Kimberly Reed - Life Flight

 

So I get a phone call from my mom. She tells me that my father is about to get on an emergency life flight from our home in Montana to go to Denver to get an emergency liver transplant. My mom is perennially optimistic and she's telling me, “Don't worry, it's going to be okay. We're going to pull through this. It's going to be all right.” But I know something is really wrong. So, I get the next flight I can to go from where I'm living here in New York, hoping that I get there before my father dies. I'm really glad I got that flight as fast as I did, because I was able to spend a couple hours with my father before he passed away. And before I know it, I'm at the side of his hospital bed with my mom and we're sobbing, because he's passed. 

 

My dad, he was a strong, silent type. He grew up on a farm and he was one of two town eye doctors. So, he could fix anything. He could fix tractors or eyes, no matter what. He was always doing it, like behind the scenes, he never wanted to take credit for. It was apparent that my mom and I and my two brothers were going to have to be fixing things ourselves this time around. The first thing my mom did was to call my two brothers, one's a year older, one is a year younger. 

 

It was going to be really comforting to see my younger brother. We were really close. He was really going to support me. It was going to be much more complicated seeing my older brother. We'd always had a really complicated relationship. There was something really big about me that he did not know. And that's that the last time he saw me, years and years before, I was male. He was not aware that I had transitioned from being male to being female. I always wanted to tell him. I was trying to find the right time, the right place, trying to get up the nerve. I was worried about his reaction, maybe that he was a bit conservative, he had a temper, I didn't know how he was going to happen and I just kept putting it off and never found the right time. And here we are, at the time where I have to deal with all this stuff. 

 

Mark wasn't the only one who didn't know my story. My whole hometown didn't know about me either. I was trying to find a way to tell Mark. I just figured with my hometown, I just wouldn't ever go back there again. So, my mom calls my brother and in one phone call, tells him that he lost his father and that he now has a sister. [audience laughter] And I have to say, Mark was really great. He got off the plane. We met him at the airport. He gave me a hug. But it was awkward, as you can imagine. [audience laughter] 

 

I think we did what a lot of families do at times like that. You just fall back on tradition and we wanted to do something that my mom and dad had always done every year, because you see, it was my father's birthday. He had passed away 20 minutes before his 65th birthday. So, we all went to Applebee's. [audience laughter] We got a slice of sizzling apple pie, put a candle in it. And my brother, Mark, who really worshiped my father, got the honor of blowing out the candle. When he was blowing out the candle, I still remember the expression on his face. He was trying to process my father's passing, he was figuring out why it had been so long that the two of us hadn't talked, something that really frustrated him. 

 

It was just all coming together. I took a business card out of my purse. It was for this job that Mark didn't even know I had. I had my new name on it. I wrote my cell phone number on it and I gave it to Mark. I said, “Look, you know, we haven't talked for so long, but here, anytime, anyplace, no barriers, call me anywhere. We can talk anytime you want.” And my mom started crying, because her children were reuniting. And also, because for years she had been running interference between the two of us and using every excuse in the book to explain why I wasn't getting back to him or why packages to me were being returned, because they had the wrong name on them. And her job running interference was over. 

 

So, Mark was in shock. We were all in shock. I was in shock, because I was thinking about the fact that nobody in my hometown knew. I'm wondering if I can go back for the funeral, if I should go back, if my mom and my brothers really want me too, really deep down. I'm thinking that I never even thought I was going to go back to my hometown and now, I'm being pulled back right into it. As contradictory as it may seem, as soon as there was a reason to go back, I had this really deep, strong yearning to go back. 

 

I had gone to school in New York and San Francisco and traveled all over the world and this place that I thought of as home, I think I really repressed, knowing that I couldn't go back there, right? I don't need to go back there. But as soon as there was a reason for me to go back there, a very strong reason, I really, really wanted to go. I wanted to see the house, the only house I had ever known growing up. I wanted to go back to my hometown and these people that comprise this community that I thought of as home, right?

