Death and Loss: When Counting Your Blessings Isn’t Enough
I’d seen sadness before. A few times in my life I had seen adult men, downtrodden when their favorite football team took a bad beat, but this, this was different. And only coming out could release the dam of grief inside.
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I experienced my first funeral at age 9(ish). I honestly don’t remember the year. What I do remember is what I saw, and what I heard. For the first time in my life, I saw sad grown-ups. I heard hushed, low whispers. Words of mourning. I really wasn’t sure what to make of it. I was clearly old enough to understand death, but I’d never seen adults exhibit these kinds of emotions before. I’d never seen these sad expressions, this droopy body language.
I’d seen sadness before. A few times in my life I had seen adult men, downtrodden when their favorite football team took a bad beat, but this, this was different. In my house, these types of emotions didn’t exist. At the time, I thought they weren’t allowed. When my mom got the news my dad had experienced a massive heart attack when I was 6, she didn’t shed a tear but continued to put on a face of ease, one that was supposed to convey the feeling that everything would be alright, even though I knew otherwise. It wasn’t until I was much older when my mom nonchalantly told me my dad had experienced another heart attack and had almost died, but was fine now, that I realized how deep the denial of emotions went. If they started to show themselves when I was growing up, we vanquished them to a land far away, never to be seen or heard from again.
So when I experienced the death of a relative, from cancer, I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel.
Arriving at the funeral, seeing all the people and all their sadness, I didn’t understand. I remember milling about, looking up at everyone I encountered, hoping to see someone who wasn’t experiencing what everyone seemed to be experiencing because I didn’t understand what was happening. Then I saw my family member. Lying there. Alone. Gone. I can still remember the intensity of the emotion. It washed over me, filled every crevice of my body, not draining away quickly, but filling me to my brim.
What was I supposed to do with this?
Looking to the adults in the group for any indication of what I was supposed to do with this aching inside of me, this indescribable emptiness, they showed me the way. They shed a few, solitary tears, then on the two-and-a-half-hour drive back home, they talked about anything but the pain. In fact, I learned at that moment, the pain and grief that I felt should be pushed far, far away, to the far corners of Mordor (if I had known what Mordor was). Although what I thought was a casting far away, I quickly realized was buried deep within. It wasn’t until a family friend passed away unexpectedly a few years later that it hit me. That same feeling, back from wherever it had been flung. I never really dealt with it before. Never really processed through it, and I knew in that moment, attending my second funeral, that it doesn’t go away. It can’t be avoided. Sadness. Grief. Loss.
Although I didn’t fully understand in the moment, I started to realize these emotions would be a constant throughout life. But, if I was to learn anything by observing my parents, you get rid of that shit as fast as possible. By ignoring it mainly, but if it must be “processed” a few tears down the face will do the trick. Not a stream of tears, that would empower the grief and sadness. But just a precious (Lord of the Rings pun intended) few would vanquish it back to middle earth. I’d love to give my parents the benefit of the doubt that they were just protecting us kids, and behind closed doors, they cried and grieved until the sun came up. But I don’t know. The ignoring, sometimes acknowledging, never allowing in of the hard emotions, seemed to be the extent of it.
Fast forward 28 years later. The sadness, grief, and loss is pervasive. It’s been a year almost to the day since I came out to my parents and family as a transgender woman. My sister is gone. Off in the deep end of the pool. Cutting me out of her life for fear that a woman with a transgender experience might have influence on her three kids. Not talking to me, but actively trying to cause more grief and hurt, by destroying other relationships that I have and writing articles against the trans community as a whole, publishing them with the likes of the Family Research Council.
My parents, while physically still in the same town, are gone as well. I have realized through years of therapy that emotionally, they were gone and unavailable to me long ago. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt when that realization hits. In fact, it seems to hurt more, understanding they aren’t available, emotionally or physically, but still wanting them to be. They continue to talk about me either as if I’m dead, in terms of a son they lost, or like nothing has changed, deadnaming me as they go.
I’ve lost my religion too. A huge piece of my identity. I held onto it for as long as I could. In fact, when I first came out it was going strong, bringing in reinforcements to stand strong in the face of terrible things said in the name of love. I’ve learned over the last months, that the love that drives those things that have been said, those things that have been done, isn’t the Love that I know. The Love that I still know is the one that sits with you. Takes you as you are. It not only takes you as you are but it actively affirms you saying, “You are good and you are right. You are so good and you are so right.”
My religion was a huge part of who I was and losing a huge piece of yourself leaves an emptiness. It feels like the death of part of myself. The same feelings that I first experience 28 years ago.
Many who have gone through the same or similar experiences of loss while coming out have said “give it time, they’ll come around.” And while I truly appreciate the sentiment, and I do have a hope that someday, these relationships will be restored, I can’t hang onto that hope right now. If I do, I’ll just keep moving, muttering to myself “they’ll come around, I’m sure of it.” Muttering, muttering, until one day I look up, and I’m on my deathbed, having missed out on life because I pushed down the emotions of death and loss, waiting for something that never materialized.
No this time I have to push in. Better yet, I have to let it out. I’ve been going and moving for the past year, avoiding it all. Today I have to stop. I took the day off of work today because I am trying to listen to my body. It’s telling me it’s time to process, time to move into the grief. I sit here in the middle of a local coffee shop, surrounded by what I can only envision are Christian Bible Studies, mocking me and my lost religion, and I write. I dig into the grief. I have lost so much. So much.
Even in writing it and allowing myself to feel it, I respond to myself with “well your wife has lost a lot too.”
“Others have lost so much more.”
“This is nothing compared to many people who have it much worse than you.”
This kind of thought process is so natural for me, and I think many of us. “Count your blessings,” a religious mantra of my childhood still echos in my mind. And while yes, it’s so important to cultivate gratitude in my life, this kind of self-talk isn’t gratitude. No this is a mask for the hurt and pain. I don’t want to push in, I don’t want to process, I don’t want to let it out.
This fight against myself is so exhausting. Adding to the very real grief, sadness, and loss.
No, no more. If someone else in my life had gone through the things that I am experiencing, I would be sad for them. I would tell them it’s shitty. It’s ok to be sad. It’s ok to feel it. I can’t tell myself that though. I can’t let go. I’m sitting in a coffee shop. There are many eyes on me. My body won’t let me let it out. I have to get out of here…
I’ve moved to my car and turned the hot-spot on my phone so I can continue writing. And I had to move my car away from the door of the coffee shop. For all my work in therapy, I still can’t bawl like a baby in front of 15 strangers in a coffee shop or even in the busy part of a parking lot.
Now, sitting with my grief, alone, in my car, in the midst of a bustling world of people who are shopping, and going about their day, many of whom are also alone in their grief, I want to let it out so badly. It’s starting to hurt my body; this not stopping, always moving forward. I finally give in to it. With eyes closed, it rushes through my body, from my toes to my fingertips as I write. The sadness and grief, pooled up for so long, draining away through body tremors, tears and guttural sobbing.
When I open my eyes, although the pressure valve has been released, the residue of this pain, this loss, remains. I thought I could get rid of it by acknowledging it, by speaking to it directly. I guess that’s the thing about death, including the death of relationships; even though it becomes more distant each day we get further away from it, it always remains. Even 28 years after the fact, I’ll always remember that first funeral. My relative lying there. That feeling. It reminds me that I am alive and I am human. It reminds me that even in the face of death and loss, Love is all around me. And that Love feels my pain too.
