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Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Rest in Peace, Melissa...

It was four years ago, today August 20, 2011, that Melissa passed away, quietly, near her Piedmont region home, in the state of Virginia.  Most of our T-bloggers who were active at the time knew and loved Melissa and I'll guarantee you that none of them will ever forget her. 

Caroline was, perhaps, one of those closest to Melissa and she graciously accepted my request to do a guest post, remembering her:

I thought that I understood the meaning of the word “mourning” until my friend Melissa died four years ago. Calie asked me wether I would write an introductory post for T Central and the gush of emotion and gut churning feelings flooded back in an instant!

It was six years ago that I first commented on “Melissa’s Meanderings” which had been going a scant month. We gelled immediately and so started a long series of regular emails on a scale dwarfing all other online communications. We contemplated online chatting and even started to set it up but Melissa decided that long emails was her preferred medium. I found out that she had many similar email friendships in her life

We were little different in age though we had been born on different continents. Clearly we had both known our true natures from an early age and learned quickly to subdue it, both of us had sought help at about twenty and got little help. Melissa had the diagnosis but could see no way in her circumstances to find a way to transition. She did try entering into relationships but realised that her expectations could not gel with the hopes and expectations of the girls she found. Like many of her generation she lived through the era of Vietnam and with a military father found resistance futile, I had wondered if exposure to that Vietnamese sun finally killed her…

She chose a solitary life living out in the country head down in a solid company to pay for an early retirement to be herself, thank goodness for her and for us that she did.

She had hardly started a blog when I first found her and we were instant soul mates. She encouraged me to start using an epilator and by degrees I encouraged her to restart going further out in the real world and she joined a support group and found some live friends again.

If she had a fault it was her ability to get to a new post first and then post one of her perfectly formed comments leaving the rest of us speechless! 

Latterly she started to find the present darker mood of our corner of the net depressing and encountered some direct hostility and hinted that this may have delayed admitting that her health had deteriorated. Few among us have not wished fate to take a hand and to not wake the next day when it all felt too much…

Her spirit burned fierce and bright though sadly not for long enough, almost exactly two years online. I had expected us to age gracefully together, her more gracefully than me, but is was not to be. The consolation is that she suffers in this mad world no longer.

There is a large void and silence which is still hard to come to terms with...
 - Caroline

I wanted to feature one of Melissa's posts and found this one, There's Been A Great Disturbance In The Force........, where she lamented about a growing divide within the transgender community. 

Melissa did a guest post for T-Central, and I really encourage those who didn't know Melissa to read this post.

Lastly, many have left a personal tribute on Melissa's last blog post.  If you want to do so, go here.

Rest in peace, girlfriend....



 

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the tribute. The power of blogs really comes through in horrible situations like this - I knew Melissa only online and for far too short a period of time. But she made a large, and great impact on my life when and I miss her terribly.

    Stace

    ReplyDelete

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