Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Secrets Unfold

Today is my grandmother's birthday. It has been less than three months since she passed away, and though at times I feel like life is back to normal, there are those moments when a picture pops up or one of the songs I used on her memorial video seeps out of the car radio, and that familiar ache returns to my chest, accompanied by that lump in my throat. My grandmother was the special-standard grandmother, special in that she was mine, standard in that she did what every wonderful loving grandparent does. She reveled in spoiling us 8 grandchildren during birthdays, Christmases, and on occasion during a sleepover at her house. She continued to spoil her 15 great-grandchildren and begged for more, namely from me, who has yet to contribute to the family legacy. But it had been years since she asked about my love life, since she nagged about my needing to find a husband and pop out a few more rugrats. And though I wondered, I was never sure why.

My grandmother was raised in the 1930s as a conservative Christian woman. Along with those 1940s and 50s traditions of refusing to leave the house without perfect make-up and hair, with mastering perfect etiquette, with being the perfect wife and mother above all else came the mentality of the traditional family. A man, a woman, marriage, and biological children. There was never to be any variance from this equation and any divergence would not be tolerated. Needless to say it didn't sit well with her when her youngest son came out of the closet as gay and it took her years to adjust to the idea, decades before she became fully supportive of it.

In spite of her gradual transition to the unconditional support and love of my uncle, my mother was concerned about how she would handle my own coming out, and strongly advised against it. "It would just break your grandmother's heart if she knew." So I continued on through the years, biting my tongue, endearing the multiple affrontals of inquiries about my lacking love life, the many are you dating anyones, the why haven't you found anyone yets and the but you're such a nice looking young ladys, before we graduated to the I want more great-grandchildren damn it, adopt one if you have tos. There were attempted set ups, such as that nice young man from Honda they met while car shopping, who was apparently perfect for me because "he's Mexican too!" before offering to give him my number (my grandmother was white, I am half Mexican). Sometimes these conversations were agony, sometimes I just wanted to tell her the truth, so she could understand, so she could stop trying to set me up with car salesmen. But I couldn't risk breaking her heart. So I stayed silent.

As I grew older and became more comfortable in my skin, I was less cautious with my secret. It is a full time job to be in the closet and it is utterly exhausting, but as most of my family came to realize this truth, I had to work to keep my grandmother in the dark. I eventually friended her on Facebook as she learned to navigate social media, but I would block her from seeing my gay-related posts to protect her fragile heart. After awhile, knowingly or unknowingly, some of these posts may have slipped through the filters, though I don't recall if I intended to block them or if I was just tired of it. I don't remember if this coincided with the time the questions gradually stopped. I just noticed one day that my grandmother no longer asked about boyfriends and marriage. It brought both relief and confusion, but it slipped to the back of my mind and I rarely gave it much thought anymore. I simply enjoyed the time I had with my grandmother.

The family parties continued, the board games, the Facebook posts, it was just grandmother and granddaughter spending time together without much thought about whatever lay beneath our surfaces. It didn't seem as important to share this secret with her and I didn't concern myself with it, figuring I would worry about it when I met someone I would want to bring home to the family, which I had yet to do. But I still had those moments where I grew weary of carrying this rock on my shoulders.

Before any soul mate came into my life, before any lavish coming out ceremony, my grandmother grew very ill and passed away on November 20th, 2015. I was there in her final moments and the flashbacks of such have kept me from any quick recovery of the loss. Being my last living biological grandparent, my heart was ripped from my chest. I didn't give that secret I kept from her much thought in the few days after her death, but one night my mom was sitting on my couch as we cried and chatted away about our fondest memories of her. I'm not even sure how the conversation came about, but in one fell swoop my mother stopped my heart.

"She knew, you know."
"What?"
"Nanie knew you were gay."
"What, really?"
"Yeah we were talking about it one night. She just said 'I don't care, I just want Jae to find someone and be happy. That's all I ever wanted for her.'"

I fell apart. I cried. I sobbed. My mother swears she had told me about this conversation in the past, and I agonized over the lost opportunity to have this heart-to-heart conversation with my grandmother myself. There was nothing I wanted more than to simply remove this mask and be myself with each and every family member in my life, but no one more so than her. But I find some solace in knowing that as I was holding my own carefully guarded secret, she was holding her secret of unconditional love and acceptance, and with it, the truth that, tradition aside, nothing comes before the love of your family.

Happy Birthday Nanie.