 

My mom reassured me that she wanted me to be there, that she, in fact, needed me there for support. My brothers too. My mom had a plan to get us there. Our family had been separated for a long time, so she had the idea for all of us to rent a car and drive for 20 hours from Denver back to Montana. So, before it, there we are in the car. My brother hasn't seen me for years, especially not as female and here we are. 

 

We had so much to do. We were planning my father's funeral service. We were writing his obituary. My mom wanted to figure out and I did too wanted to figure out how we could introduce the information about me while still keeping the focus on my father. So, she had me driving out across Wyoming, 70 miles an hour. She had me take dictation of her friends and she wanted to invite them over for tea. 

 

So, she had this really strategic list. It's like, “You invite Judy,” and she's going to tell all the people in the arts community that my mom was involved in. “And you're going to tell June.” And June is going to tell all the people at dad's office. “We'll find somebody else in the--" She's going to tell everybody at the church. And the next night, there they were, 18 of my mom's best friends and the minister from the church where the service was going to be performed. They're drinking tea.

 

And my mom says, “You all know very well by now that I've lost my husband. And I know a lot of you have wondered what happened to my middle son who seemed to disappear.” And she said, “I want you to know tonight that I have a daughter and her name is Kim. This is my child, and I love my child and I hope you do, too. We can focus on this tonight. We can talk about this tonight. You all are my ambassadors. If someone has questions at the funeral and I'm caught up in things, I'm going to point them to you and let you tell this story, because you can talk about it in a sensitive way.” 

 

She took a couple questions from the people there. And the whole tea party ended [audience laughter] slightly different than the tea party we hear about in the news. [audience laughter] The whole thing ended with everybody raising their teacups and saying, “Hip, hip hooray for Kim. Hip, hip, hooray for Kim.” There were a couple of amens and some applause, and then everybody went home. I swear there was a brown out from all the simultaneous phone calls [audience laughter] that were being made, dispensing the information, right? 

 

So, then the next night, there was a viewing of my father's body at the funeral home. I had elected not to go, because I didn't want the focus to be on me. I was going to keep it on everybody and keep it on my father. But my best friend, Tim, from high school was at the viewing. And he calls me up. He had only known the new me for a couple days. I hadn't even told him, but he knew me really well and he knew I was chickening out. He called me from the funeral parlor and he said, “Hey, I got a lot of people here that really want to see you.” 

 

I should probably tell you that the people he's talking about are the football team, [audience laughter] because I used to be on the football team. 

 

[cheers and applause] 

 

And so, Tim says, “Where are you? I got a lot of people who want to see you.” I'm like, “Yes, I don't want to go and I want to keep the focus on my dad. I don't want to be there.” He's like, “Yes, whatever. Either you come down here or we're going to come up there. What's it going to be?” I said, “All right then, come up here, I guess.” So, before I know it, the football team is at my front door. [audience laughter] A couple of them have cases of beer under their arm. [audience laughter] One case gets tossed in the snow bank to keep it cold. It's just like high school. [audience laughter] And all of a sudden, they're in my living room. It's this wake instantly and this show of support for me and for the memory of my father, right? 

 

They're in my living room, this living room I never even thought I would see again. And people were either laughing or crying, mostly laughing. I remember looking around the room and there's Kevin. He was one of the co-captains of the football team with me. I look over there and there's my brothers, Mark and Todd. We were all very close in age, so we had friends in common. They're telling stories about my dad. I look over on the couch, and there's Frank. Probably should have also told you that not only was I on the football team, but I was the quarterback. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause]

 

And so I look over on the couch and there's Frank. He's an offensive lineman. [audience laughter] It's the job of an offensive lineman to protect the quarterback. [audience laughter] And Frank is protecting me once again, 20 years later under very different circumstances. He's got his arm around my girlfriend. They're laughing and knocking back cans of cheap beer, and that was the moment that I knew things were going to be okay somehow. There was one more person there that night, and that was my mom. She told me something that we ended up repeating quite a bit that weekend through the services. She came up and she said, “You know, dad was always fixing things, and it looks like he fixed this too.” She said, “You know, even though your father has died, you've been reborn.” Thank you very much.