meredith

This photo is from about thirty years ago. I am wearing Ken's letterman’s jacket from Attica High School in Indiana. In this photo, he is my stepfather, and we seem to be laughing. Now, he is a source of grief, as he has been for nearly twenty years – but more so, because he died this afternoon at age 59.

He tried to be a father figure when he started dating my mom. I was about 11, and I told her I was angry. Her last husband had died seven years before, so in my memory it had always been just me and my mom. In hindsight, I understand why she remarried, but I swore at the time that he would never be my father. Unfortunately, that turned out to be close to true. He tried to be a father, but he could only manage being a pushover, willing to say yes whenever mom said no. He did try, I know he did, but he was also a prescription drug addict beginning in my teenage years. I didn’t know this until I was in my early 20s, and our relationship went downhill from there.

My mom kicked him out, but they remained friends. Meanwhile, he kept losing one job after another. He was a manager at a grocery store for a few years, and a manager at a Wendy’s for several years, but he never seemed stable to me. I kept him at arm’s length, and we’d try now and then to have contact. He turned angry, he started blaming me for not fitting into the neat little image of a daughter he had, he put me through a cycle of abuse and apology. I went no contact in 2016, when I was 35 and he was 53. He continued to be abusive by trash-talking me to my mom, and on social media, but I did not waver. My partners and therapist have all supported me in this.

He moved back in with my mom a couple of years ago following an MS diagnosis. I refused to go to my childhood home while he lived there. And then, in the fall of 2022, he was diagnosed with stage IV cancer. He moved to assisted living, but it was too late for much treatment. He was hospitalized on my birthday, January 18. My mom waited until she received a prognosis on Saturday to call me: “Days to weeks.”

So I went to see Ken on Sunday, January 22. I had discussed this with my therapist months ago – I needed to go for myself. I needed to say goodbye, because I am a compassionate person, and I wanted him to know on his deathbed that I loved him, I wanted to make that last effort. When I walked in the room and said “I love you,” his response was – to paraphrase – “Fuck you.” I stayed long enough to finish some paperwork with my mom, but it was over. He died at that moment, for me, and the rest was just sitting by the phone waiting for the news.

I know MS causes personality changes, as does addiction. I know this, and yet, this was who he was. My stepfather was emotionally abusive, absent in spirit, and/or uncertain how to relate to me for most of the 30 years we knew each other.

Now he is gone. He is my third father-type-person to die, but the first one I actually knew. There is no neat and tidy word for my feelings. I don’t know what to do next.

CN: Generational trauma, HIV/AIDS, death

I'm doing research on HIV/AIDS and the deaf community for an upcoming work project, and it's depressing. The project is called Left Behind, if that clues you in to why I have to take breaks for cat videos frequently.

The most upsetting things I'm working with are the scrapbooks of Darol Nance, director of the Deaf AIDS Center, founded in 1986 in San Francisco. Darol kept wonderful records, pasting in flyers for memorial services, obituaries, and hundreds of photos. She dutifully wrote names for most of them, and paging through the books leads to so many heartbreaking stories.

There's a happy picture of Darol and Julio sitting on a house's front steps, they are both smiling. But a few pages later there's more pictures from the same day, zoomed out a little bit, and you see the cane Julio had to use to walk around, and how small and tired he looks next to his partner.

Across a double page spread, you can see the effects of wasting syndrome. In one picture, Don S. is robust, laughing, a twinkle in his eye. In the next, he's gaunt, with sunken cheeks and a flat expression.

There's a picture of Don P. in his bathrobe at home. The next picture is Darol at his funeral. She's posing next to a print of the first photo.

So many funeral pictures. One of them is an open casket.

The project is called Left Behind because most deaf people didn't know what HIV was, much less how you get it or that you die from it, until years after the hearing community. This was all before the ADA – television was rarely captioned, and interpreters were rarely provided at doctor's appointments or educational workshops. The information just didn't get out there. The Shanti Project began providing HIV/AIDS services in 1981 – they didn't offer anything for deaf people until 1990. When they did, the program manager wondered, “what took us so long?”

It's difficult research. It's difficult writing. It's going to be difficult to take in. But most of my audience doesn't realize that HIV used to be a death sentence. They don't remember a time when you couldn't look up health information on the internet.

The project will be worth it. Julio will be there, both his actual AIDS quilt panel (made by Darol), and his happy picture on the steps. Rosie, Ms. California Deaf Leather 2004, a black trans woman, will be there, she's wearing her sash in the picture we're using. John, who entered the hospital near the end of his life and was handcuffed to the bed, unable to communicate, will be there with one of his two panels.

It hurts, but it's worth it.

Equal rights for others does not mean fewer rights for you. It's not pie.

But also, the reverse.

The Washington Post has published yet another edgy article about polyamory and once again we're clutching our pearls on both sides of the aisle.

Wait, you can have a wedding if you're a throuple?!

Oh god, not another completely superficial article about polyamory.

What caught my eye, though, was not the polyamory, although the focus on triads and the superficiality was once again tiresome. Instead my focus fell on the following.

And as a genderqueer, pansexual person holding this ceremony in 2015 — before same-sex marriage was legal throughout the U.S. — Rachael wanted to stand in solidarity with queer people who couldn’t legally marry their partners, Rachael said.

As long as Obergefell stands, my complaint here is pretty moot, but I will say it anyway: people having heterosexual marriages is not what kept queer marriages from happening. There are 1,138 federal rights associated with marriage, and anyone who wants them should avail themselves of them. There are plenty of reasons not to get married, but “because my friends can't” is not a good reason. What does that actually do? Does your state somehow grant rights to queer people based on you not getting married? Have your queer friends said “look, I know you want those 1,138 rights, but it makes me sad, so you shouldn't get them” to you, in so many words? This form of “solidarity” is bullshit, it means nothing.

My wife and I got married in Connecticut in 2009. It was the first state to offer marriage (as opposed to civil union) without requiring residency, so we drove up from Virginia and did it. Of course the piece of paper meant nothing back home – and indeed, Virginia had some very restrictive laws on this – but it felt good to us to be married. In 2013, we began filing federal taxes as married when the Defense of Marriage Act fell, and in 2015 we became actually really married when Obergefell was passed.

Would any of my straight friends getting married prior to 2015 have changed any of this? Absolutely not. I'd much rather they have voted, donated, and contacted their officials than “stand in solidarity” with me.

There is a very real possibility that Obergefell will be struck down at some point in the future. If that happens, I don't expect any straight folks to get divorced to “support” me. What good does that do? You'd have to have a whole lot of divorces to have a tax impact, and that's not going to happen.

Straight people, I don't care if you're married. You refusing to buy a pie does not mean the government is going to give me your pie. The fact that articles are still talking about this seven years after Obergefell means people still don't understand this basic concept.