A couple of weeks ago, I posted this diary. I've promised further information to some folks, and this is the best venue for me to do that.
Follow below for the way things unfolded...
Grandma passed away the evening of the October 16th. She was 88, and had been pretty much fully lost to Alzheimer's/dementia for at least a couple of years prior. I had made a clandestine trip to see her last spring, as I suspected (correctly, it turned out) that my birth family would shut me out of the information chain. I had the staff at the nursing home add my name and number to her chart so I would get a call when she passed.
It was a difficult visit for me. The woman I remembered as strong, yet warm and gentle, was gone. In her place was a small, confused woman who never did recognize me, her eldest grandchild.
After I wrote the previous diary, I convinced both my spouses to accompany me to the funeral. We left the Twin Cities early Friday morning, as it takes 4-5 hours to get to South Dakota from here. I did insist on someone else doing the driving because I didn't really feel too able to focus. The drive was uneventful and the weather pleasant.
We got to the church about 20-30 minutes early. I resisted the panicky urge to turn around and drive back to Minnesota. I had arranged ahead of time to meet up with the single cousin I still talk to, and her mother (uncle's ex). Several of my family members were congregated in the parking lot, but neither my cousin nor her mother were with them. We parked a distance away and I walked past the group, without acknowledging them, to enter the church and see Grandma one last time. Things felt very strained, and then proceeded to get rather weird.
I went into the chapel and viewed Grandma, then back out to the vestibule to hang out with my wives for solace. My cousin arrived, as did her mother. We were at least 15-20 feet from everyone else arriving, at all times. No one looked our way. It would be comical, if it wasn't so sad. After 10 minutes or so of this, a figure broke from the other group and headed our way. It was my father, but I almost didn't recognize him. We haven't spoken in maybe 3 years. Somewhere during that time he had retired. The man I remember as being nearly as tall as my 5'13" barely reached my nose. He seemed to have collapsed within himself, both physically and emotionally. He spoke to me, for perhaps a total of one minute. It felt very much like he had rehearsed some sort of script, and very quickly ran through it and excused himself. In that time I expressed my wish that communication needs to be better among us; that I had heard about Grandma's passing from the nursing home, not from anyone in my family. I did refrain from mentioning that I STILL haven't heard about his sister's death in a car accident 2 years ago. I felt that would have caused pain for no good reason.
I'm still trying to come to terms with that 1 minute conversation. I strongly feel like I encountered a poor simulacrum of the person I once called father. One I do not recognize. I found out after the fact from a very close family friend and mentor that he has been withdrawing from groups and things that had been central to his life since the early 1970s, but that he goes to Mass every day (this last from a different source). I also found out that he was heavily medicated with pain meds for the arthritis/carpal tunnel issues caused by a lifetime of abuse both by his career and his hobbies. I want to be as forgiving as possible. As bad as losing Grandma is to me, she was his mother, which must be worse. I'm left with a sense of disquiet. I don't know when or if I'll ever see Dad again, alive. I also fear that the time of his passing won't be that far off.
After Dad ducked and ran, my eldest cousin (10 years my junior) approached me and verified the name (my legal one) I was known by. His younger sister was close behind. This too felt odd, like they were extending the tip of an olive branch from behind their fortress, waiting to see my reaction. I was polite. Probably threw them off. These siblings are the children of my late uncle; the uncle who told me not to call him after I transitioned because he couldn't handle it while he was busy dying. This conversation had taken place 2 or 3 years before he passed. I'm still uncomfortable about his branch of the family. I went to his funeral and was shunned at the visitation by his wife, and sat alone to one side of the same church at his funeral 8 years ago. I'm feeling aloof and neutral to them.
My sister and family just ignored me all day, even though we never really had a falling out.
When it came time to file into the chapel for the service, I lined up with the family, as the eldest grandchild, and had both of my spouses with me. By this point, I felt it a point of pride that I belonged there, to honor the woman who had been my fiercest advocate and defender. The service was unremarkable. I've never enjoyed Catholicism. Giving it up for Lent one year was a great decision.
After the interment, we all regathered at the church for a meal and socialization. I found the side branches of the family to be rather awesome, and we had a nice visit.
During this time, my mother finally lost our game of emotional chicken and approached me, asking if we could speak privately for a few minutes. Positively dripping neutrality, I agreed. The details already escape me, but I will go so far as to say that that channel is provisionally open again. I agreed to actually answer the phone if she calls. Being who she is, she couldn't resist the urge to drop dirt on others. She informed me, not really surprisingly, that my surviving uncle (father of my good cousin) had lobbied that I be discouraged from attending, which is a nice segue to a later conversation with my cousin.
I asked her about this item, and she related to me that she had indeed had a conversation with her dad earlier that week, wherein he expressed concern that "(former name) not show up to his mother's funeral in drag." I'm not sure where to even begin to unpack that statement. My first reaction was dismay that I had completely forgotten to accessorize using my huge collection of sequined ballgowns, tiaras, and feather boas. One of my spouses said that, no, I had utterly neglected to wear a suit and tie. Drag? What the hell is drag with respect to me? I'm a moderately-butch-predominantly-female transperson. What is my opposite presentation? On what day? Regardless, she had shut him down hard, and he did end up dropping it.
From this point, the trip turned from strange, uncomfortable, and awkward to surreal.
I had held off on deciding whether or not we would stay overnight in South Dakota, or head back to Minnesota. My cousin and her crowd were planning to spend the evening at the family bar (the owner had introduced my parents to each other), and we decided to join them. This is the bar where I had been arrested for underage drinking when I was going to college there. The owner's wife had come to the funeral, and was sitting with us all night. We had been there for an hour or two, when a moderately scruffy guy sat down next to my wife.
He started out by saying: 'My buddies have a bet...'
I interrupted him, pretty aggressively, and informed him he was going to lose that bet. Clearly, they had read my wife as trans, and were trying to engage in some middle-school style humor. We kept him and his three drunken millwright friends in conversation for quite some time, without ever actually revealing anything. My (taller) spouse had been doing education work all day, and she continued that. I wasn't in the mood to teach Trans and Social Etiquette 101, and let her do so. The first guy proved to be moderately decent, but his friends were just skeevy. One tried to grab my ass as I walked to the bathroom. I blocked him and growled. I was in no mood for tomfoolery.
Still later in the evening, it came to our attention that SDSU was performing the Rocky Horror Show live, on stage, and at midnight. This was too good an opportunity to pass up, so I ran up to the college and bought four tickets, for myself, my spouses, and my cousin. I've long been a fan of the film, but a live performance beats that hands down. Absolutely without a doubt the best performance I'd ever seen. We stayed overnight. I'm pretty sure my grandmother was smiling about this.
I'm still processing. At some point, I really need to cut loose and grieve, hard.