it started last week at your service. a friend of yours stood up during the quaker style part at the end and referred to you as an activist. i'd never heard anyone use that language with you before.
he quoted johnny cash, his explanation for why he chose to dress in black (" " )
to be looking out for the little guy. your friend saw you this way.
my ex called you a language activist. that makes sense. you broke things down into tiny pieces, seeing the connections on all levels.
today i look through your books in your office and there is almost a whole shelf on black english/ ebonics/ education issues for african american students.
it occurs to me how much you always made a point of standing up for black english and how it was a legitamate dialect, with its own rules and that it wasnt that people were speaking 'incorrect english' as was often said but that the world was the one with the problem of not recognizing it because it wasn't academic english. how did you get interested in this? it has nothing to do with you or anyone you ever knew too closely, i think. but you learned from your students, friends of mine, friends of friends. you were interested in the ways people spoke , even the ones who dont' get a real voice in this country. i feel so proud of you, to know you, to come from you. i take a book about gender and grammar. i see on your shelves my book from my woman studies class. you were a strong feminist, didn't ever skip a beat with my queer and later trans identities. you were interestted in the way inner city kids talked and took that as seriously as any of the books you had to read for your dissertation. eric wants to keep some of your membership things going---planned parenthood, the southern poverry law project. you were into buying from catalogs that donated money to social change or envirnonmental organizations. i feel like looking out for others/ hte larger good was jus so muc of what you did, never ever witht the intention of getting any praise or even ackowlgenment .
they say of you at the service how you were driven to make things btter everyerehw you went. sometimes this played out as perfectionismn or criticsism of others ways of doing things, but mostly it played out in you serving others and i feel really proud that you were the person i called mom.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
11-24-08 vitamins
you were always so private. i feel like a strange spy looking through your emails and your drawers.
i arrive this morning to start going through your things in your office.
it's something i was dreading this weekend when i agreed to come do it.
i didn't realize how much stuff i had given you, all art, and how much of it you put up on your walls. some of it in frames and everything. i feel both proud and sad, i don't want to take it back. i wrap some of it in newspaper and think who might like to unwrap it as a gift. it was meant for you, i don't feel like i have a use for it right now.
the the week your oldest and dearest friend that i've known in my time called you
'the universal mother' refering to your purse and how you'd have everything someone might need in it--a tissue, a band-aid...
your drawers at work are no different. i'm fortunate that you are so organized. everything in a ziploc bag. i find all the stuff you, or someone else, might have needed for your work day---tampons, pads in every size, a brush and curling iron, band-aids, lotions, anti-itch cream, it's all here. including pantyhose, also in a ziploc bag. and extra ziploc bags. snack bars, vitamins..the vitamins really get me. you were always so in to taking vitamins. always worried about calcium and how i probably never got enough--especially my years being vegan
'you really should be taking supplements' you tell me.
here they all are and i think how in your last year you ended up with osteoporosis, due to the terrible steroids they kept you on for so long and at such a high dose. you were 2 inches taller than me and by the end i could see the top of your head. compression fractures in your back you needed surgery on, 2 different times. all the pain your back caused you off and on this past year....meds you took to rebuild your bones. you were so good. walking, taking vitamins, eating well...that's how i remember you. how did you get so sick? all these bags of vitamins, some looking a bit moldy after sitting in a drawer for a year...how much control do we have? someone can do what seems like all the right things and look how it plays itself out.
11-17-08
my grandmother hugs me out of the blue. for a good bit of time, for us.
she tells me
'you're doing a good job'
it's very sweet. i thank her. i wonder what she means exactly by that?
it seems easier to cry about other things than to cry about my mom being gone.
it still feels too much to really believe, understand, or accept. it's only real part of the time, the rest of the time it's like how it was during college or even living in philly- we are just in different states, but if i pick up the phone i'll eventually get to hear her voice. i don't know how to believe the news this is not true.
she tells me
'you're doing a good job'
it's very sweet. i thank her. i wonder what she means exactly by that?
it seems easier to cry about other things than to cry about my mom being gone.
it still feels too much to really believe, understand, or accept. it's only real part of the time, the rest of the time it's like how it was during college or even living in philly- we are just in different states, but if i pick up the phone i'll eventually get to hear her voice. i don't know how to believe the news this is not true.
11-11-08
today we met with a woman to talk about my mom's estate. at the end of our meeting she looks at us and says something to the affect of offering her condolences.
'you both seem sad' she says, not feeling sorry for us or bothered by this, but like she gets it. i don't think we are seeming especially sad, we are just trying to take care of business. but, we are very sad.
'it makes me teary eyed, she says', ' i went through this myself, it's been 25 years...' she gets up from her desk, goes and gets a tissue, it's subtle but she is crying.
