange; I’ll start there.

My mother passed away from lung cancer on February 17, 2007, and this past February 15, 2014, my sister passed away from the same disease. I somehow knew my sister, who had been in failing health, would go right around the same time as when my mother passed. I took a psychology course in college called “Death and Dying” and was amazed at how many terminally ill people wait until an anniversary, or birthday, or significant day has passed, or has come around again, before they, too, pass on.

It should also be noted that on February 14, 2009, my Aunt Pam also died from lung cancer, so February is not a happy month in my family, but I digress ….

My mother’s 77th birthday was last week, on the 27th, and naturally, though she isn’t here, I spent a great deal of time thinking about her because we’d celebrated that day for so long and just because the person is no longer here doesn’t mean the day doesn’t matter.

All of that leads me to today, which is my sister’s birthday, and the first one to pass since she died. I am reminded that my sister died a couple of days before the anniversary of my mom’s passing, and that their birthdays are also just a few days apart. It seems fitting, and still unbearably sad.

Still, I 'll think of good times, happy times, big sister stories. Today is about my big sister, older than me by just fifteen months. That’s not a lot of time, really, and even though we were a couple of grades apart in school, we were very close in age, but that’s about it. We were very different people; very different, even though I learned a lot from her, about myself, about my life, about life, and today, on what is, and will always be her birthday, I’m remembering all she taught me.

My big sister; my very first best friend; I loved her from the moment I was born, and I imagine she'd say she loved me from that second, too, even if I was 'the new baby.'

My big sister; we were very different. She was gregarious and out-going and had tons of friends and was always doing something. I was shy, almost petrifyingly so — my mom used to joke that I didn't start talking until I was eighteen — and I had just a handful of friends.

My big sister; she could be as stubborn as a mule, and had quite the temper, while I always tried to please, and be the nice one, and not draw attention to myself. We were as different as night and day, and as thick as thieves.

My sister has cancer, had cancer. Now she doesn't, now she's safe and free and doesn't hurt and has her hair, and might be sitting with my mother right now, talking things over, and reminiscing some. That makes me feel a little better. My big sister and I have like minds on death: there is no fear of it, though there is also no anticipation for it. There is just this sense that death is part of our journey and, naturally, a necessary step.

My big sister; she taught me all sorts of things, even though she wasn’t all that much older. But she gave me life lessons, some which took, and others which took a while.

This story is about a basketball game, and a pair of high school mascots. Our school team was the Cougars and there were a pair of Cougars who stood on the sidelines during football and basketball season, riling up the crowds, playing with the cheerleaders and generally just having fun.

One night, one of the mascots couldn't make the game, and she asked my sister to take her place. The other girl also begged off, and, well, my sister asked me. I said, 'No.’

As a young closeted gay kid, I did not draw attention to myself; I stayed in the shadows as much as I could, but when my sister asks, well, sometimes it feels like an order. And so I thought about it; I thought it might be fun to not be me for a while. So, I relented.

The costumes were big, furry, heavy, and hot, but I kept my cougar head on all night so no one knew it was me. Still, it gave me the chance to act in public like I wanted to act, and not like I thought I should. I learned that it was okay to be different, to march to a different drummer, to act the fool, to have fun for fun’s sake. To not care what people thought about you.

Again, it was a lesson that took a while to stick; there were other lessons that needed to be learned first, like accepting myself, coming out, and allowing others to accept me, too, but for those couple of hours on a Friday night in November, 19fumphity-fumphy, I was my one true self … under a fur covered head, yes, but my one true self.  I learned from my sister that it was okay to be yourself, because she knew who that fool in the cougar costume was, but she still loved him, no matter how he acted.

I've been thinking about more of those times since today should have been cake and cards and phone calls, but is now, mostly silent.

I’ve been thinking about all of the lessons my sister taught me ... and this is another one:

My sister joined the Air Force many moons ago and began moving around the world — Spain and Germany — and back again; Delaware, and I think New Mexico was in there, too. But soon enough she came back to California where the family lived and we got to see one another more often.

She was a mountain girl, living in a small town in the foothills outside Sacramento, while I lived smack dab in the middle of our Capitol City. We were quite different; she enjoyed gardening, I enjoyed nice dinners with good wine; she was garage sale, I was Macy's. She was married, I was gay.

Different. But this story isn't about that. This story is about the day she taught me what I think is the greatest lesson a person could learn: how to say I love you. See, I was good at writing those words on a card, or signing them at the bottom of a letter, but I wasn't too keen on saying them out loud for whatever reason. 

But, one day, many years ago, she called to chat — my sister loves to chat on the phone and I loathe it ... yet another difference — and we talked about all kinds of things, from what we were doing to what the world was doing. At the end of the chat, as we were saying our goodbyes, she said, All right then, I love you.

I said, Thanks. And I hung up.

Thanks? That was my response to my sister saying I love you? I mean, I guess I meant Thank you for loving me but that isn't really the correct response either, is it? So, as I tend to do, I sat there after that phone call and wondered why it was so hard for me to say those words, and I realized that I come, came, from a family that didn't really ever 'say' the words. We showed our love; we knew we were loved; I guess we all just felt we didn't have to 'say' it. 

Also, I thought, subconsciously, that I didn't deserve to be loved because I was the 'different' one; the gay son. I mean, my parents knew I was gay, and they were fine with it; they loved me. But I’ve always wondered if they ever hoped that I wasn't gay; what parent wants a gay kid? No matter how much you love them, as a parent, you realize their lives would be easier if they weren't gay. So, I felt loved, but at the same time, unworthy of being loved because I wasn't the 'son' that had been expected.

My sister, however, thankfully, thought differently. Just saying I love you so easily and simply, without force, made me realize that I was worth it.  And I thank her for that. See, after that conversation, and after my introspection, I listened to what she was saying: we all knew we were loved but she wanted us to hear it. And that made a huge difference.

I didn’t change overnight and turn into one of those people that say I love you at the drop of a hat; it took time. And, I think the first time I said it back to her I probably choked on the words a little bit, as though they were somehow foreign to me, but it got easier and more natural.

And, I think it helped push away some of the Old Bob who might have been fearful of love and being loved. I think, having my sister teach me that lesson made it all the easier for me to tell Carlos I loved him, and to hear him say it back to me, and to keep telling him and telling him and telling him.

It wasn't that my sister loved me, I always knew that, and I always will know that, it's that she made me realize I was worth it, and I could say it, and hear it and mean it and be it. That's just one of the lessons my sister taught me.

My sister, my big sister. My hero. So while today hurts, for so many reasons, I want to think back on the laughs. The time we had a party at the house while my mother and father took our little brother to an A’s game in Oakland, and how my parents never caught on; at least until we told them, years later, after the statute of limitations was up.

I want to think of my sister who was a wonderful mother, to four wonderful girls; she instilled in each of them her independence, her sense of self, her sense of worth, her joy, her love.

I want to think of my sister with her husband, Tom. It took her a while to find him, but when she did it was the best thing she ever did. No one made my sister as happy and loved and comfortable and peaceful and filled with life, as Tom.

So, I'm gonna sit for a while and think about the last time we were all together and stood still long enough for a picture. I'm going to laugh and smile, and feel loved, and feel love ...

For my sister.