My Gifted Life

If there’s one thing people assume when it comes to women is that we are all going to cry where a man will stare stoically and unblinking at the approaching asteroid about to flatten the planet. Men don’t want to be women because then they’ll be weak. We don’t want women for leaders (US only, everyone figured this out) because they can never stand up to the pressure. A man will be more convincing because of his physical stature, and the size of his biceps. Bat man, pursuer of justice who manages to not get hit bones broken, z hero to developing male minds everywhere.

All silliness aside, humans are humans. I was wimpy, so I cried at all the tearful movie endings. I felt pretty weird, was I supposed to be a strong man (hint, before transition) or show my vulnerable side? The sad thing is I had all these guy friends and they had received the message better than me. Meanwhile I had moved on to where the girl lost the guy. Therapeutic tears.

But there’s something so very consoling and completing about tears. They really do heal, and as macho as some men (even some women) are, your psyche needs them. It let’s you acknowledge your fears and regrets and turn them into something positive tomorrow.

My dad died back in 2010. He had been living with us for eight years, and then when our daughter went away to study, we finally moved him into assisted living where he always pretended to be a little unhappy and the caregivers told us he was having a good time. But one day he fell and broke his hip or maybe his hip broke and he fell down. Well, no matter how old you are, they have to repair a broken hip because you need mobility and you can’t have any of that with a busted hip. It was funny though. We were in preop, and he was still awake and I swear I remember him trying to bargain out of having the repair. OMG. He was fairly irrational as this was in the early early morning and, like many elderly, he tended to sundown around 5pm.

Some hours later he’s resting comfortably and we’ve arranged a rehab bed for him at a nursing home where we knew one of the staff. We figured she’d be an extra set of eyes and ears to keep track of my dad. By this time, he had gone completely deaf and we communicated with a small whiteboard. Slow, but it works. Meanwhile we visited him every day, especially when he failed rehab. I don’t know the figures, but hip fractures kill a pretty large percentage of people in their 80s and older.

Medicare gives you around three months of skilled nursing care before you’re on your own. Take my advice, calm your concerns, admit that your dear mom or dad or whomever is not going to be about for much longer and get them into hospice. Hospice worries about comfort and dying peacefully and you really want that for them. It might have been one of the poignant things we did for him. He lingered for a couple of months more. Incidentally, it would have been impossible to take care of him at home.

During the honeymoon phase, ] which happens a couple of weeks before someone dies, they often temporarily recover from things like dementia and other brain-based problems, or at least get better for a time. During that time our daughter got to spend a couple of weeks with him. I was very grateful they got to enjoy that bonding experience. I remember asking him if there was anything he wanted to tell me, but he was content. So was I. I barely missed the end – bad advice on timing from the staff, but he was in a coma.

I sat with him. His heart was still going, even though he had clinically passed, so I was there when the heart stopped. All those years and suddenly it went poof. The huge man of my childhood broken in a frail elderly body. Usually in Judaism the body is buried the next day, but he died on the twenty first and my sister’s birthday was the twenty second. So religious dogma gave way, and he was buried next to my mom. I said a eulogy for him. I’m actually not positive but I don’t think anyone else did. It was a real small service. He had long since fallen out of touch with his ham radio buddies and his siblings were long gone. The group of mourners were just some cousins, my sister’s family and mine.

We ritualize death in Judaism by remembering our dear departed during three times. For the first seven days the family sits shiva. During this time people in the community help you with things. After that first week we have a month to reflect back on the person we have lost and slowly ease back into life. At the last we have the yahrzeit which we celebrate each year on the anniversary of their death. Some Jewish services have a special time to remember our lost ones, it’s called the yizkor service. Most major Judaic holidays have this, e.g. Passover, Shavuot, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

I was badly hit with grief. Incidentally, this was over a year before I came out. But my grieving didn’t end after months afterward. I probably grieved for my mom about two or three months with the worst over in perhaps six weeks. A year was way out of normal, even for a crybaby like me. Well as we came up on a year it became messy.

I reached the inescapable conclusion that I was suffering from depression, and I also hit the end of my rope with the transgender obsession I had. I think you all know the end of that story if you’ve read much I posted, but that was the beginning of therapy and discovering the future.

I’ll leave you with this. It took a bit to find a therapist. The only reference I had was to Fenway, a large health center in Boston, but they were only taking their own patients for transgender care. Fenway gave me a list of possible therapists outside of Boston and I was fortunate to find Christine Becker to guide me. Incidentally, Christine left the area some years ago now, but she was great.

A last thought

The first thing I asked Christine was “Can you make this go away?” and I’m sure you’re not surprised she said no. Nothing ventured nothing gained.

———————– A note from the author ————————

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Rachel