Current Post On Trae’s Blog:
My grandmother died last night. This wasn't a shock or a surprise. Her health has been on the decline, and she's been in hospice for the last month. She lived a long life, and in her final days she was surrounded by her three adult children.
My grandma was a kind woman. She wasn't perfect, but I always felt loved in her presence. She was a retired kindergarten teacher, and was still working when I was a kid. I have so many happy memories sitting at her kitchen table, and I'm going to carry those with me for the rest of my life. She was also proof that anyone who claims that you get more conservative as you get older is full of shit, because she certainly didn't.
I think it's interesting how the body processes grief sometimes. I don't know that I'll cry, but over the past month, knowing this was coming, I've felt a tension in my gut. Now that she's passed, instead of relief that tension is replaced by a sense of emptiness. That something is missing that should still be there. Something has been taken away, and I feel it.
Of course, as I wrote that, I immediately started crying... so I guess my body processes grief in pretty ordinary ways too.
I wanted to come up with something profound linking this to Beltane, which we sit in the middle of right now, but it just seemed hackneyed. Like I was trying to dig out some greater significance when the truth is death comes whenever it wants. The only predictable thing about it is that it's the end of all of our journeys. I hope that when I pass I'm so lucky to have lived such a long life with people that I love around me in my final days.
For the record, I will be fine. I just needed to get these words out while they were still in my head. I don't have some rousing conclusion or deep insight to tack on here at the end, just that gut feeling that something is missing.
Because it is.
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The ship is sailing. I repeat: the ship is sailing! <3
Was it Kierkegaard or Dick Van Patten who said “When you label me, you limit me?”
There’s a wonderful youtube video by my man RJ Aguiar about being bisexual and monogamous and one of the things he covers is labels, like people telling him that since he is committed to this one guy, “Why don’t you just come out and say you are gay?” Sigh. Anyway, he gives very similar advice to what Ruth does: that labels work as a shorthand but the minute they don’t fit, throw them away.
Another trouble with labels, they don’t always mean the same thing to different people. I might say something intended as a compliment, only to have it taken as an insult, or vice versa.
Other Person: Eew! That movie looks weird!
Me: Ooh! That movie looks weird!
I’m really not a fan of the whole identity politics schtick. I think it gets used to divide people far more than anything else currently.
But Lynn’s advice here is the best advice I can possibly imagine and, should I ever find myself stuck in the position she’s in in this scene, I pray that I’m able to offer something as effective.
“I’m really not a fan of the whole identity politics schtick. I think it gets used to divide people far more than anything else currently”
Spoken like a straight white dude who has no clue what it’s like to not be the socially acceptable default.