Duchess reflects (rants) on death, ritual, identity, and pink carnations

[LifeLube is bloody thrilled to present Duchess a new, semi-irregular column featuring the ramblings of an English Duchess. This is the second - more to come. Click here for the first.]

Unfortunately we all die, it's a sad reality that comes as part of humanity.

As I don my black twin set and antique pearls to bid another close friend goodbye, I started to reflect on the rituals and language around death and bereavement in our own lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans communities.

Most of the ritual around death is based in religion and it is ironic that many of us return to these faith based rituals to mark the end of life when for the majority of our lives organised religions often isolate and marginalise us because of our relationships and life partners. Although there are smaller groups within these faiths who acknowledge our lives and value us, they are splinters from the main religious tenement and few have structured ceremonies for the bereaved.

As a community we have gone through an almost genocidal onslaught on gay and bisexual men through the HIV epidemic, and many of our trans and lesbian and bisexual sisters and brothers were not left untouched. There were periods in the 80's and 90's where the funerals came so thick and fast it was worse than the new season on Broadway and we ran out of small talk and chit chat as we bumped into each other again and again, laughing, crying, remembering and rejoicing the lives of those we had lost.

But despite all of this death, we are drawn back to the hetero-norms of religion to mark the passing of our lives, we have no language for death and bereavement in our community and hence struggle to find a community paradigm to mark the passing of loved ones.

I was most struck as I tried to simultaneously swallow a dry and tepid cucumber sandwich and shake hands with the bereaved partner that there is no language in our community for the bereaved.

The heterosexual terms of widow and widower are based on the concept of marriage, a luxury of language denied to the vast majority of our community across the world. We have fought long and hard to argue that our relationships have validity and have them recognised in law, but as a community we have yet to develop the language that goes with these life-long partnerships. When a gay man looses his partner of five, ten, twenty years, we just re-classify him as single and expect him to find someone else. There isn't a tick box on the form for 'civil partner bereaved' and yet widower doesn't quite fit - despite the drama queens running for the veil and gin gimlets!

The advent of anti-retrovirals has changed the nature of HIV and AIDS in the western world, yet infection rates continue to rise amongst gay men and as people live longer we are seeing the returns of lives of hedonism full of smoking, drugs and alcohol coming home to roost with strokes, heart attacks and early onset dementia, and frankly there are enough dizzy queens in the world without adding hoards of demented queers to their numbers! As we live into old age and some of us who have been fortunate to find life partners, will find ourselves loosing them, being the one left behind, and we need a new language to describe that state.

At one funeral the pastor stumbled over the re-written core text, where 'he' and 'she' had to be switched to recognise that this was the funeral of one part of a same-sex partnership and despite the best  intentions the wording didn't fit and it all felt a little forced in. Of course the awful choice of floristry didn't help, bright pink carnations are never a good funeral flower, I don't care how camp you are!

Almost every tribal community has a special place for the bereaved, especially the widows, from the dowager empresses of the forbidden city to the white widows of India, these communities recognise the special and unique space occupied by the bereaved.

So what space do we create in our diverse, migrating, fluid and fluctuating community?

How many LGBT community services and organisations run bereavement services?, how many of us have asked about how the local funeral home will recognise and accommodate queer identities?

How often do you see bereavement materials which are LGB and T inclusive in language and imagery?

Now this might just be a personal rant as I am not as young as I used to be and despite surgical interventions and the wonder of botox, I know that unlike Cher, I will not live forever, none of us will (okay I'll give you Joan Rivers and Cher might), so why don't we get the discussion going and find a language, rituals and identity which values our lives and our loves in death as well as in life.

[NEW on LifeLube] Duchess on NHS, Independence Day and family values

[LifeLube is bloody thrilled to present Duchess a new, semi-irregular column featuring the ramblings of an English Duchess. This is the first - more to come.]

Although some of my detractors will say otherwise, I was not even conceived when the National Health Service was created in the UK on the 5th July 1948.

Embodied to provide universal healthcare free at the point of access for all UK nationals, the NHS is one of the few healthcare services in the world that has held onto its socialist basis that healthcare is a basic human right, irrespective of class, age, gender or sexual orientation.

I’ve been blessed with reasonable health so my tax contributions, and those of my husbands, have been mainly spent on those less fortunate, which as a diamonte socialist is fine by me. I mean it may be awful to say, but the rich can’t afford the poor to be ill, toilets don’t clean themselves, so it is everybody’s interest really.

I should confess but completely entre nous, over the years the odd unfortunate run in with something nasty acquired in a questionably dark establishment from a handsome young sailor, has meant a visit to a sexual health clinic. I really despair at the thought of any country where sexual health services are on a payment basis, it is distressing enough to be battling with something amiss down below without having to hack the emergency credit card out of the freezer or take the family jewels into hock. Discreet and to the point, sexual health services were less traumatic than I expected and the introduction of the fast-test HIV testing means I was in and out in less time that it takes to have a facial at Aveda.

It is somewhat ironic that the NHS was founded the day after US Independence Day, not that I’m a colonialist, I mean if you want to run things yourself who am I to want to take the helm, but it is interesting how the two countries have diverged. Despite its size the UK has remained independent from Europe and has held its own on the International stage, some might say at the sake of our local best interests, but hey that’s politics.

The US is much larger and in many ways more traditionalist than the UK, the division between the two polls of politics appears to be growing and the republican rhetoric seems to be more blunt and ruthless than before, but that may all be because I was always distracted by Nancy’s pearls before. The rise of the Tea Party political movement seems in some ways similar to our UKIP and BNP parties, brutal nationalism and a return to ‘traditional’ ‘white’ able-bodied’ ‘heterosexual’ family values all veiled behind delicate cucumber sandwiches and rather questionable tea.

Personally I’ve always wondered when people start mentioning family values, it reminds me of a rather inbred branch of the family who lived in Wales and developed a disturbing and very distinctive shape to their upper dentition a little reminiscent of horses teeth. In these modern times I wonder what family means? Blood relations is the term used on medical forms these days, and the reality of modern life is that few of us spend our lives nestled in the family home. Like any dutiful child I try to have dinner with my parents at least once a month and touch base every week, but I consider my family to be broader than just my blood relations. My friends who have been part of my life for almost half of my years on this earth are family as well, they know my deepest secrets, the shame and the joys that should never been revealed until everyone is very drunk at my wake. Someone once said to me that your family are those who in your darkest moments don’t judge, don’t preach, don’t ask for anything in payment or kind, but simply hold your hand and give you love and support….and on that deep and profound note it’s time for to take the butler out for a spin…until next time!

Duchess xx