Grieving
Grief is strange. I guess "nonlinear" would be a better way to describe it.
You can be going along with your life with your grief feeling like a manageable backpack. It is never gone, but sometimes it can be distributed across your body and carried without really slowing your pace. You do life without anyone even knowing you have something to grieve about. You take care of yourself, your family, your home, and your job. You are okay.
And then, out of nowhere, the weight is once again too much. So heavy that the actions of everyday life are too much. No longer a backpack, but an extra large trunk. Without handles. No way to even get a grip of it.
I can barely stand much less carry the weight on my heart. I thought I was fine, but I am not fine. Not even close.
This afternoon was the perfect day for some cleaning; a March day warm enough to crack the windows in the Midwest. Cleaning, organizing, and laundry with a backdrop of sunshine and praise music.
Dusting led to freshening up my chotchkies for spring, the perfect time for chickens on the mantel. Time to put away a flowerless vase.
I pause. It's your vase. I turn it over to see your initials carefully carved into the bottom. And the year 2019 (before all of this).
One of the many pieces of pottery you made and gifted to me...probably for Mother's Day.
Oh, the irony of it all. A Mother's Day gift for a person you no longer talk to, much less call "Mom."
Your initials, the ones I gave you. The ones your Dad and I hemmed and hawed over for nine months as we tried to pick the perfect combination of names that represented both of our families, especially the strong men in our families. It brought me so much joy to name you after my grandpa. I couldn't wait for you to carry on the family legacy with your name.
The name you have now thrown away. The name you no longer identify with. Your "dead name."
I break down under the weight of it all and want to smash the vase into a million pieces, like my heart. I want to scream about all the pain you have caused us. I want to strangle the people who convinced you that you are something that you are not.
I want you to come home. I want this nightmare to be over. I want to wake up and have my little boy, turned young man, back.
I am not okay. I cry out in utter hopelessness and confusion. I cannot carry the trunk.
I am not okay today. But tomorrow, with your pottery put away, my grief will return to its designated place on my back and I will resume my pace of life.
I have carried this burden for three years now and I am becoming more and more angry. I suspect I’m going to sound really selfish now, but after three years of agony, I’m now furious that my life has been taken away and will never be normal.
Why could I not have a normal life with a normal son who found a normal wife and had normal children? I don’t ask for anything exciting, just an average vision of the future; one which most of my friends seem to have with all those images of weddings and children being born. Instead, I have to make up lies and quickly change the subject when people ask me how my boys are.
How can you say to people who barely know you that two of them are drug addicts and of these two, one handsome 6 foot boy thinks he is now a woman and you can’t bear it
and that the other one completely hates me and blames me for his life mistakes and has completely rewritten his childhood.
I have one lovely son left in my life and I try to focus my hopes and any conversations about my children on him but it’s really hard. I don’t even feel I have a normal relationship with him because he has also been rejected by his siblings and doesn’t want to talk about them. All contact with him must be very upbeat and superficial and I’m constantly worried that I will lose him as well.
I monitor every contact with him watching for signs that I’m annoying him or irritating him in case I lose him too. I worry that he will detect my stress and anxiety and sadness and pull away because his in-laws are so much more stable and content.
I feel like my happiness and optimism and trust has been stolen from me. No one but other parents could possibly understand what a huge hole this has left in me. I feel I will never be truly happy again.
Yep, that is how our lives are as parents of trans children, somedays that cross we bear is too much and we must rest for our selves and sanity. So thankful for my Wife as we struggle along this dusty, terrible, pothole laden road, together. Could not imagine going it alone without her. So sick of it all! Thanks be to God for seeing us through another day.