5:28am June 1, 2015

I keep remembering random stuff my dad said all the time.

Sometimes it’s innocent or funny stuff, like words like “regusting” (a combination of revolting and disgusting) or if you asked him how he was doing he’d say “as fine as frog fur”.

Other times, like a lot of (mostly) white people from a different era, it could get embarrassing. If people spoke in a language he didn’t understand (anything other than English or sometimes Spanish) he’d mutter something like, “you do and you’ll clean it up, lady”. And (when not in mixed company, so he seemed to know this would be offensive but he’d say it anyway) he’d refer to Asian people as “ornamental”. That’s not a typo, it’s a horrible pun on Oriental.

And you couldn’t talk to him about that sort of thing without him getting really pissed off and accusing you off trying to tell him what he could and couldn’t say. I once made the mistake of taking visible offense at how he referred to gay people and he started screaming at me. But another time we actually managed to have a conversation about why he was afraid of gay people (I won’t get into it in public though).

Weirdly enough, though, he was far better and more supportive in how he viewed and treated me as a gay person than a lot of people who go out of their way to look as if they’re enlightened liberals about the matter or whatever. When I came out to him he said he already knew, and that being gay is natural, he’d seen a lot of gay or bisexual farm animals growing up (yes, seriously, chickens and cows and sheep). And despite his sometimes disrespectful words, his other views and actions towards me and other gay people were nothing but amazingly respectful, far more respectful than average even. He’s the person where I learned the most that sometimes it’s easier to put up with the “microaggressions” of someone who deep down actually respects you, than it is to put up with liberal bullshit from people who deep down are bigots and don’t respect you at all but know all the right words to say and jokes not to tell and stuff.

That doesn’t make his actions okay, but it makes things more complicated than a lot of the culture of linguistic bullshitting (I don’t know what else to call it) makes it seem. That culture makes it seem like if someone says something offensive then they are to be lectured at and, if they don’t change instantly, shunned until they do. Hell, even if they do change instantly and apologize and try to get other people to change and do everything right by the standards of that culture, they’ll probably still get shunned for the rest of their lives, as if being visibly bigoted is a cardinal sin.

Even though I don’t care who you are, you hold bigoted views about some group of people (including groups you belong to – I’ve seen mixed-race family members talking about pride in their heritage one moment and then condemning racial mixing the next, don’t even ask how that works because I don’t know, but it’s impossible not to absorb at least some bigoted views even about your own groups), it’s literally impossible not to in the world today.

It’s just that people in that culture are really good at hiding their own bigotry, often by trying to be the first, and the loudest, to condemn other people for bigotry. Notice my wording there, it’s very careful – “condemn other people for bigotry” is a very different thing than “condemn bigotry in other people”, even if there’s so many people blurring that line that people have lost sight of that.

I would far rather put up with someone using offensive language about me if, deep down, they respect me and other people in my group as human beings and otherwise treat us very well, than I would put up with people who know all the right things to say, but don’t respect me at all. Obviously it would be best to deal with someone who respects me deep down AND doesn’t say offensive things, but given a choice between all four options, I’d rank them like this from best to worst:

1. People who respect me through their actions and don’t say offensive things.

2. People who don’t respect me through their actions and do say offensive things.

3. People who don’t respect me, and say offensive things.

4. People who don’t respect me, but know how to appear respectful by saying all the right things and failing to say the wrong things and (usually but not always) instantly condemning anyone who says the wrong things.

Yes you read the last two right. I’d rather deal with naked bigotry than hidden bigotry. It’s far more straightforward and less weasely.

All of which is to say, my father may have said the wrong things – including things I took great offense at, although I rarely showed it or I’d get accused of “waltzing in here and telling him what to say”, it was rarely worth the effort – including about groups I was a member of, but he was infinitely respectful in all other ways, and that made up for it in my life anyway.

And no I’m not just saying all this out of that misguided “respect for the dead” BS where even when someone as awful as Nixon died, they can suddenly have done no wrong. Even though in my personal beliefs about the afterlife, my father probably knows why it was wrong, now, because the parts of him incompatible with love have seemingly been removed.

This doesn’t happen to everyone at death, but it seems to have happened to my father because he used love to overcome fear in the end. And when I feel his presence it’s so very respectful that it reminds me of other invisible presences that are expressions of absolute goodness. I didn’t fully realize until dealing with his death that this could happen so entirely to actual human beings, but it seems to happen to those who fully accept being absorbed into love when they die.

So I would have said the same things, and in fact did say them when talking about him sometimes, when he was alive and still mired enough in human ego to say offensive things about groups of people. And likewise I will still sometimes discuss his bad side even though that side doesn’t seem to exist for him in death. Because the bad parts of us are part of who we are when we are still alive, and sometimes after death too if we fight love hard enough.

