Holding Hands

I was in the mall last week when I saw an older (appeared to be in their 80s) couple doing something that I thought was very sweet: holding hands as they walked through the mall. That’s something that I rarely see old folks do in public. Later, however, as the same couple was seated near me in a restaurant in the mall, I realized that the man’s mental faculties were severely impaired, and he was suffering from some form of dementia. It was obvious that the two of them had been together for a long time because they were much too intimate for just nurse and patient, but it was also obvious that the woman was basically now acting as his caretaker. His whole demeanor was very child-like, and she treated him that way - as a child. Which I then assumed was why she was holding his hand since that is exactly what I do with my daughter when we are out in a public place. My initial point of view, the one that saw their hand-holding as a sweet sign of their love, had now changed to one that saw the hand-holding as a sign of necessity for protection.

Assuming from their age and their demeanor that they were married, I even wept a little then, as I thought of what life must be like for that woman. The man that she had probably married, likely a long time ago, no longer existed. In his place was this childlike person who needed to be constantly looked after, this burden that took her time and her strength. What must her life be like now? Was this how she foresaw her future with the man she loved? And of course, it then immediately became obvious to me that many spouses of us transgendered folks have to deal with this type of drastic change in their lives much before the onset of any form of dementia. The person that our spouse married quite often becomes a quite different person later in our life together. And in a lot of cases the union cannot tolerate that change. I left the restaurant feeling pretty down that day, although it had been a very nice day until that couple had come in. I had had way too many negative thoughts to deal with, and I almost resented that older couple for making me think them.

After I had a chance to process things, though, I realized that I should not have felt as badly as I did. There was obviously a lot of love between those two older people, and while I realize that love rarely really does conquer all, it certainly can make much of the unbearable, bearable. Yes, I hold my child’s hand to protect her and to keep her from wandering off, but I also hold her hand because it gives me pleasure to do so. I don’t resent doing it at all, even though it is often a necessity in a crowded mall. For the woman I saw, just holding hands with the man she loves might be enough to compensate her for HAVING to hold his hand. He may not be the man she married, but something in him has obviously fought to stay alive and maybe she sees that, too. And while I doubt that she foresaw her life to be the one she is currently living, I also realized that very few of us ever see the life we are living as the one we would have. Reality has a tendency to blind-side most of us.

Finally, I realized that many of us transgendered folks have been somewhat self-pitying in our perception of the state of the world. We sometimes have a tendency to concentrate on the broken marriages, the lost jobs, the other bad things that happen because we are transgendered, and to overlook the relationships that last or the other completely normal things that continue to just happen despite the fact that we are transgendered. Reality for most folks also includes a healthy dose of good stuff. And sometimes the good stuff is enough to carry us through a lot of bad stuff. I think I saw evidence of that last week in the mall.

(P.S. I posted this and then as I re-read it, I realized that some of the very best things in my life are my friends. That includes the friends I have made here, and I wanted to thank you all for that.)