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6:17 p.m. - Friday, Nov. 29, 2002
Ms Leslie gets Sappy for T'Giving
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Thanksgiving was good for Deana and good for me. Just as I had threatened, we threw out convention and had a quiet meal here during which we spent a moment honoring our dead: Her father and my buddy Craig. She wanted to pray before the meal. I'm an atheist but a pretty darned tolerant one, so we stood holding hands while she prayed. She was genuinely happy and thankful to be with me and that fact alone made me feel happy too. I think by now we all must know how hard it is for me to believe anyone wants to just be with me.

Following Cosmicrayola's advice. I had ordered a dinner from the deli of a nearby grocery store. It came cold. The turkey was thawed out and cooked; It was a cajun fried turkey, but everything else was frozen solid. No matter though. We had plenty of time to heat everything and make a pretty excellent dinner of turkey, potatoes and gravy, bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, corn-bread dressing, cranberry sauce, dinner rolls, fruit salad and a sweet potato pie. Not bad for a broken-down old veteran and her broken-legged sidekick. I ordered enough to provide plenty of leftovers for us both as well. With a ten-pound bird between us, we will be making turkey farts until Xmas.

I gave little floral arrangement I had used as a centerpiece to put on her daddy's grave. We got there in the late afternoon, when the sun was just shooting orange and red around the horizon. It was cold for Mississippi, and very still. A beautiful day but wistfully lonely. I left her alone with her daddy's grave; a small white oval tablet standing among hundreds of identical ones. Dead veterans, every one. This is the place, I thought, where I'll most likely end up. It's a good place. It's peaceful and well kept. I don't mind thinking of it. I waited by my old van until Deana was finished and started walking back to me. I met her in halfway, in the middle of the paved access road and she hugged my neck and sobbed for a long time. I felt jealous in a way. Jealous that she could love her father so much. They lived close to each other all their lives and, though he hated her transsexuality, he was good to her, supportive of her actions, and worried for her safety. I was jealous too that she could come and see the monument that hid her father. It stood as evidence that he once walked. I thought of the picture of the grave that Craig's sister sent me. It was very much like this one, standing white and silent among hundreds of the same in a large cemetary in Denver. In nearly forty years, I haven't visited my friends graveside once. I was bedridden with my shattered leg all those years ago, in an army hospital in his home town of Denver when I learned he had been killed shortly after saving my life in Vietnam. ANd so even though I was able to send flowers to his funeral, I as never able to tell him goodbye, even though the final intersection of our paths took place within a mile or so of each other. I wish I could see his grave and cry just once.

And then later, I found myself here. I had taken Deana to her little trailer house and come back to my own apartment. I sat here for a little while, reading diaries. A lot of people used the day's entry as a chance to list some of the things they were grateful for. There are so many things I have lost or given up in my journey to here. Many of the things I read that others were grateful for were the same things I've never had. Others were things I had lost. My life has been reduced to an utter simplicity. That's mostly a good thing, but not always. There'e a huge freedom that comes from having nothing to lose, but it comes at the price of sadness at times like this, when you see so many others who seem so happy in their complicated lives. But then, I thought, a simple life brings simple blessings, and these blessings are some for which I can be most grateful. So here's my thanksgiving list... a day late, but every bit as sincere as the rest:

-I'm thankful for yesterday, because for that one day I was able to exist as me. Finally I'm reaching my heart's desire, which is only to live the way I feel and feel the way I live.

-I'm thankful for today, because it offers the chance for simple joy if I will but look for it.

-I'm thankful for tomorrow, because it offers the promise of better things to come. As long as I have a tomorrow, I can have hope.

And I'm thankful for my friends, old and new, far and near, because they are such a big part of all my days. I thank them for the support and encouragement I need to find and live as myself, I thank them for the simple pleasures in their friendship, and I thank them for teaching me through their examples that we all struggle with problems and obstacles in our lives, and that as long as we don't give up, there is always hope for tomorrow.

Thanks friends.

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