[3/2/23] #20 - Diana

[3/2/23] Diana

This will be a piece that might trigger some of you and well that's fine by me. Unfortunate but fine.

Doug was my Aunts son. He was a big guy. 5 years older than me and always playing mortal Kombat or street fighter always offering me a controller knowing my grandmother would disapprove.

I flew out to California every summer to stay with my aunt Nancy and visit my grandparents for a week or two.

My mom and stepfather were poor and my dad wasn't around. It was a gift from my grandmother. We would go to Disneyland, knottsberry farm and the beach.

We ate out as my grandmother God bless her couldn't cook to save her life and it was always Dennys or Marie Calendars. It was the best times of my childhood.

I always felt like such a adult 9-14 boarding a plane and acting like a adult with my $100 traveling money.

Doug was my chaperone at amusement parks, arcades and beaches of long Beach. I now look back and he had to have hated it.

His father had passed of cancer (the same type that got his mom 25 years later) when he was 13 and he always had a girlfriend, the baseball team, friends and a real life but he never seemed to mind dragging a kid around with him.

His sister Amy was my age but she was to be a Dr. She was in advanced summer classes. Always head in a book and always kind but never overly interested in me or amusement parks. She was on a mission from the time she was 10 years old.

I lost touch with this portion of my family as a teenager. We moved to Colorado from Massachusetts and I ran away. As far as I could get on $219 and a job as a telemarketer lined up with a pay by the week hotel... I put California away from that time in my life.

At 18 I had my own apartment and started calling my grandmother every Wednesday.

She always loved the weather of Colorado it was just fascinating to her. She never left Orange County in her entire life but for one RV trip with my grandfather right before he passed. She would warn me of snow constantly.

A single inch was enough to warrant a call to her grandson in the wilderness of Denver. Sweetest lady ever.

However when I began asking about Doug she would always reply hes so busy nowadays with the academy, he never calls.

Doug was a cop. A moving up the ranks in his early 20s cop. We hadn't spoken in years and while I knew Amy was at Penn State studying medicine which added up, I just couldn't picture Doug as a cop.

I decided at age 20 to drive out to California with a girlfriend. Show her the beaches and relive my childhood all over again. Grandma was on her first bout of chemo (she went 5 different bouts with colon cancer before succumbing) and with my dad completely out of the picture physically there was no better time.

When I arrive in Anaheim I became a adult in those moments. Grandma was 80 pounds and I didn't recognize her. I didn't want to leave her after 6 days and running out of money.

She called all the family over to her small retirement mobile home in Fullerton and we had KFC. She could only eat mash potatoes at this point.

A man who I didn't recognize walked up and gave me the biggest hug and said wow have you grown. It was Doug. All 6'7 340 pounds but it wasn't Doug.

All the smiling and generous manners were gone. I tried to talk to him alot that night and he just looked through me and not really interested in engaging. He was on a gang task force for LAPD.

Grandma said after he left. He's changed Ed but he still loves you, we all do.

Doug called one morning to tell me that he was taking grandma to chemo because no one else would and that I should move out there if I care so much. Anger. Angry dude.

I didn't but my father did and my dad got sober for his mom. Hasn't drank or used in 19 years because it was his mothers last wish for him.

Dad and I got so close during that time. The forgiveness took a long time but he was damn persistent if nothing else.

I'd ask about my cousins every so often and it'd always be well Amy made dean's list and is applying to Yale or Brown for post grad and Doug is still a dick.

Grandma passed and I flew out for 2 weeks to help my dad with anything I could. He was a wreck after 3 years of caretaking and having no interaction outside of his AA meetings, she was his everything.

I saw Doug and met his wife Tanya and she was very polite, very kind and when around seemed to make Doug laugh and reminded me of the guy I knew growing up.

I began playing online poker in 2006 everyday for hours and it turned out so did Doug. He wasn't very good but he would call and we would talk strategies, games for hours.

Doug and my dad had a falling out over my dad's insistently trying to get Doug to go to church and not accepting Jesus. This is my dad's calling and he's overboard with it truthfully.

