At one point, a few of my relatives turned to me with a baggie full of photos of my uncle Glen, the one who had moved with my mother to New Orleans early in their adulthoods. With the baggie was a deathbook, the bound volume that guests at a wake sign so the family can have a memento of who mourned with them. My uncle, the one I’d known the best through sheer proximity to us in New Orleans, had died of multiple myeloma cancer when I was a sophomore in high school. My cousin Dana, whose house hosted the gathering, whose mother had passed a half-year ago, and who was organizing the event, said that I should take the book and whatever pictures I wanted. Others around the table agreed, shaking their heads somberly. This seemed right. I had known him, after all, in ways I hadn’t known anyone else in my mother’s family.

 

He was also, like I am, gay.

 

In the moments after this gifting, I felt a welter of

emotions. Part of me was extraordinarily touched by

the gesture. It was such a thoughtful recognition of my past relationship with my uncle. Another part of me, though, felt that this handing off to me of his deathbook and photos was a simultaneous acknowledgment and disavowal of our shared queerness. The identity was recognized, but the gift also seemed to say, “This is your thing. It really belongs to you, not us.” Perhaps the fact that only one—only one—of my cousins asked me about Mack, my husband and partner of seventeen years, prompted me to feel that my queerness, along with Glen’s, was being both evoked and dismissed at the same time.