I have had numerous friends who have been gay and have had difficult and sometimes impossible times coming out to their parents. This can cause many problems some fixable others not. What angers, saddens, and confuses me the most is how the parents; usually fathers are seen and treated. I think its sick for a son to wish his father to hell just for not accepting him. Yes, it's horrible that they are not accepting of you, but it is something that is just as hard for them. You can't hate someone because they aren't 100 percent accepting to you or even if they're not even 1 percent accepting of you. THings might change. You never know. but part of life is knowing that you just have to move on. Do you think there will ever be a chance of him accepting you if you are constantly wishing him to hell. I wouldn't think so. Think about it, and good luck! ~Wes
Do We Need To Go There Again?
Because of Dad's Alzheimer's, I had to come out of the closet twice. We got it right the second time.
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"Hey there. Are you a man or a woman?" my father asked the stocky girl in navy-blue coveralls as we rode the elevator down to the hospital lobby. Eighty years old and wandering in the abyss of midstage Alzheimer's, Dad used to pride himself on what he didn't say. I, at 42, unmarried and the youngest of three brothers, was now his partial caretaker, making frequent trips across the Hudson to the hospital near my childhood home in New Jersey.
Until recently, Dad's illness was all about frustration: he drove his mouse-gray Buick Century into cars that had stopped short, he got lost on trips to the store, he forgot his grandkids' names. But this new phase of filter-free wonderment was relatively refreshing, if only for its lack of guile. That is, until he aimed it at me as I drove him home.
"Hey! Where do you live?" He asked everyone this—even my mother. "Manhattan," I answered.
"Do you live in a big building? Have I been there?" He had, even though he hated "that city," the one to which he used to commute daily.
"OK, so what do you do?" he demanded. "I'm a magazine editor," I responded.
"Nice."
In his lucid years, Dad never grasped why I'd want to toil for "so little" when I could just take over his insurance agency and write on the side, as if my craft were some sort of high-class hobby.
"Got a dog?"
"No," I said, sighing. "Two cats, Steve and Eydie." These were tedious but easy questions I always answered. Maybe he'll stop soon, I thought. But he didn't.
"Are you married?"
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