On Not Coming Out to my Great Grandmother

Nobody ever really had a eulogy or made an obituary about my great grandmother, who her grandkids and great grandkids called Gran. She passed away last September, about a week into my second year of college at 96 and I haven't really processed it properly. Maybe, since she lived so long, nobody had really processed it. I like to write poetry in my free time and have started and scrapped numerous pieces about my relationship with her, which only grew complicated in the last couple of years when I came out as gay.

When I came out to my my mom, the news traveled through the grapevine to the rest of my family. They disagree whether it ever got to Gran. My brother says he recalls having a conversation with her and my grandmother about it, and yet the Christmas before she passed she asked me if I'd met any boys. It didn't bother me too much until the grapevine extended to my more distant family.

It's not like Gran, our stubborn, silver-tongued matriarch wanted us to all stay in line: she'd be a hypocrite and she knew it. She'd been through too many crazy things.

When she was five, she was kidnapped by her kindergarten teacher and forced to join the Evangelical church, where she dressed as an angel, 'flew' on wires, and spoke in tongues. Her own mother, my great great grandmother, had to convert just to get her back.

She pretended to be sixteen, two years older than she was, when she met my great grandfather on a blind date. She married him at sixteen and had her first and only child when she was seventeen. She wanted many more but her heart condition prevented that. She was supposed to die in her forties but almost lived a hundred years.

She and my grandmother went to Russia with one of the first American tourist groups that were allowed. While there, she saw a child being abused and went to tell the person off, which got her thrown in jail. My grandmother had to flirt with the police to get her out.

Those are just a few tidbits of my favorite stories about Gran, who was the epitome of "tiny and mighty." This wasn't to say that the time she grew up, and her link to Catholicism, didn't make her traditional: she and my Aunt didn't talk for an extended period of time after she lived with a man before getting married, and she was utterly shocked when my mother got pregnant with my brother before marriage. She grew to overcome it, though, and while deep down I knew she'd overcome my queerness I wasn't sure I'd be able to deal with the initial reaction.

After I'd made it official with my girlfriend I brought her to meet Gran and introduced her as my significant other. Granted, I guess I'll never know if she thought I meant "girlfriend" in the romantic sense: my timing was impeccable because several of her neighbors came to visit, who DID know what I meant by "girlfriend," and outed myself to about five more people than I really wanted to. Her lack of reaction only gave me temporary relief.

She passed away a month after that. A few days before I sat next to her bed and all I wanted to do was leave. I couldn't stand the fact that my great grandmother, who loved the beach, and life, was spending her last hours in pain in the desert. At one point she looked at me and winked, probably thinking "why the hell did your mother bring you here?" She'd seen me almost pass out just walking into a hospital.

Upon telling her I was at school to become a civil engineer, the nurse said "she must be very proud." I sure hope so.

When my mom, brother and I each saw one in different locations on the same day, we decided that Gran was now a praying mantis.