In my last post I said my next book would be A Prayer for Owen Meany. Well, as soon as I cracked it open and read the inside cover I realized it was the book that the movie Simon Birch was based on. I just finished reading The Help and didn’t want to read another book that I had already seen the movie for…at least not now. So, I reached for a book my husband had just finished on the death of Matthew Shepard. What really drew me to this book is the fact that it is written by his mother. That automatically means more to me.

This book couldn’t have come at a better time. I had just finished a three-part series on my other blog “Good Grief” about my sister’s death and had been called out for being too harsh or mean to my sister for being honest about her choices and ultimately their terrible consequence. Someone close to me thought I needed to be more reverent about the way she passed and wanted to remind me that I may not know the whole story. While that’s true, I know enough and I’m entitled to my feelings and my choice to share those feelings. Being the person I am, it bothered me that I had upset someone I love. I started reading back through and second guessing myself about how I chose to post the whole thing. After a while I came to realize that bloggers face this scrutiny every time and if I wanted to feel like a legitimate blogger, it was bound to happen. No love was lost with the person I had upset; I’m good at fixing.

I tell you about my other blog to bring up one thing I absolutely loved about this book. Matthew’s mother shares about the son she loved completely but guess what? She didn’t leave out the less-than-great details about his life. She told the little ugly truths that we as a whole like to brush over. He had problems. He made bad decisions. When he passed away he didn’t know it yet but he had HIV. When I read these things she said about her son, I didn’t take them as her attack on his character, but more as her bringing him down to Earth for us all to relate.

Too often when people die and WAY too often when their death receives a lot of media attention, people tend to begin to speak about them as saints. I know I’m guilty of it. I’ve done it when talking about my dad or my sister, neither of whom were perfect. I know it used to drive my mom crazy and I couldn’t see her point. Yet another moment of clarity when I realize my mother was right. Dang! So now that I have a shared perspective with Matthew’s mother and my own, I think it’s better for all to explain how real a person was rather than sugar-coating their life for a frilly little story. Relationships are messy, real, gritty and raw. Life is all of those things too. Why bother writing about the tragic death of your son if you plan to make it soft? Luckily, she didn’t do that. Any good mom will tell you honesty is the best policy.

As I finished this book this morning, I felt angered. I was mad not because of the way it ended, with an optimistic look at really making changes in the future of the LGBT community, erasing hate and acts of hate through education and awareness and putting children first. I was angry because when this book was published, we were finally seeing the progress these efforts were making. Finally there was a more accepting world being formed for our children to grow up in and finding their voice wouldn’t mean making sure it was an “acceptable” voice first. What an exciting time it was to think that we may be able to agree that all should be allowed basic human rights. But flash forward eight years and look what we’ve done.

Now, I didn’t and don’t intend for my blog to be political. I am beyond pissed that talking about allowing all to have basic human rights and protections is “choosing a side” in our newly fucked political climate. This is why I am pissed. Why was it so easy to erase all of the progress that people like Judy Shepard have been working tirelessly to make? Why did people gravitate to someone who wouldn’t hesitate to call someone a slur and send the message that it was acceptable to do so? Was there that much underlying hate still running through the veins of this country? Is it hopeless to keep fighting and to stand up for what is right? What can I do- me as one person?

I get that for some people it really was a choice about one issue, such as abortion or gun control. What I want to ask those people, though, is how can you be okay with all of the other shit and the shithead that came along with that? What kind of message to you want to send to the young kids still trying to figure out who they are and struggling with perhaps being homosexual, or minority, or female or anything else our country’s “leader” seems to be fine putting down? How can you be fighting for suicide prevention and simultaneously stripping an entire category of people of their rights, dignity and security?

While my final feelings were despair and frustration, so many things about this book spoke to me. I cannot imagine what it was like to cope with the loss of a child in such a brutal way while also being bombarded by media, well-wishers and the devil himself in the form of the Westboro “Baptist” Church. How this woman made it through is a heroic tale of the choice we’re all faced with (often more than once) after we lose someone to something tragic. We’re faced with the choice to fall down or get up. The choice to get up is made almost every day at first. This woman was brave enough to share her sorrow with us all. It is definitely worth reading.