Losing a Sibling – Sunday Reflections

We had another wonderful day here in New York City. We met my niece who lives here for lunch at a great little restaurant on Greenwich Avenue and I very much enjoyed catching up on what’s going on in her life. She seems to be flourishing after losing her mother, my middle sister and then her father less than two years later. She’s happy here in New York, has left banking which had given her the opportunity to live in London and then move to New York, and is now in the French culinary school here in New York. What was haunting to me throughout our wonderful meal was how much she looks like my late sister – I literally felt myself tearing up at a couple of times thinking of my sister and things lost. Throughout the remainder of the day we managed to avoid the 9-11 protests and instead seemed to encounter people involved in fashion week – certainly a more attractive option.
*
The 9-11 remembrances seem to always get me looking back in contemplation. 2001 was a year of huge upheaval in my life: I lost my sister and had to deal with her estate and so much high emotion and intra-family drama; I came out to my former wife after keeping secret to all but myself the epiphany I had had two years earlier as the result of an unintended encounter in Chicago; and, of course the 9-11 attacks took place.
*
In many ways I have achieved what I had dreamed of when I came out – I’m in a committed relationship with a wonderful man and overall we have a comfortable life despite living in anti-gay Virginia. My ongoing financial struggles given the collapsed economy and the impact on the real estate practice are the main source of constant worries. Another plus is that I have also reestablished communications with all of my children and I treasure my relationship with my youngest daughter who has worked for me for a year now as a paralegal. Perhaps most importantly, I am at total peace with my sexual orientation and long ago ceased feeling that I had been cursed by God.
*
I could never have reached this inner peace remaining in the closet. Living a lie on a daily basis, in my view, makes it impossible to come to terms with who you are. Moreover, it reinforces a sense (even if it’s subconscious) that being gay is wrong. As I have noted before, I have met far more genuine people in the LGBT community than I knew in the outwardly perfect world of suburbia where everything was about appearances and “keeping up with the Jones.” Despite all of the turmoil I have been through since coming out – forced out by my law firm for being gay, divorce case from Hell, two suicide attempts – I truly know that it was the right thing to do. I believe that I truly would be dead by now if I had remained married and in the closet.