I feel like an ancient deity with many arms, capable of simultaneously holding so many seemingly contradictory truths. The way death brings people together. I will be the last arrival of all my siblings and cousins to make it to the desert to gather around my grandfather's death. It takes this to get us all in one place. I don't feel my own deep sorrow over his passing; I'm thankful he went peacefully and I have compassion for those who were close and will miss him most.
For myself, I am the black sheep that strayed far, far from the flock and it was the judgmental law that he laid down that led my father to keep me a secret for years, preferring to let the family wonder where I could've disappeared to rather than risk being seen as the failed father of a beautiful, brilliant genderqueer tattooed tranny. Me, who sees animals and entities in the swirling cream clouds in my coffee. Me, who is probably the most closely and purposefully acquainted with death of anyone in my family. Me, who still, at thirty years old, anxiously labored over what kind of wardrobe felt respectfully "gender appropriate" and also still myself enough to wear for this occasion.
There is irony in the fact that now I struggle to find clothes that do not feminize my form. They have managed to accept my transition and shift their language to "he". I think they were so grateful just to have me around again and hear what I've been up to in life. But to wrap their heads around this formerly gregarious little girl who was always playing dress up becoming a boy who is not at all like the sports-watching, car-obsessed, cookie-cutter suburb family man, perhaps that is too much to ask. I don't really care how they see me, to be honest. They don't need to fully understand my life.
The mystics and the healers have always been poorly understood by their contemporaries. We are profoundly blessed in this modern age of travel and communication to have found our own connected covens and rabble-rousing crews.
So I go into this remembering my kinship to earth and sky and all that surrounds and supports me. I call on my acquaintance with death's gatekeepers to guide me and I call on the deepest well of compassion I know to allow me to hold space for the grief of my family, that I may be a channel for their healthy release, so they might become freer and deeper and more aware and grateful for this. So be it.
