There’s No Wrong Way to Grieve and No Wrong Time to Come Out

Connecting with my mom through creating, queer performing, and doing grief on my own timeline

The first time I visited my mom’s headstone was in 2010, two years after its unveiling. I was back in  Michigan with my boyfriend for a friend's wedding. I printed out a map of the cemetery and asked him to drive. I spotted the massive stone wall with the signage, he made a sharp right, and then braked at the gates which were locked.

I was confused. Do cemeteries have hours?  

Of course they do. And of course this one was closed. It was a Jewish cemetery, and it was a Saturday. 

What kind of daughter doesn’t visit her mother’s grave for two years and then gets locked out due to religious ignorance and bad planning? The kind that does grief all wrong.

“Do you wanna get out of the car?” My boyfriend wiped some sweat across the top of his forehead and ran it back through his hair. I shook my head. He rolled the windows down and turned off the engine.

From between the iron bars we stared at the rows and rows of slanted headstones popping out of the hills and hills of freshly cut grass. Granite, green, granite, green. I didn’t even know which one was my mom. Where do I send my hello? I studied the map I’d printed out of the 40 acres and 15,000 plots for 30 seconds, like I was someone who successfully read maps. I dropped it between the seat and my door. Another thing to throw out when we returned the rental car. Where do I send my goodbye?

“She knows you’re here,” he offered later, as he reversed us back onto the main road. 

It was a sweet thing to say, but all I kept thinking was, How does he know she knows, when I don’t even know what I know?

***
Two years later, I was moving out of the apartment my boyfriend and I shared for seven years and holding our hug goodbye a little longer. I was comforted thinking about how we would both move on, but stay connected. We had a cat together. 

Staying connected with my ex and my cat I knew how to do. Staying connected with my mom, not so much.

My spicy, gorgeous brain often participates in black and white thinking, though I didn’t know that’s what I was doing at the time. Grieving can make dichotomies feel especially stifling. You’re either connected, or you’re not. Someone is alive, or they’re dead. You move on with your life, or you believe in ghosts. Pick one lane, and make sure to pick the one that feels like you have the most control.

I didn’t know how to continue a relationship with my mom, and I got caught in a loop of “nevers.” She will never meet the next person I love. She will never come visit me in my new apartment. She will never know I’m gay.

***

I wasn’t conscious I was gay until I was 32, and I was a little pissed off when it all sank in. I couldn’t believe I’d been gay my whole life and nobody, including myself, had bothered to tell me.

“Mindy, you’re so gay, how did you not know you were gay?” – All of my current friends and lovers 

This question is always delivered as more of a statement. It’s a witnessing ritual among queer fam, it’s an “I love you because I see you” moment. 

I guess if I had to answer, I’d say something about how we all have protective parts that keep our secrets safe, sometimes even from ourselves. 

I’m 44 now, and sometimes I still grieve the gay childhood I never had and the coming out to my mother I never got. 

I romanticize myself as a queer kid in middle school. I have a large group of gay friends. I’m the president of our Gay Straight Alliance. I sing the Amy Ray part of every Indigo Girls song—not just because I love the harmony, but because it’s queer music and I’m a queer human. 

I’m out, and I don’t have to work hard to fit in. The “wrongness” about me, the instinctual knowing that something’s not quite right, the social unease, the otherness I can never quite put my finger on, has transmuted into pride, self-acceptance, and community. 

My mom is a PFLAG member. When my friends come over she buys rainbow-colored bagels and whitefish spread, and spears the lox with trans flag toothpicks. And when she glides into the room with the platter, she says wonderful-terrible things like, “I love my queer, polyamorous kid a lox.”  

Mindy Raf and her mom

Of course there was no Gay Straight Alliance at my school in the 80s and 90s, or LGBTQIA+ community where I lived. None of my classmates were out, and I didn’t know a single gay adult. But if I’m going to daydream an alternate timeline, it’s obviously going to be a queer utopia. 

When you learn new things about yourself as an adult that have been there the whole time, it’s as if the universe gives you a pair of magic goggles that allow you to see your past more accurately. 

“Wow, everything is gay. Oh, and also neurodivergent!”

It’s a bittersweet privilege to meet more of yourself, and more of your secrets, as you get older.