' i lost my father, i was 19. it gets easier with time she says' i'm thinking how its been 25 years and just the sight of us dealing with this is making her cry, and wonder how i will feel in 25 years. 'don't mind me' she says dabbing her eyes 'i'm just emotional' or something like this.
i say something about how it's a universal experience--meaning my loss and her loss are intrisically connected, and it makes sense to me that one would trigger the other.
my stepdad says how he doesn't want things to change with time---what he means is he doesn't want to forget the time with my mom, he doesn't want her to get further and further from his mind and i relate to this.
i've been thinking of this. how at my friend's mom's funeral i cried when the best friend read a bible quote and got choked up at the end. and when my friend's sister broke down during the eulogy, it caused me to cry even more. and on a certain level i'm not sure who i am crying for---her loss, her sad heart, or my own. i feel like it all comes from the same place---our joy, our sadness, it all comes from and meets up somewhere and we are never alone in it.
'you both seem sad' she says, not feeling sorry for us or bothered by this, but like she gets it. i don't think we are seeming especially sad, we are just trying to take care of business. but, we are very sad.
'it makes me teary eyed, she says', ' i went through this myself, it's been 25 years...' she gets up from her desk, goes and gets a tissue, it's subtle but she is crying.
' i lost my father, i was 19. it gets easier with time she says' i'm thinking how its been 25 years and just the sight of us dealing with this is making her cry, and wonder how i will feel in 25 years. 'don't mind me' she says dabbing her eyes 'i'm just emotional' or something like this.
i say something about how it's a universal experience--meaning my loss and her loss are intrisically connected, and it makes sense to me that one would trigger the other.
my stepdad says how he doesn't want things to change with time---what he means is he doesn't want to forget the time with my mom, he doesn't want her to get further and further from his mind and i relate to this.
i've been thinking of this. how at my friend's mom's funeral i cried when the best friend read a bible quote and got choked up at the end. and when my friend's sister broke down during the eulogy, it caused me to cry even more. and on a certain level i'm not sure who i am crying for---her loss, her sad heart, or my own. i feel like it all comes from the same place---our joy, our sadness, it all comes from and meets up somewhere and we are never alone in it.
11-15-08 mom's service
this is what i read at my mom's service today:
To my mom,
I have known you for 30 years. That is a lot of time to cover and there is so much that’s happened, I can’t do it all justice here but I want to say some things to you in your passing.
There is a reason the first tattoo I got was a ‘mom’ tattoo.
It started out as a joke---I’d always liked the iconic tattoos—the anchors, etc—and joked around about getting a ‘mom’ tattoo like like I’d seen on the arms of men in photos or movies.
But the more I talked about it, and thought about it, the more it made perfect sense to me to have one.
‘I really love my mom’ I told my friends
‘she is one person I know I’m going to love forever—I won’t ever regret having her name permanently on my body’
but it was more than this—more than how much I loved you in the expected way a kid would love their mom. Even more than liking you as a person, which the older I got the more you became a friend to me.
It was the sense of connection I shared with you.
That’s something I have always felt extremely lucky for , and proud of, and I know not every kid feels with their mom. over my life you have been there for everything, much more than you wanted to at times, I’m sure. Every challenge in school, every break up, every major life decision I have trusted your judgement, your level headedness, your patience with me to help me feel like I was moving in the direction I was supposed to. It is really hard to imagine being without your guidance as you were always the person whose opionin I trusted most of all.
I know I was not an easy kid at all. I can understand why you didn’t have any others after me. And you didn’t have it easy while you were raising me. There were many years it was just us, and you worked full time—keeping other people on track and being the person to answer all the questions—while working on your phd and taking care of everything at home. And you barely had any help. Your family all far away, you really did it all yourself. you were more than just a mom—you mananged to fill in for other family who couldn’t be around for me.
One of the amazing things about you is that you just dealt with it. You took the situation as it was, and took me as I was, as difficult as I feel like that must have all been you never stopped or felt sorry for yourself.
With all the things we struggled with and ways it felt like we didn’t understand each other, thinking of it all now, I feel like you were the perfect mom for me to have in this lifetime.
I want to tell you why:
You never judged me. I brought to you all kinds of situations other parents would never have touched and you took it in.
When I told you , in high school, that I might be queer, you didn’t react harshly to me.
When I decidced I’d like to go to an art college, you stood behind me, even though I had no real plan of what I was doing or how I would support myself. You never doubted me. For all the calls to you during that time where I just wanted to drop out and didn’t know why I was even there, you just told me to keep going. I have spent my whole life doubting my abilities, my place in the world, my feelings, but you never have. You thought I could do anything, maybe even things you weren’t sure you could do. I don’t know where all this faith came from, but I am very lucky to know someone in my life has had that much belief in me.
