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....
At
home I’m always in shorts and bare feet, summer and winter. Before the
stockings became necessary no problem. Now it’s different, I still try
to keep to shorts and be compliant with wearing the stockings but then I
get remarks from Mrs.A. She can’t get used to seeing me ‘exposed’ in
them, especially the black ones. The picture is not a good one but
one gets the idea. If I would walk around the house as in the picture
above, I would get more than just a weird look.
