My family have all but ignored the anniversary of my partner’s death. Am I wrong to feel so hurt?
I’m a 50-year-old gay man. My partner, who I was with for 21 years, died suddenly 10 years ago. My family have all but ignored the anniversary of my partner’s death since it happened. My father died the year after my partner and I always send my mother a card or flowers on their anniversary, and ring to check in on his death day and birthday. With it being a decade since I woke up to find my partner dead, I thought that my family would at least send a text or call. There was a total silence.
I feel if I had married a woman and been with her for 21 years, or indeed had children with her, then my family would behave very differently. My mother is constantly asking me to order flowers in remembrance of friends of hers whose husbands have died, including on the anniversary of my partner’s death last year. She ignored the date and asked me to order some flowers to remember the date of a friend’s husband who died. I pulled her up about it last year and had thought with it being a decade, that this year may be different. I brought it up on our family chat. They have not replied.
My family were supportive of my relationship and attended our wedding, but I feel that my relationship is deemed “lesser” than my sister with her husband and three kids. My mum is 80 and struggled with my sexuality but that was a long time ago. I am so hurt, I feel that I’d be better off without them and focusing on my own life and happiness. Am I wrong to feel this?
Eleanor says: Normally the best explanation for hurtful silence like this would be that people just don’t know what to say around grief.
They especially don’t know what to say on death anniversaries. We hope that time will heal grief, and of course it doesn’t, so now on top of not knowing what to say about the death, nobody knows what to say about the fact that it still hurts. That’s twice as many things not to know how to solve. It gets into a spiral of not knowing what to say.
But your family shows facility with thoughtfulness and grief. You feel they’re more assiduous and automatic with those rituals when they’re for heterosexual relationships. You could be wrong, in principle, but you’ve had decades of experience navigating sexuality: I doubt your “othering” radar would go off for nothing.
A friend of mine has never quite trusted the apparent social acceptance of same-sex relationships. He points out that it’s in really recent memory that being gay meant being the target of all kinds of state-sanctioned exclusion. No, you can’t have a “real” marriage. No, you can’t visit in hospital. No, no rights to the estate. Where did the feelings behind those policies go when the laws changed, he asks. Did they evaporate? No, at most the presumption that “real” family is for heterosexuals went underground.
If your relationship seems to them less like the Paradigm of Family, even if only in the deep underground of the mind, they might accidentally assume it was less difficult to lose.
You’ve already tried saying something. That doesn’t seem to have made the change you’d like. It’s possible that’s because they’re now doubly afraid of saying the wrong thing. But at a certain point it doesn’t matter how sympathetic a story we can tell about why someone’s not coming through for you. What matters is that they’re not.
The problem with acknowledgment is that when you don’t get it, it can feel like you don’t deserve to get it. That’s wrong. I cannot imagine you waking to find your partner dead. I cannot imagine having to wonder every year if it will seem to matter to your loved ones.
I want you to have ways that you can mark this loss without them. I want you to have a tree you can go to, a plaque that will have flowers on it, a phone where you can call him, an opportunity to talk about him instead of just the fact he’s gone. You deserve to be recognised, and to not have recognition feel like an alien task that requires special cognitive effort. Sometimes we talk about the “chosen family” of queer friends who’ve also had to rough these rejections. If your biological family can’t provide the right kind of recognition, is there a chosen family who could?
You mention the possibility that you’d be better off without your family. Before you separated completely, I’d want to be sure you’ve said it in these terms to them. There’s a big difference between “this matters to me” and “this matters to me so much I’d rather be without you”. It might be the latter gives them grounds to reflect in a way they haven’t so far.
Whatever happens, the magnitude of your loss deserves to be acknowledged. As does the life you and your partner shared.
This letter has been edited for clarity and length.
***
Ask Eleanor a question
Do you have a conflict, crossroads or dilemma you need help with? Eleanor Gordon-Smith will help you think through life’s questions and puzzles, big and small. Your questions will be kept anonymous.
