‘Strange Solitude’

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’Strange Solitude’

26 Jul 2019

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Thirty years passed quickly.

I just realised something.

It came to me as I was commenting to a Facebook post about fathers and their LGBT child.

Last week – 19 July 2019, 11pm – marked the 30th Anniversary of my father’s death. We finished watching ‘China Beach’; the 11pm Late News was starting.  He began to heave his last breaths as I held him, hugged him; I wanted him to know that I would not let him go alone.  Where was the rest of his family?  He was staying at the New Jersey home of his sister and her husband – they had not come downstairs to the basement to see him all day.  My dad’s brother and his wife lived a few miles down the road – they had not bothered to visit since the previous Sunday.  My father’s natural daughter returned to her la Jolla, California, home two weeks earlier – she chose to leave her father during his final days rather than stay with her father til his passing.  There I was – the only family with my father at his final moment, the family member rejected by that family.

I flew from New Jersey cross-country to my home on the Saturday immediately following my father’s death on Wednesday night – family told me that I was not welcomed to be present at their home any longer.  My father’s funeral home visitation was that Saturday – family told me that I was not welcomed to participate and greet visitors.  My father’s funeral and Requiem Mass was that next day, the Sunday immediately following his death – family told me that I was not welcomed to attend Requiem Mass at their Catholic Church.  The military provided special attention to my father’s funeral service as a Veteran of WW2 and Korea, as a Bronze Star recipient – family told me that I was not welcomed to receive the Military Honour Guard as his child.  My 33rd birthday 30 years ago – my first time without my father.  Strange solitude.

I don’t know what this means.  I always – ALWAYS – found a way to commemorate his death each and every year with at least a moment of silent reflection at 11pm.  This is the first time in all these intervening years that I totally forgot about him on that day.

My dad was college educated – nearly a doctorate.  My dad had plenty of information about Transsexualism – there was Christine Jorgensen during the 1950s, then his brother-in-law Frank and his Transition during the 1960s, then me since and throughout my childhood, teens, adulthood.

My father had my entire lifetime to become accustomed to me – growing up as a Transsexual child, Transition at age 18, struggling through part-time, full-time at age 28.

Dad knew that I had been in Transition, knew that I had been part-time, knew that I had my 1982 exploratory surgery and its diagnosis because he snooped through my private medical papers.  I withheld information of my May 1983 surgery from family because I had no counselling to help me share my good news with family.  I had no idea how family would accept it, I could hide that surgery because I was still presenting as Nick to them.

We hadn’t seen each other for only a brief interlude – since late May 1985 when I returned to Utah to pack my household belongings and move from Utah.  He didn’t know that I advanced to full-time during those few intervening weeks earlier – quite literally on the road. I departed my Utah apartment as Nick, I became Sharon as soon as I drove out of town.

That first year after making full-time was the worst.  He rejected me more than any other time.  About the only difference in his responce to my Transsexualism was that he would no longer hit me.

He softened slightly when he saw that I cheered the Mets winning the 1986 World Series.  I was definitively, unquestionably his daughter that year; but there I was, cheering on the Mets, doing what he saw his son doing in 1969 (and in 1973’s losing cause).  It was about the first time since November 1985 when we finally met again, even if only tentatively.

Nope.

Dear Ol’ Dad was socially and emotionally distant my entire life, specifically my Transsexual life.  He never, not once, addressed me as Sharon; I didn’t expect that when I was age 8 when I made my first announcement that I chose my new name, but Sheesh!, he intercepted my postal mail for Sharon beginning in 1977, he snooped through my boxes of personal and intimate medical papers at my own home.  He lived in denial of what I presented directly to him.

I devoted my life to my father during the last three weeks of his life.  Lying in his hospital bed in the basement of his sister’s New Jersey home, he turned his back to me, he preferred to look at the wall, whenever I tried to talk with him.

With his death 30 years ago this past weekend, maybe I can fantasise that he could have changed; but, I submit, the cold reality is that these subsequent 30 years would have done nothing for our relationship.  My father would have remained opposed.

The first words that I said to my dad:

• ‘Now I’m happy, Dad.  This is who I am.  I’m still me.  We can still watch Sunday football together.’

That’s what I told my father.  One of the first things in 1985 when I travelled to his home at Sierra Vista when he invited me for my birthday.

Just like that – my words permanently etched to my memory.

My dad turned away from me as I entered the door.  Maybe he never heard my plea.

He refused to look at me.

The remaining of my 1985 birthday visit was cold, without much conversation between us.  We prepared dinner in silence, we ate in silence.  Maybe because we were nervous and tentative during this first time when my reality truly and finally hit his reality.

I don’t recall, but I don’t think we hugged good-bye that night.  The time was getting late and I departed.  My drive home was 90 miles and two hours distant – plenty of alone time for myself to ponder that evening’s events.  As he would later turn his back to me in his hospital bed.  As I would return home in solitude during my cross-country flight home in 1989.