*** 

I came out to my mom as gay and polyamorous over fifty times from 2016-2018. It was well-timed, and crafted with a satisfying dénouement. At least that’s the feedback I got from the audience. I highly recommend coming out to a parent as part of the narrative thread of your solo comedy show. It will always go exactly the way you planned.

I create in order to meet and share my secrets. 

Here are some more examples. Let’s get granular.

• I’ve come out to my dad four times, so far. Once as gay (on my brother’s patio in Portland, Oregon) and once as polyamorous (on a Zoom call during the pandemic). The latter didn’t go as well. Then I got to come out to him two more times while performing on a Moth Mainstage show where I told the story about the Zoom call and what happened when my wife, my partner, my dad, and I all went out to dinner. I told a theater of 800 people all about my polycule, but I still find it a challenge to bring it up to my siblings.

• From 2008-2012, I performed as an omnisexual musical comedy drag character named Leibya Rogers while I thought I was straight. When I came out, I retired the act. 

This is a photo of a queer artist thinking they’re a straight comedian

• I found out I had anxiety by reading some reviews  (“The protagonist, who clearly has anxiety…”) of my young adult novel, The Symptoms of My Insanity, that was loosely based on my life. And then last year, one reader found me on social media and told me the protagonist was a queer influence. I wrote the protagonist as straight, but—like me—I guess she was queer coded the whole time.

I could go on.

I would love to say I fully processed my grief and felt all of my feelings before sharing my life via writing, live storytelling, and stand-up comedy. I would also love to know when, exactly, grief is ever fully processed.

I’m coming on sixteen years since my mom died, not counting all the years she was sick, and the process of the processing is still processing.

I used to see the things I made as crystal balls, unlocking unconscious secrets within me, as if the act of creating was happening without me. But now I give myself more credit.

I’m certain there are so many things I still don’t know about myself, massive truths my nervous system has eviscerated into nanoscopic seeds and scattered throughout my body. 

One thing I do know is that I need to feel safe in order to feel anything. Creating provides that safe container. It’s how I process. 

*** 

Twelve years after my last visit, I return to Michigan with my wife. I take a screenshot of the map of the cemetery and ask them to drive. 

We park across from a thick, leafy oak tree that shades my mom’s headstone. It’s hot but not humid, cloudy but still sunny. A perfect fall Michigan day. I sit down on the grass and close my eyes. Goodbye and hello. It’s all everywhere. Not just the memories, but the stories on stage, the words in journals, the moments in dreams. 

I used to berate myself for not being able to execute scheduled rituals or other ways to stay connected to my mom. But it doesn’t matter where I am, or what, specifically, I do. I’ve been connecting to her, in my own way, all along.

When I open my eyes, I see my wife sprawled out on the grass next to me, shadows from the leaves moving across their smiling face.

“What are you doing?” I laugh. “Are you sunbathing?”

“I’m cuddling with your mom,” they answer matter-of-factly, as if it’s not a totally batshit thing to say.

And maybe it’s not. 

The safer I feel in my body, the more I’m able to soften the edges of my black and white thinking, to expand and even enjoy all the gray. (I don’t think my mom would ever roll around outside without a nice picnic blanket and a lot of hand sanitizer, but perhaps times have changed.) 

“We’re talking about polyamory. She knows everything, and she knows you’re here.”

“I know,” I smile. “I know she knows.”

There’s no wrong way to grieve. It’s a funky, awful, visceral, wonderful, beautiful, labyrinthine process. And there’s no wrong time to meet new parts of yourself, to keep creating new things, to meet and share your secrets.

I don’t want to be “as sick as my secrets.” I want to be as curious as my protective parts. 

Here’s to meeting more.

Mindy Raf is a critically acclaimed solo show artist, stand-up comedian, songwriter, and published author. Her comedy and writing have received accolades from BUST Magazine, Publishers Weekly, and Time Out New York, which named her solo show Not The One: a love story an “LGBT Best Bet.” Mindy co-produces a monthly comedy show Golden Spiral Comedy the last Thursday of the month at Whiskey Cellar NYC in the East Village. You can find her here on Substack, on social media, and occasionally she updates her website.