I never connected the dots to why a cop had so much time on his hands. He was a full time gamer and played online poker constantly.

One day while we were talking he stated he was moving and wouldn't be online for a couple weeks.

He then told me he was moving Marina Del ray had gotten a large settlement from the state and was now divorced but they were best friends and she would be moving with him. I could tell he didn't want to talk about it much more than that.

My cousin Amy and I began talking more as she visited Colorado often. She was the leading oncologist at a hospital in Brooklyn and would stay here a week or two in hopes of learning from our children's hospital which was the biggest in the nation.

She confided in me that her brother was her best friend. His partner was killed one night doing a raid on a drug house. He had severe PTSD and was never treated for years He was divorced and rarely left his home.

Our little talks of poker strategy were his only interactions with anyone besides his sister and mother. He divorced his wife because he loved her but knew she needed more.

I began inquiring about what he was up to in our chat box and he would reply pretty encouraging stuff. Joined a m&g club, training to be a massage therapist, going to a club every Friday and learning to dance.

I flew out to San Francisco to see see him for the first time since my grandmother's passing and he was severely obese but something was entirely different... He was overjoyed.

He loved his new life of playing live games, being part of a overweight dance choir, dressing up to go to the club to find love... Gay clubs... What???

Yes as he put it as we sat at park bench. He was queer. I was taken back, really taken back. He would probably tell you that I didn't have the greatest of reactions.

I just didn't know what to say in the moment. He went onto tell me about his massage business being the biggest in marina del ray 5 in total. He was a drag queen and had so many friends, a boyfriend, wealthy and busy.

I remember flying home and telling my friends at dinner next week about Doug. They were all shocked that I wasn't elated for him. I wanted to be but he was my role model as a kid. Then he was the tough cop and now he was on myspace in full drag promoting his next show.

My cousin Amy was his biggest fan. She loves her sibling. The kindest person ever happened to love the same sex. He saw that I stopped calling, sending chats about games. One day he simply texted, "are you gonna be like your dad? Should I stop trying? Your family Eddie"

Everything changed in that moment. I called right away and we have never gone more than 2 weeks since talking about his unfortunate decision to be a A's fan and my understanding as a Rockies fan.

Doug Beard became Diana Beard-Smith in 2017 unexpectedly. She never told anyone she was having the procedure. Diana learned lessons most of us will never know.

She lost life long friends, family members and being homosexual apparently is fine but gender changes were against some unwritten rule.

She crossed a line somehow. Not with me though. She's still bad at poker, still smokes too many cigarettes and is obsessed with open world games that take months to complete a single level!

The largest change though is her health. It's not a easy surgery at any age but near 50 it was tough on her. It was all she wanted though. Hormone therapy is hard and expensive. IT'S ALL SHE WANTED and she loves herself more than anyone I know. Now.

She was bed ridden for months recently but she never seemed to mind. She gave up everything and says she knew the risk but this is all she wanted for years and years. She's herself and that's enough for her.

She takes care of her ill with cancer ex wife and best friend to death Tanya. She watches a lot of NBA and calls me whenever the warriors win to goad me as I told her they were washed up back in December. She's become one of my biggest fans always asking if I had the over in a high scoring game. She knows I like those Curry/Klay overs haha.

I really have no idea why I decided to share all of this with you but today but in a world of such harsh opinions and people not knowing how to feel about different titles of gender I guess I wanted to relay that people are people, family is family and that love is love.

The person who showed me the world as a kid is now showing me a different world as a adult and it's sad, it's beautiful, it's family and it's life.

I started to blog this morning with a rundown of the NBA and how I see things shaking out when she called to wish my dog a happy birthday. The NBA can wait.

She once told me the worst feeling she ever had was when she graduated from the academy. It was for everyone else and to push what she knew inside the furthest away from what she felt inside.

Don't ever let someone in your family get far away. There's simply no time for it. Love you DB and thank you for everything.

Thank you as always for the space and good luck to all, Eddie