When, about 5 years ago, I told you I might be transgender, and I was panicked about what that could mean, the first thing you said to me was ‘you don’t have to figure it all out today’
I know people whose parents don’t talk to them, don’t accept and don’t try to understand their kids for being so different from how they want them to be.
I asked you one time how it was you could be the way you were
And you said something like ‘I guess a lot of parents have these ideas of how their kids are going to turn out—getting married, having kids, things like that—and I just never had that with you’
your capacity to accept and love someone for who they were is amazing. I know it wasn’t just to me, your child, but it was your way with much of the world. All my friends I brought home for a holiday or just randomly, unexpected, no matter how much of an outsider they might have been otherwise they were treated the same way. You’d send them home with food and act like they had been around forever. You tried very much to understand me on all levels- you never tried to tell me how I should be in the world. You encouraged me to explore who I was and made it safe to do so.
I wish I could ask you what it was that made you want to have a child and how you managed to be able to let me be so much myself in the process. while the world has given me messages that art is not important or legitimate, you signed us up for art classes together. While I felt like I didn’t belong because of my sexuality you gave me magazine articles about gay kids in public schools. When I was struggling to accept myself as being transgender in a society where a lot of people don’t even know what that word means, you were coming with me to the trans health conference to learn more. You never made me feel guilty or wrong for how I was, even when I was down on myself. I’m not sure how it is you could love so openly but I am lucky to have experienced such an example first hand. And I know it extended beyond me, beyond my friends, to your friends, your co-workers, even people you barely knew. Your acceptance and your almost obsessive desire to give to people-time, energy, money, presents, whatever was needed, without wanting anything in return, are things I admire so much about you and feel awed by. I am really proud that I have had such a great example to follow. I know I have thanked you over the years for all you’ve done for me, but the feeling has always been beyond what I’ve been able to show you. i hope, in my lifetime, I can do half of what you have done for me and others in the 30 years I have been lucky enough to be your child.
To my mom,
I have known you for 30 years. That is a lot of time to cover and there is so much that’s happened, I can’t do it all justice here but I want to say some things to you in your passing.
There is a reason the first tattoo I got was a ‘mom’ tattoo.
It started out as a joke---I’d always liked the iconic tattoos—the anchors, etc—and joked around about getting a ‘mom’ tattoo like like I’d seen on the arms of men in photos or movies.
But the more I talked about it, and thought about it, the more it made perfect sense to me to have one.
‘I really love my mom’ I told my friends
‘she is one person I know I’m going to love forever—I won’t ever regret having her name permanently on my body’
but it was more than this—more than how much I loved you in the expected way a kid would love their mom. Even more than liking you as a person, which the older I got the more you became a friend to me.
It was the sense of connection I shared with you.
That’s something I have always felt extremely lucky for , and proud of, and I know not every kid feels with their mom. over my life you have been there for everything, much more than you wanted to at times, I’m sure. Every challenge in school, every break up, every major life decision I have trusted your judgement, your level headedness, your patience with me to help me feel like I was moving in the direction I was supposed to. It is really hard to imagine being without your guidance as you were always the person whose opionin I trusted most of all.
I know I was not an easy kid at all. I can understand why you didn’t have any others after me. And you didn’t have it easy while you were raising me. There were many years it was just us, and you worked full time—keeping other people on track and being the person to answer all the questions—while working on your phd and taking care of everything at home. And you barely had any help. Your family all far away, you really did it all yourself. you were more than just a mom—you mananged to fill in for other family who couldn’t be around for me.
One of the amazing things about you is that you just dealt with it. You took the situation as it was, and took me as I was, as difficult as I feel like that must have all been you never stopped or felt sorry for yourself.
With all the things we struggled with and ways it felt like we didn’t understand each other, thinking of it all now, I feel like you were the perfect mom for me to have in this lifetime.
I want to tell you why:
You never judged me. I brought to you all kinds of situations other parents would never have touched and you took it in.
When I told you , in high school, that I might be queer, you didn’t react harshly to me.
When I decidced I’d like to go to an art college, you stood behind me, even though I had no real plan of what I was doing or how I would support myself. You never doubted me. For all the calls to you during that time where I just wanted to drop out and didn’t know why I was even there, you just told me to keep going. I have spent my whole life doubting my abilities, my place in the world, my feelings, but you never have. You thought I could do anything, maybe even things you weren’t sure you could do. I don’t know where all this faith came from, but I am very lucky to know someone in my life has had that much belief in me.
When, about 5 years ago, I told you I might be transgender, and I was panicked about what that could mean, the first thing you said to me was ‘you don’t have to figure it all out today’
I know people whose parents don’t talk to them, don’t accept and don’t try to understand their kids for being so different from how they want them to be.
