My mother called me the other night, to let me know how the memorial for my sister in law had gone. I was understandably bummed that I was unable to go on such short notice, and was eager to hear the details. Only when everything had been described, did my mother bring something up.

"I hope you won't be too mad at me," she said. "When I wrote the obituary the first time, I accidentally left you and your sister's husband out. I wasn't thinking very clearly."

Oh, I thought. Oh well. It happens. Obituaries are not easy. "That's alright, momma. It happens."

"But then I realized the mistake, and submitted my correction. But I didn't think to call you first, and find out how you wanted it done, so I put your old name in. But only the paper back home got the correction. The one in Wyoming had already gone to press, so you weren't there."

I was....a little disappointed, but you know. I can understand, I guess. And at least the one in my brother's home town didn't have my old name plastered all over.

Oh, how wrong I was.

Mom. I'm going to have to call and ask, that if you do not have the courage to face up to the fact that your intersexed child has chosen to live in the gender you did not choose for him, you should just have the balls to leave him out of mention in the family. It turned out the one in our home town didn't get me...and the one in my brother's home town did.

And better yet, one of my coworkers didn't believe me, I guess, about the affair and looked up my sister in law's name on the web, and up popped the obituary. With me listed as a sister-in-law. Yeah. That's sort of awkward.

I cannot say, in a way, just how much that did wind up hurting me...I would rather not exist, than have to face the fact that my mother and father cannot face what they did to me...or what I did to correct the matter.

CJ