ANOTHER Death in the Family

Life can be so strange.

I just returned from vacation – if you can call it that.

It was time off. I got to spend some quality time with my parents and one of my children – the daughter from El Salvador, who has returned permanently and appears to finally be over her wanderlust.

But, it was unseasonably cold and rainy. Many mornings were quite foggy. And the real reason for my time off was due to the death of an Aunt in North Carolina who had battling brain cancer for a number of years.

During the week that I was away, another Uncle was in ICU at one of the local hospitals. He was in rather bad shape. My relatives are all his stepchildren. He had been staying with his biological children since the breakup of his marriage with my aunt. As he lay in ICU, my cousins visited and saw what appeared to be evidence of elder abuse on his lower extremities.

So, this began another drama that played itself out near the end of my stay. My uncle passed away. His funeral was on the day I left to return home.

Three deaths in three weeks!

I find that all this death and dying business has left me feeling wrung out and basically out of sorts.

Going to WV for extended periods is stressful to me. I feel like I am the only gay person in the entire city. From the outside looking in, the communities that my family all operate with in seem to be “Straight Central”. The older I get, the harder it is for me to play along.

So, I spend a lot of my time just being me. I try to relax and be myself. But in the back of my mind I am always concerned about the “issue” and wondering if I am giving anything away. I certainly don’t want to cause any undue hardship on my parents or have people making any bad comments. So, I keep a very “low” profile.

People may think I’m being a snob….or that I am being shy. But really, I just keep my head down. Hopefully no one will notice that I am the odd man out. I am GAY!

Yesterday I received a telephone call from my mother. My uncle’s stepdaughter – my first cousin – had gone through a very ugly and unpleasant divorce from her husband of 32 years a few years ago. He remarried, and we hear that his current wife has filed for divorce.

When he moved out of wife #2’s home, he moved in with a wealthy man that lives in a rather upscale area of my hometown. On July 4, he invited his daughter to visit with her boyfriend.

Over the course of the visit, they determined that the ex-husband is gay and living with another gay man!

So, apparently there are some pockets of gayness right there in the midst of “straight central.”

I suppose you just have to know where to look!