I asked you one time how it was you could be the way you were
And you said something like ‘I guess a lot of parents have these ideas of how their kids are going to turn out—getting married, having kids, things like that—and I just never had that with you’
your capacity to accept and love someone for who they were is amazing. I know it wasn’t just to me, your child, but it was your way with much of the world. All my friends I brought home for a holiday or just randomly, unexpected, no matter how much of an outsider they might have been otherwise they were treated the same way. You’d send them home with food and act like they had been around forever. You tried very much to understand me on all levels- you never tried to tell me how I should be in the world. You encouraged me to explore who I was and made it safe to do so.
I wish I could ask you what it was that made you want to have a child and how you managed to be able to let me be so much myself in the process. while the world has given me messages that art is not important or legitimate, you signed us up for art classes together. While I felt like I didn’t belong because of my sexuality you gave me magazine articles about gay kids in public schools. When I was struggling to accept myself as being transgender in a society where a lot of people don’t even know what that word means, you were coming with me to the trans health conference to learn more. You never made me feel guilty or wrong for how I was, even when I was down on myself. I’m not sure how it is you could love so openly but I am lucky to have experienced such an example first hand. And I know it extended beyond me, beyond my friends, to your friends, your co-workers, even people you barely knew. Your acceptance and your almost obsessive desire to give to people-time, energy, money, presents, whatever was needed, without wanting anything in return, are things I admire so much about you and feel awed by. I am really proud that I have had such a great example to follow. I know I have thanked you over the years for all you’ve done for me, but the feeling has always been beyond what I’ve been able to show you. i hope, in my lifetime, I can do half of what you have done for me and others in the 30 years I have been lucky enough to be your child.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
11-7-08
"I'd rather have had 24 years with an amazing mom than 70 years with a mediocre one"
this is what my friend had said last week and she repeated the sentiment again today as part of the eulogy she wrote.
i had never been to a funeral before today.
i had been to one memorial service for my friend and bandmate who passed away from cancer a few years ago.
this was a funeral in a much more traditional way. a casket, in church. we went to the cemetery. my other friend explained the way it all worked to me.
'i've been to too many of these' she said.
she sat next to me during the service, her eyes full of tears telling me 'if you need to leave at any point, just let me know'
we did end up stepping out at one point, and sat and talked for a while about the service and how it seems even at a funeral its not okay to totally cry and break down.
there was one lady who they took out of the room, she was sort of bent over and saying 'oh god, oh god' over and over and coughing and holding her stomach. i heard her friend tell her 'let it out, let it out' and i was glad that was the advice she was getting. other people fanned her, brought her water and tissues.
i feel like so much of our society, of the culture i grew up in particularly, is afraid of the sadness they feel, and i've inherited this myself.
i find myself afraid of opening a door that as soon as i do i imagine will never close again. it's hard to imagine that feeling will just pass through me or out of me.
i notice all the physical reactions my body has been experiencing lately---
hard to breathe, feeling hot, feeling shaky, light headed, foggy headed, unreal. feeling my heart is skipping out of beat ( which it does ) or just too fast or like it is just aching, almost like there is a hole in the middle of it.
i'm exhausted in a way i am recognizing as emotional exhaustion. sometimes its hard to tell if sleep even helps it at all.
this is what my friend had said last week and she repeated the sentiment again today as part of the eulogy she wrote.
i had never been to a funeral before today.
i had been to one memorial service for my friend and bandmate who passed away from cancer a few years ago.
this was a funeral in a much more traditional way. a casket, in church. we went to the cemetery. my other friend explained the way it all worked to me.
'i've been to too many of these' she said.
she sat next to me during the service, her eyes full of tears telling me 'if you need to leave at any point, just let me know'
we did end up stepping out at one point, and sat and talked for a while about the service and how it seems even at a funeral its not okay to totally cry and break down.
there was one lady who they took out of the room, she was sort of bent over and saying 'oh god, oh god' over and over and coughing and holding her stomach. i heard her friend tell her 'let it out, let it out' and i was glad that was the advice she was getting. other people fanned her, brought her water and tissues.
i feel like so much of our society, of the culture i grew up in particularly, is afraid of the sadness they feel, and i've inherited this myself.
i find myself afraid of opening a door that as soon as i do i imagine will never close again. it's hard to imagine that feeling will just pass through me or out of me.
i notice all the physical reactions my body has been experiencing lately---
hard to breathe, feeling hot, feeling shaky, light headed, foggy headed, unreal. feeling my heart is skipping out of beat ( which it does ) or just too fast or like it is just aching, almost like there is a hole in the middle of it.
i'm exhausted in a way i am recognizing as emotional exhaustion. sometimes its hard to tell if sleep even helps it at all.
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