Month: August 2016

On Grief of a Loved One

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Grief comes to us in unexpected times and places, like it did five years ago mid-August when I found out my brother was being flown home from vacation to critical care. The cancer was finally taking over for good and I was in the middle of setting up for an event at college. The night felt like a blur except for a few moments, like one of those movie scenes where the important moments are in clear focus with people’s faces swimming around mine covering me in love. I remember the people I ran to, the people who surrounded me, the feelings of being afraid and small and not knowing what is really happening.

And then grief comes to us rhythmically, each year on the day our loved one died, passed away, left us to explore the beyond (hopefully to drink good beer and walk on the beach). Every year as August 31st approaches, I prepare myself for the grief I know is going to come. And it seems like every year I’m preparing myself earlier and earlier for the onslaught and every year the grief seems to grow. “They” say it gets easier with time, but I’m not sure who “they” are, because they sure aren’t me. I thought that I had processed my brother’s death and that I had grieved as it was happening.

But I don’t think I fully understood what it meant at the time.

It meant that I wouldn’t get to ‘come out’ to him, even though he probably already knew.

It meant that I wouldn’t get to introduce him to my boyfriend who had been my best friend throughout college.

It meant that I wouldn’t get to call him to tell him said boyfriend proposed and that I was engaged to be married.

It meant that he wouldn’t get to know that I graduated my Master’s program.

It meant that he wouldn’t get to bitch with my other siblings and friends about the people who sent said fiance and I hateful responses on our RSVP cards, and threaten to send them glitter bombs and other nefarious items in return.

It meant that he wouldn’t get to see me marry the man I love.

It meant that he wouldn’t get to watch me grow into an adult.

Each year, more things happen as I grow and change and through all of it, my brother isn’t here to see it. Some people will say that ‘he’s watching from above,’ but that’s only an attempt to make themselves feel better. It doesn’t take away the grief that he isn’t here physically right now. And that he should be. It doesn’t make it any better that cancer robbed him of his life, and by consequence, robbed us all, his family of the chance to experience life with him.

But this is how I deal with my brother’s death. I prepare myself for this day to come and I live through it with all the emotions I need to, and then I let go. I choose to let the grief take me over and then I take my brother with me in my thoughts the next few days. I lay him down to rest until he comes back next year. And of course, there are always unexpected visits from grief throughout the year, but it mostly comes this time of year for me.

Everyone deals with and experiences grief differently. Some people will try to give you platitudes and tell you that everything will be alright. Others make trite comments in the hopes they don’t have to deal with the uncomfortability of your grief. That’s it, though, you get to deal with grief however best you need to deal with it. For my brother, that meant not making a big deal out of his cancer. It meant not wanting to be ‘friends’ with people that weren’t his ‘friends’ before he was diagnosed. I admire him for dealing with death the way he wanted to and not letting anyone else, friend or family, make him deal with it differently. Grief is an odd thing. It comes to us unexpectedly, and it also never fails to show up, right on time when it should. May we welcome it and live through it and let it teach us what it will.

As an unrelated, yet related, side note, my brother used to say, especially once he was diagnosed, “Don’t sweat the small stuff. It’s all small stuff.” This phrase has come to me a few times over the past few days in unexpected times and through unexpected people. But, it’s a good reminder for me, as one who worries and frets about all manner of things. May you rest in peace, dear brother, and even in death, I hope you’re not sweating the small stuff, because it’s all small stuff.

Gay and Christian [High School Part 2]

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I apologize for the lengthy delay in posting. The summer has gotten away from me more than any other year. I’m used to being a bit more relaxed in the summer, even if I had a job, because it was between school years. This summer has seemed particularly busy to me, though. For one thing, I had been getting up the past four weeks at 3:30 a.m. for my 4:30 shifts at Target. Thank God that’s over because I was exhausted from not getting enough sleep, not working out enough because I didn’t have the energy, and not cleaning up at home so our apartment was a horrid mess. Then, add in that I bought the Sims 3 with some leftover birthday money and most of my free time, along with my husband’s, went towards leading our double lives on the Sims. I created roommates who fell in love and worked hard in their careers while raising three children and my husband (who had never played it before) created a single sim to play who after some time began the search for immortality. Tells you a little something about our personalities, eh?