My dad came to my apartment in November 1985.  That was a few days after Clint’s football buddies tried to attack me.  Clint was with my dad.  They both yelled at me – how could I do this to them.  They demanded that I change back.

I would not hear from my father again for several months.  Clint never came to visit me at my apartment and he did not welcome me at his apartment.

Christmas and the 1985 holidays season was distinctly alone for me.  No communication from family.

 I drove to Sierra Vista on the evening of my dad’s birthday (23 Jan 1986) with a card and plans – hoping that we could reconcile.  He was not home.  I waited for a short time, but eventually determined that he did not want me around, that he was avoiding me, that he made his own plans without me in them.

We had almost no contact for about a year – til the time of those 1986 baseball playoffs.

My dad came to visit me for the first time since 1985.  He actually came to pick me up after work one day where I was employed as Court Clerk at a Tucson city court office.  He allowed me to introduce him to the few co-workers there still working later hours.  He was good, he behaved himself, he said nothing to my work-mates to expose me.  We went to dinner that evening – our first dinner together in public.  There must be some spark, something good in my father about those efforts that I can grasp – that that was one brief event when he felt comfortable about my presence.

Family happy endings are nice, but not universal.

Our relationship remained difficult for our last three years.

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Epilogue – for the record (26 Jul 2019):

Family read this post adapted to another social media site.  They left a Comment.  No doubt that their gossip mill is running full steam as they have done in the past.

I alluded to this in the essay.  My father snooped through my box of medical papers when he travelled to visit me at Utah during Christmas vacation 1982.  I learned in 2015 that he told family that I had BA.  Well, that’s Our terminology; his report was more civilian and obviously quite wrong.

My point being – Why can’t family offer their invitation for me to visit them, rather than gossip among themselves, rather than silence toward me?

No one says that this meeting must be at their home or my home.  Maybe at the Public Library?  Or the salad bar?  Or a walk in the park?

My sister really extended herself this year.  She sent the absolute briefest of a text message that, at first effort, didn’t even include my name.  How thoughtfully thoughtless!  No information about her and her family.  No enquiry expressing her interest about my life.  No picture of her and her family.

Do they really want me to be part of their family?

Or do they keep me around because my life makes a punch line in their conversation?

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Thank you, Dear Reader, for visiting this page.

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‘Father’s Day’

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‘Father’s Day’

(16 Jun 2019)

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Today is Father’s Day, huh.

I have two fathers – one who provided his germination, one who raised me after that.

Two Father’s Days come to my mind.

– 1969:

This picture is Mincemeat and me at our co-apartment at Grambling, Louisiana – June 1969.

My father and I went through another one of my innumerable Feminine Protesting arguments.  Parents always win these confrontations.  As punishment, he ordered me to clean the camper for our coming Independence Day vacation to New Orleans.

While I was cleaning the camper, the wind gusted, slammed the back door, and broke the glass.

What followed never made sense.  My father insisted that we bring Mincemeat with us to Catholic Mass.  Why would an adult bring a dog to be locked in a hot, humid vehicle on a hot humid Sunday during June in Louisiana?  Why?  Our residence apartment was air conditioned.

In this Google Maps view:  our apartment was that last one – in the back, to the right (we parked vehicles parallel with the building; our camper faced toward the street).

Mincemeat must have been in unbearable fits.  He must have tried to get outside, to make it to fresh air.  Instead, he cut his lip on the broken glass.  Bleeding must have made him more frantic.

I remember as if today.  I knelt at the pew after Mass, praying, waiting for my father to decide it was time to go home.  I had no idea what had been happening just outside church, at the parking lot a few yards from the door.

My father’s casual time could very well have been the difference between Mincemeat’s life and his eventual death.

Mincemeat was suffering heat stress.  We drove to the veterinarian at Ruston.  It was too late.  The vet told us that the best we could do was take him home, keep him comfortable, keep him cool, provide water or ice chips.

Mincemeat died that Sunday afternoon.  We wrapt him in my beach towel and buried him under trees near a place where he and I played at an open field to the west of our apartment, where now there are new homes.  Here is a current Google Maps ‘satellite view’ where we buried Mincemeat.

– 1989:

My father travelled cross-country to Sloane-Kettering for cancer treatment in April.

This was the Mahwah, New Jersey, home of my father’s sister where my father was staying.  They isolated him from the rest of their family, they dumpt him in their basement – at those windows to the right of the garage door.  Gawd!  I have not seen this house since 1989.

That house was the scene of years of hate and derision that my father’s family directed toward me each time my father brought us cross-country to visit – 1961, 1963, 1965, 1967, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1979, 1983, and finally 1989.  I made two serious (unsuccessful) efforts at suicide during our 1967 visit because I just needed to get away, any place.  Death seemed more logical than enduring any more of them.

