Looking for the Bridge
on holding the tension of opposites
My grandma died a week ago Friday.
She was a kind and loving woman who was loved by many.
I loved my grandma.
My grandma loved me.
My grandma hated gay people.
My grandma loved me.
My grandma hated gay people.
These are just statements of fact that are somehow equally true. These are two things I have to hold on the day of my grandma’s funeral. While the rest of my family and her friends and community get to grieve and celebrate this woman who lit up a room with her smile, I’m left trying to make sense of these seemingly irreconcilable—but equally true—facts.
My grandma loved me.
My grandma hated gay people.
As I sat and listened to the preacher speak about her and the stories told by her siblings, children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren (of whom she had nine, despite her obituary leaving my two daughters out of the equation), I saw clearly just how multifaceted people can be.
Your perspective on a person can truly change a lot about what you see. To the vast majority of people in her life, she radiated nothing but love. I certainly got the opportunity to see that. But I have a different perspective than most in her life, and so I saw things many didn’t.
I lived with my grandma for a short time after a particularly challenging season of my life. Living with someone offers you a direct line to a kind of intimacy most people never get. I heard and saw things most in her life never did.
“I wish they would all just go crawl in a hole and die.”
The words came out of her mouth so effortlessly. She wasn’t really talking to me, but I was there. It was more that she was talking to herself or maybe the tv as she referenced a lesbian that was being publicly shamed on Fox News—which was always on in my grandma’s house. My grandma, at this point, did not know I was also queer, but I did. And those words hurt as much now, writing them in this essay, as they did then when they first landed in my body. When I heard them, and all the hate and disgust they were wrapped in, all I wanted to do was to crawl in a hole and die.
I’m sure she would have never said something like that in front of me if she knew—and she never did after I came out to her. But just because she doesn’t say it, doesn’t mean she doesn’t think or feel it, doesn’t mean the belief isn’t still deep under the surface.
This was a new kind of pain for me. It was a pain that confirmed my suspicions and fear about what she really thought, but more than that, it was a pain of complication. Most of us queer folk are used to people wanting us dead. It’s always painful to hear—and always scary—but there is a way that it’s expected and prepared for. It makes sense to us. In so many ways, for as horrible as it is, it’s clear. Clean cut.
But this pain, has all that other pain, and also left me holding these two seemingly irreconcilable facts:
My grandma loved me.
My grandma hated gay people.
My grandma loved me in so many ways. Always sending cards and being available to spend time with me. Giving me a place to live when my life fell apart. She sent me money every month to help me pay for my yoga therapy training. I wouldn’t have been able to afford it or the time away from work it required without her help. She did this because she believed in me and wanted me to be successful. My grandma loved me. No one can tell me otherwise.
My grandma showed her hatred for gay people in many ways as well. In the comments she made to me before I came out to her. In the way she voted. In the news and media she chose to consume and believe. In the church she attended until she died.
Somehow, beyond all reason, both of these things are true:
My grandma loved me.
My grandma hated gay people.
I could feel them both every time I was with her. She loved me. She hated gay people. I could feel the battle going on insider her. Maybe she felt as confused and frustrated as I do now. Maybe she tuned it out, pushed it back to the recesses of her subconscious, to keep things pleasant. I don’t know. We were never able to talk about it. The tension I could feel in her, and the pain, confusion, and frustration in me made it difficult to stay close after I came out.
And I wanted to be close. I have longed for the family connection I see flowing more effortlessly between the other members of my family. I wanted her to be a part of my life, especially after getting married. I wanted her to connect with my kids the way I saw her connect with my nieces and nephews. One Christmas she did buy my daughters each a sweet gift. The one I remember most was a stuffed beagle—which I still treasure. But anytime we were with her there was a hesitance. Some reservation.
I want to be clear that I acknowledge and deeply appreciate the effort and even, dare I say, progress that was made. But there’s no getting around the fact that that reservation was always there. It felt like standing on the other side of a canyon from someone. I’m sad we could never find the bridge to cross.
Because my grandma loved me.
And my grandma hated gay people.
I carry deep grief that my grandma and I were never able to have the kind of relationship I wanted after I came out. Strangely, my desire to connect more deeply with my family was really fostered by my coming out. I’ve heard it’s different for a lot of folks. But for me, coming into who I really am has made me so deeply aware of my connections to others, and has given me a deep desire to foster and care for those connections. I love my family. I’m heartbroken my queerness and transness is a problem or barrier for so many of them—which I was reminded of at the funeral.
Maybe I’m most heartbroken by the fact that no one seems willing or able to talk about it. For as much as my grandma loved me, she never had the capacity to work through or address this deep inner conflict. The topic was never on the table, but was always in the room.
It’s heartbreaking because I would hope that someone’s love for another person would inspire them, even compel them to remove the barriers they felt towards them. But I guess that’s not always the case. And of course, being on the receiving end of all this after my grandma’s passing is honestly a mind fuck. I don’t get to have a clean or direct grief like so many in that church got to have. I am certainly sad she is gone, but I have so much more to be sad about.
Death, though, is a great clarifier. It puts things in perspective, and I’m grateful to be given this particular perspective. I feel a sense of urgency in myself to love more cleanly and completely. To allow my love for God and people to compel me to work through the barriers I have. I shudder at the idea of dying and leaving anyone in my life behind feeling the way I feel now. I want the people in my life to know how much I love them and I want to work through and remove any of those secondary complicating facts from our relationship.
All I want to do is become Love.
Of course relationships are messy and complicated, but I always want Love to be pushing me to be more and more loving. I feel compelled to work through and rearrange any less than loving thoughts or worldviews that have made their way into my heart and mind.
The only solace I’ve found since her passing is that I believe wholeheartedly that we are reunited with the Divine Reality when we die. The Divine Reality is Love. When we go, the parts of ourselves that held on to hate or fear, or even anything less than Love, all fall away. Love is what is real, unchanging, unborn, and undying. Love is eternal. Now my grandma is nothing but Love.
I have so much grief that I didn’t get to experience her in this way while she was alive, that we couldn’t find the bridge. But I did experience her love, and the ways she was unloving don’t take that away. And in the same way, the ways she was loving don’t erase the ways that she wasn’t. To only focus on the ways she hurt me, or the ways she was hateful doesn’t honor the reality of who she was. To only focus on how she was loving doesn’t honor my experiences of pain. The best way I can think to both honor her memory and show love and care for myself is to hold both.
So, I’m doing my best to hold both. I’m doing everything I can to find the bridge.
Just beautiful.
A beautiful reflection on a heart- rending truth. Sending hugs.