This post, however, is a continuation in the series on growing up Gay and Christian, and it’s fitting that the Sims came back into my life since the last time I had played it was in high school. As far as senior year goes, it began the same as all the others. A renewed promise to God to let go of lust and to embrace piety. And like every other year, I failed. And to top it off, I began to like a guy. It was the first time that I wasn’t simply in lust over another boy. I was in like and the bug had bitten me bad. He was my first real crush, and as anyone can remember of their first crush, everything about them can melt your heart. His smile, his laugh, his mischievous eyes,  the laundry detergent smell from his clothes all enveloped themselves into my psyche as the only possibility for my life. Suddenly, my desires didn’t seem so bad, so different from everyone else’s. It seemed so normal and so natural for me to like another boy. I felt the flutter in my stomach when our hands touched, when he smiled at me or talked directly to me. I felt the world flip on its side when I’d do anything for him over and above that which I’d do for my friends. Yes, I was naive in my affections, but that’s how first crushes come to us. They come in unexpected places, through unexpected people, and they almost always don’t work out the way you want them to.

This was the tipping point for me. I accepted that I liked this other human being as more than just a friend, and it was another boy. I began to walk away from the concept of God that had been given to me and that I had cultivated over seventeen years of life. My concept didn’t change, but rather I did. In my anger, I decided that since God did not change me, I wanted nothing to do with God. So, I walked away. I ignored the presence that continued to walk alongside me. And through this walking away, this ignoring of God, I began to find myself and to acknowledge who I was. I began the long, arduous journey of learning to accept my sexual orientation and to love myself. I cut for the last time senior year, the emotional pain had begun to lessen as I let in the feelings I had so desperately been fighting with all my being. It’s amazing to note the healing that occurs in a person when they begin to accept their sexuality. I stopped binging and purging on a regular basis. It still happened once or twice over the next year because my self-worth was still far too entangled with achievement and whether or not I was ‘doing enough.’ I wasn’t instantly healed, but that’s not a surprise. Overnight healing doesn’t happen with things like this. It takes plenty of time and lots of love, from both other people and from oneself.

The last half of senior year was one of the happiest and healthiest times for me in high school. I remember the night I told one of my best friends about the boy I liked through a text. (I never came out and told my friends I was gay. I simply told them I liked a boy.) A few nights later we stayed up late one night on a porch swing in her backyard, talking, telling things we hadn’t told each other or other people before. I talked about this boy, about the depression and the cutting and the binging and purging. We spun our stories late into the night, weaving our friendship together in a way I hadn’t with anyone yet before.

It was magic and it was healing and it was the seed that gave me courage to begin coming out to my closest friends that summer after high school. Some were shocked and others were not, but all met me with open arms and love big enough to fill the hole in my scared, vulnerable heart. I think it was my hometown friends who began to shape me in a way that left me open to the theology that would enter my life in college. Their unwavering friendship and support was a shaping force in my faith once I returned. For I believe that God enters into friendship with us, in all God’s otherness and bigness and smallness, God chooses to be friends with God’s creation, which we are but a small part. And in that friendship, God shows us unwavering love and support. God is loyal to us even when we can’t find it in our hearts to trust. God loves us when we can barely hold ourselves together. God gives us grace and forgiveness for hiding a part of us we were scared to share with others. God opens the door for us to be vulnerable and then God gives us strength and courage to love ourselves and to tell the world who we really are.

Thank God for honesty and vulnerability. Thank God for friendships that are strong and courageous and tender and supportive and enthusiastic. And thank you to the friends who heard my vulnerability, my confession, and stepped in to say, I love you no matter what. You changed my world with your hugs and your listening ears. I could not have begun to accept my sexuality and learn to be myself without you, dear friends. You gave me courage and love when I so desperately needed it, and so I raise a glass to you and to all the friends who have ever given a young queer kid the space and the love to be themselves.

Previous posts in this series: Gay and Christian [High School Part 1], Gay and Christian [Surviving Middle School], Gay and Christian [The Early Years]