I travelled to visit my father.  I arrived on Father’s Day 1989.  I stayed with my father downstairs in that basement for the next three weeks, what would be his last three weeks on Earth.  I lived in a chair that I brought to his bed-side, my feet touching his feet, giving to him a sense of connection that he was not alone.

My father’s family – his brother, his sister, her husband – sat at their kitchen table just upstairs from the basement, they talked loudly, they schemed ways to steal from his estate as soon as he died.  My father heard them.  That trio saw my father as their Gravey Train, their Cash Cow, their Golden Goose, their Meal Ticket when he was dying.  I asked my father what he thought about his family –  who really cares for him, and who doesn’t.  Their callous disregard pained him during his final days, having put years of effort into a family that saw nothing of his true value in life.

My father died of cancer at age 62 – in that basement.  I was the only family with him; I hugged him as he let go of his final breath.  His sister and her husband were upstairs watching TV – their daily soap opera on tape, recorded by their VCR timer from earlier that day.  His brother could not be bothered driving the few miles from Hawthorne to visit him more than a few times between April and July.

I was there for my father when my father’s family was not there for him at his most crucial experience.

Now do you see more excuses why his family hates me!

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My father committed many bad deeds during his life.  I could take volumes to list the harm that he did.

But …

I shall today remind myself and others of his good.  We are all human – our bad and our good.

My father was a courageous sailor during the War in the Pacific of WW2.  The military plucked him from high school as soon as he turned age 18, they sent him through the usual boot camp, they stationed him for duty supplying combat forces throughout both the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.  After the War ended, the military assigned him to the Occupation Force at Japan.  The military awarded a ceremonial sword to him.

The Army called him to duty for the Korean Conflict.  He again served with exceptional distinction.  The Army awarded the Bronze Star to him.

My father took advantage of the GI Bill upon his discharge following his service at Korea.  He studied both Engineering and then Political Science (1950s).

My father had a brief career as a drafting engineer for an aerospace company (1960s).  Among his work, he helpt design and draw space-craft.  One of his products were prototype representations of what would become the Space Shuttle.

My father was a middle school and high school teacher beginning in the mid-1960s.  He first taught high school History.  He got his Master’s Degree in Mathematics and taught middle school and high school Mathematics for the remainder of his teaching career.

During his teaching career, the National Science Foundation awarded scholarships to him to attend post-graduate Summer education programs at both Grambling College (Grambling, Louisiana, 1969) and Southern Oregon University (Ashland, Oregon, 1970).

My father taught overseas: Pinewood International School (Pylaia, Greece) and The American International School (Sao Paulo, Brasil).

My father was also a school administrator.  He was Principal at Ramah Elementary School (Ramah, New Mexico) and Naco Elementary School (Naco, Arizona).

Thank you to the students and members of the Buena Community of Sierra Vista, Arizona, where he spent most of his years as a Mathematics teacher.  Thank you who expressed your kind words to his obituary that Doug posted this week.

Thank you who came to read this tribute to my father.

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Allow me to say that this goes the other way.  With a dose of Karma.

My father rejected me.  He had little interest in being father to me, especially as the years passed and he had to have realised that there was no reversal for me.

I never gave up on him as he gave up on me.   I was the only one with him when he died 30 years ago; his family rejected him.

I eventually learned that my father told his neighbours that I died.  Actually his story to his neighours was not really meant to be malicious; I find it curiously ingenious and endearing.  He did not know how to handle me visiting him at his home, me Sharon arriving in my Ford Fairmont driving the same car that me Nick drove.  How will he respond when the neighbours ask him about that woman driving Nick’s car?  Where is Nick?  I learned what my father did when I went to his home after he travelled to New Jersey (April 1989).  His next door neighbour approached me, introduced himself, asked me who I was.  I introduced myself only as his daughter Sharon, I did not tell him that I was Nick.  The neighbour then expressed his condolences – first about the death of my ‘brother’ Nick and now my father’s terminal condition.  I thanked him and went about my tasks.

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Our parents of we children of the 1950s and 1960s had little idea about Trans.  Jorgensen was salacious information to them.

And, as I wrote, our parents were human – flawed at times, good at times.

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Additional Resources:

Google Maps is cool!  I located those old haunts there.  Sometimes, places are the same, sometimes they are different.

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Dear Reader:

Thank you for visiting today.

Thank you for bearing with my personal reminiscences.

Thank you to the resources.

Be nice to one another.  Keep your words and actions kind and decent; no insults, we are better people.

Please return for another essay.

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Post Script (18 Jun 2019):

I also posted this same essay to my social media page.

I noticed only one family member bothered to read and check that post.  Where are my sister, my father’s cousins, nieces, nephews?  I don’t need to imagine; I know the gossip that his niece will spread, that will travel among family during the coming days, then flitter away.

‘Thank you’ goes to you who came to my social media and to here.  Some of you knew my father as their school teacher.  You expressed to me kind regards about your experiences with my father.  Ευχαριστώ πολύ.

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