(Regarding that:. Wizardry doesn’t live in the unwilling heart, according to the Young Wizards series, and I’d say neither does love, even when people die. Even though death is itself one side of love and that side of love will offer to absorb you into it when you die. One part of what makes that ultimate kind of love what it is, is its respectfuless even of people’s right to reject it, its lack of interference in such situations. If it interfered with your right to reject it, it wouldn’t be love anymore.)

(The thing that most convinces me of my father’s transformation in death and love, is his lack of interference in my own life. There’s this feeling of him standing back, keeping a certain distance out of respect, even when he is hanging around. Just like a loving person wouldn’t walk up, stand closer than you were comfortable with despite knowing of your discomfort, and start poking you all over your body with their finger. He is doing the spiritual equivalent of never ever poking people or knowingly standing too close – other people who knew him and have felt his presence after death have told me they know exactly what I mean, so this isn’t just one person’s observation. And that tells me his negative aspects are likely gone now. Otherwise…. It’s too hard to explain beyond what I’ve already said. I think this is the difference between a ghost, who would still be mired in ego, and a spirit that has been absorbed into love after death but retains other characteristics of its living self. I didn’t realize this could happen quite this way until I saw it happen to him, but it made total sense once I did see it.)

But to me, despite his transformation, failing to remember his negative side would be disrespectful to his memory. I understand that most people in Western culture (and probably others, but I’m not familiar enough with them to know) seem to think the opposite. But I find it highly disturbing, even appalling, when someone dies and suddenly it’s forbidden to talk about their bad side, and they’re suddenly described in ways that don’t at all match who they were.

I remember when someone I knew died. I had known her moderately well. Not a close friend but nothing even close to a stranger either. We communicated regularly and I watched her communicate with others too. She was always coming up with bad things to say about people. Like more than most people do. Frequently behind their backs, and sometimes even to our faces. (She definitely said bad things about me to my face. I assume from her other patterns off behavior that she could have also said things behind my back, but I’m not sure if I mattered enough to her for her to talk about me to others, because I’ve never been told anything of it by others.)

When she died, one of the first things someone said in eulogizing her was that she never had an unkind word to say about anyone. I was speechless when I heard that. I had trouble believing anyone who interacted with her at all could fail to notice that she said bad things about people, more than most people do. (And most people do at least sometimes. Including me. I’m not claiming any personal perfection in that matter here, just observing what she did.)

And I felt like this new saintly perfect version of her was not true to her memory. And it really really bothered me. It was like everyone but me seemed to suddenly have a highly distorted memory when it came to her. And while people are alive, and sometimes also after we die, we do have a bad side. Suddenly not remembering that after people die feels incredibly wrong to me. Incredibly, mind bendingly, powerfully, wrong.

So please nobody give me shit for remembering bad things about my dad. It’s part of who he was when he had a body. I’d I didn’t remember it, I’d be remembering an illusion, not a person. But also please don’t give my dad shit for being imperfect. Because I guarantee no matter who you are, you hold at least some views that are as bad or worse. I’m not a Christian but in matters like this I definitely think of that story that ends with “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. I don’t mind condemning some of his words and seeds, but condemning him as an entire person crosses the line into stoning as far as I’m concerned, and I won’t put up with that any more than I would put up with a fake saintly image of who he was when he was alive.

I have to remember him as he was, but I don’t have to consider him unredeemably evil just because, like everyone else, he had an imperfect ego that included some measure of bigotry. Especially given the fact that his actual actions towards people (aside from the things he sometimes said) were not only far more respectful than his words sometimes were, but far more respectful than most people in general are. Including, perhaps especially, most people who hide their bigotry better than he sometimes did (in this society, I don’t care who you are, you’ve absorbed at least some bigotry, whether you noticed or not).

I didn’t intend this to turn into a long discussion about death, remembrance, the afterlife, and the way people handle bigotry and other imperfections in themselves and others. I just meant to talk about the weird things my dad said and how they were sometime funny and sometimes offensive and embarrassing. But then I wanted to explain that I’m not being disrespectful of the dead or something, because a lot of people seem to have hair trigger tempers about things like that and the last thing I need is a lecture about how to remember my own father. And then I also felt like I needed to explain – especially on tumblr – that discussing his prejudiced attitudes isn’t an invitation to hate and condemn him forevermore. Doing that would be just as offensive to me as failing to remember he had a bad side is. And explaining both those things took forever.

I will not put up with being told he was essentially perfect (or that remembering his imperfections and talking about them is evil somehow), because that’s not who he or anyone else is when we’re alive. And I will also not put up with being told I should consider him a horrible person. So just don’t, with both of those things.

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