It’s been an emotional week. On Sunday, I heard from my mom that my grandfather (who had been in a nursing home for a while and was on hospice) seemed to be fading, and my grandmother didn’t think he’d be around much longer. Monday morning I woke up just as my mom texted me the news that he’d died in the night.

I have been having a lot of complicated feelings about this loss. My grandfather was a sweet, gentle man in my childhood memories of him, and I looked up to him. He was also unwilling to come to terms with having a queer and trans grandkid.

The last time I saw my grandfather was at my brother’s wedding, a little over 7 years ago. We wrote letters for a while after that, attempting to reconnect. I tried to explain who I was becoming. He threw a lot of bible verses at me and tried to get me to come back to Jesus. After a particularly painful exchange, I eventually gave up. We stopped talking.

Several months ago I reconnected with my grandmother, and it went better than I expected it to. Unfortunately, by that time, we were losing my grandfather to dementia, and we decided that it was better for everyone to not try to have that conversation with him again.

I love my grandfather. I was also deeply hurt by him. In many ways, I’ve been grieving this loss for years, but there’s still a fresh element of finality to the loss, now. Grief is a messy thing. It’s not linear. There’s no timeline and no roadmap.

I’m also rather anxious about the funeral, which is happening on Saturday. I haven’t seen any of my extended family (aside from my grandma and one cousin who won’t be there) since well before I started transitioning. They all know – I sent out a zine over the summer reintroducing myself – so it won’t be a huge shock to them. But I’m still not really sure what to expect. I’m grateful for my grandmother’s support – she requested that I join the other cousins in attendance as a pallbearer, and I think the rest of the family will follow her lead in interacting with me. But it is stressful.

My grandpa was a storyteller. He was who I got my own love of storytelling from. I hope that now, released from his body, he’s able to be proud of the stories I tell and of the person I am.