Coping with Loved Ones by Phillip Hoyle

Coping with loved ones is not really my topic although I do face some such challenges, challenges I’ve settled by maintaining distance. Still my experience is not so much coping as simply living away from the people whom I seem so much to bother. I don’t expect them to change in their attitudes. I keep my distance. I have done so for fifteen years.

When I told my sisters that my wife and I were separating, that she was going back to Albuquerque to work and I was staying in Tulsa, that we didn’t know how to solve the difficulty two sexual affairs I’d had with men had created, and that I bore the responsibility for our problems, one of my four sisters was stricken. Sometime later, after I had moved to Denver to live my life as a gay man, I received a letter from her and her family that she, her minister husband, and their two young adult daughters had signed, a letter that separated them from me with its condemnation expressed in biblical language. I read it—a letter her husband had written—and felt sadness. I felt especially sad that they had involved their daughters in the act of rejection. I felt deeply sad for my sister. I did not respond to their communication. I have not seen my sister or her family since then.

Each March I send my sister a birthday card. Each December I send her family a Christmas card. That’s it. That’s enough for me. I feel sad for them all. I did send her husband a get-well card when he was being treated for cancer. I sent him my congratulations when he retired. I don’t know to do more than that. I hope my sister has a sense of peace in all this. That’s my best wish for her.

My other three sisters have been open, loving, and including, whatever their thoughts about homosexuality, sin, and salvation. I appreciate their attitudes. I treasure them all, even the rejecting sister who once had been one of my closest friends. I suspect this story would be more interesting if it had been written by my rejecting sister. She’s surely the one who has to cope. She’s the one who holds out for me to change. She’s the one who believes I’ve committed some unpardonable sin. She’s the one who has to deal with the embarrassment of having a sinfully gay brother who probably does all kinds of horrible things decent people must protect their children from, must rid their society of, and must enact laws to limit. She’s the one who fears that civil freedoms for the pursuit of happiness or simply the right to work, marry, and live in peace give too much to homosexuals. She’s the one who has to cope with too much. So she does cope; she prays every day of the week for my repentance. I keep my distance so she doesn’t have to cope with me close up. Face to face might be too much provocation.

My coping strategies: distance and separation. Perhaps they are too much a habit I’ve cultivated. I see they may present a problem on the horizon. As we age and our health deteriorates, a thing well underway with this group of siblings, I am sure I will need to be face to face with members of the rejecting family. Then I’ll have something more to write about! Then I’ll know more about coping like people in small towns have to cope with their families! In the meantime I’ll send my cards and best wishes for these folk who find me to be so evilly unrepentant.

© 14 October 2012

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, giving massages, and socializing. His massage practice funds his other activities that keep him busy with groups of writers and artists, and folk with pains. Following thirty-two years in church work, he now focuses on creating beauty and ministering to the clients in his practice. He volunteers at The Center leading “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com