Last week Jeanie texted me that she was going to be a vendor at a local community event. "I would love to come," I told her, "But I have so much work to do that I really have to put social activities aside for now". Our friend, Randall, talked to me before he pulled out of the driveway and I told him the same thing. As I began tackling the items on my to-do list, I suddenly thought of Uncle Joe. I then texted Jeanie again, saying, "I'm on my way up. I finally decided that supporting this cause is more important than anything I have to do."
"Don't forget your dead bear." That's what Uncle Joe, my father's younger brother, casually said to Grandmom as he reached for her fur coat while they got ready to leave. Uncle Joe's humor was one of his most memorable characteristics. If someone said, "I lost a few pounds," Uncle Joe would say, "Turn around, I think I just found them." One year when I said, "Merry Christmas, Uncle Joe", He replied with, "Oh Christmas, my ass!" I'm not sure what that meant but it made for the perfect line in one of my stories about a character like Scrooge. This natural comedian made himself present during the more serious times, too. On the day when Mom was having a cancerous tumor removed from her leg in 1980, it was so good to see his head poking through the door to her hospital room. He was at Grandmom's house every Mother's and Father's Day, and on Labor Day in 1975 when he also visited Dad in the hospital after Dad stepped on a rusty nail and got blood poisoning.
Mom had become good friends with Uncle Joe a short time after her young marriage to Dad. While Dad was at work, Uncle Joe would take walks through the park with Mom as she pushed my oldest brother, Jos, in a baby coach. Uncle Joe eventually got drafted into the Korean War. While he was overseas, Uncle Joe wrote a letter to Mom telling her that he had a secret that he wanted to share with her, but it might result in her not liking or respecting him anymore. Mom replied by saying, "Joe, I couldn't think any less of you if you told me that you killed a man!" With that being said, Uncle Joe laid it all out, "I am a homosexual," he wrote. Yes, Uncle Joe was gay. He didn't choose to be gay. He didn't want to be gay. It was just something that he had to live with. It was just something that was going to make his life a lot harder than it had to be.
Fortunately, that disclosure did nothing to change the way Mom felt about him. They continued to be friends. A short time later, there was a picture contest that took place in Uncle Joe's unit. All the young servicemen presented pictures of their girlfriends. Everyone had to vote for the woman they thought was the most beautiful. (I assume that they were not allowed to vote for their own girlfriend). Not having a girlfriend, Uncle Joe presented a picture of Mom, pretending that she was his girlfriend. Well, guess who won the beauty contest?
Not everyone got as much information as Mom did. Uncle Joe didn't even tell his parents. Grandpop lived and died without ever knowing that he had a gay son. He never realized how badly he hurt Uncle Joe when they were watching TV together and Grandpop referred to a few characters in a show as "those fairies". Uncle Joe chose not to tell Grandmom until he was days from dying himself from a terminal illness. Grandmom had grown up in a time when no one discussed anything sensitive, so when Uncle Joe told her that he was gay, she was completely overwhelmed. She called my father to talk about it. That was a good decision. Dad deeply loved his younger brother and never once said anything disparaging about Uncle Joe or his sexual orientation. I was close by when Dad and Grandmom were talking on the phone. I don't know what Grandmom was saying. I just know that Dad kept saying things like, "Well, you know, they were born that way." It was clear that he just wanted Grandmom to accept Uncle as he was.
By the time I was growing up, everybody talked about everything, even in my parochial high school. In my junior year at Nativity, we attended a "Marriage" class, in which many topics about sex were openly discussed. We were told that sexual orientation is not a choice and that it is unchristian to treat someone without respect because he or she is gay. I felt compelled to share that while Dad and Grandmom were still talking. "At Nativity they said..." I began. Before I could even finish that sentence, Dad quickly said to Grandmom, "Dorothy said that Nativity said that they were born that way." Good job, Dad! That wasn't exactly what I was going to say, but it was close enough. I wasn't there when Uncle Joe died but I was told that he died in my father's arms. He may not always have felt safe in his life, but I know he felt safe in his death.
Many people became tired of the cloud of shame and secrecy that LGBTQIA people were forced to stand behind in the past. So now we have the PRIDE movement, with June being PRIDE month. I was pleasantly surprised to find a number of Christian churches setting up tents at some of the PRIDE events I attended, now affirming the LGBTQIA community, some even supporting gay marriage. With all of this being the case, why is it still so hard to tell our friends, especially the more conservative ones, that we attended a PRIDE festival? We have to do it because it is only by breaking the silence and speaking out that things will change. We have to speak out because no one should have to be afraid to tell their parents that they are gay. No parent should have to feel completely overwhelmed when they hear that their child is gay. No one should have to come up with a fake picture of a girlfriend to be accepted by their peers, and no one - gay or straight - should ever have to hear comments like "those fairies".
My parents were buried right next to Uncle Joe, so when I visit their graves, I talk to Uncle Joe, too. For years I've been giving him updates on the last news involving LGBTQIA people. I remember excitedly telling him when they finally won the right to serve in the military. As I was announcing that, my eyes suddenly fell on Uncle Joe's Navy tombstone with the flag behind it. I could almost hear Uncle Joe laughing.
"You think the only people who are people, are the people who look and think like you, but if you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you'll learn the things you never knew, you never knew!" Lyrics from the song, "The Colors of the Wind" by Judy Kuhn - from the movie POCAHANTAS (1995).
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