Now This

More family drama. Actually, more of the same family drama. It goes like this: My father is spiralling deeper into depression and indolence, knows that he should do what Mom, his doctor and therapists, his sons and I have recommended. But, he says, he has no interest in eating or reading a newspaper. Under those circumstances, how can anyone expect him to join clubs, make new friends, take up a hobby--or even a job, given that he doesn't really need the paycheck, which would be small, anyway.

He has no bodily strength, he says. Mom concurs; he eats only when she forces him. That's one of the easier things she's been doing. Every time I've talked to her during the past two weeks, she sounds more tired, angrier and sadder. She doesn't have the strength to keep up with all the extra work she now has; she expressed regret that she probably won't accompany me to Trinidad after all. She probably won't go to my nephew's high school graduation in California, either.

It's one thing for my father to passively prevent my mother from going the her grandson's graduation or my gender reassignent surgery. But it would be much worse if he deprives my brothers--and me--of their mother, my nephews and nieces of their grandmother, Uncle Joe of his sister and other people of someone they love. That, I've told him, is the one and only thing for which I would not forgive him.

I hope he doesn't undermine me in getting the surgery, or anything else. For a time, it seemed as if he were being as supportive as he knows how to be of anything, and he even was helpful. Now this, as I'm only six and a half weeks from my surgery.