KarMel Scholarship 2009
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Winner of the “Written” Category “Remembering My Sister” By Graham Trail - OR
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Description of Submission: “Short essay about my sister transitioning into my brother.” - Graham
Biography: Graham is a graduate from Whitman College. He is currently attending Boston College working on a Masters of Fine Arts.
In his spare time, Graham likes to write prose or creative or fictional writings.
Why Karen and Melody Liked It: We have never had a family of a transgender talk about their feelings. It was touching to hear about the loss
the family feels for one child, while learning to welcome a new one into the family. It was a new perspective to hear.
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Remembering
My Sister No one has died. This isn’t that sort of obituary. My family has lost a future,
however, and all the accumulated hopes and silly expectations and little
pleasures attached to it have been swept away. My sister has renounced her
gender. Expect pronoun trouble.
If this was a glass-half-full sort of paper then maybe I’d be celebrating the
emergence of my brother, or simply the transformation of my sibling. And
there will be celebrations – Christmases and birthdays (two birthdays?) and
road trips and long walks and wrestling matches. But I also need time to
remember my sister, and to acknowledge her loss.
So: Sage Trail (the girl) is gone. She was born on August 24th,
1990, to a caring middle-class family in San Francisco. She died, at age 18,
of self-inflicted wounds in October 2008. She was just beginning her first
year at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. She is survived
by Sage Trail (the boy), who is keeping the name and is slowly making
physical progress toward masculinity - “Getting rid of my goodies,” he told
me over the phone. His current Facebook status is
“Sage Trail is watching desperate housewives like a real man.” Our family mourns the loss.
“I’ve thought of Sage as my daughter for 18 years… There’s a person there,”
my father told me during a recent phone conversation. “The thought that has
affected me the most is imaging her injecting testosterone. Imagining the
physical injection, the testosterone entering her bloodstream, like a drug.
It’s a very disturbing image. It’s like plastic surgery – once everything
becomes contingent, where does it stop? I am not completely happy with my
body, but I’ve learned to accept it. Sage will be able to grow a little wispy
beard, yes, but what if then she wants a body like a football player? I’m
worried about Sage never being happy, about never feeling done.”
“Dear! Your son wants to say hi!... I mean your
first-born,” my dad calls to my mom. My sister may be a memory now, but
she is more real to me than this brother I have never met. My sister is hands
on my shoulders and weight on my back, she is the bruises from a thousand
fights, she is late-night Halloween candy swaps and rolling our eyes at our
parents, and she is gone.
I’ll always feel a little responsible for Sage. When I was four, my parents
asked me if I wanted a little sister. I said yes. For weeks afterward I
excitedly told passersby on the street that my mom was going to have a baby
come out of her vagina. I was her herald. It would be impossible for me to summarize
Sage’s 18 years of life for you, so I’ll focus on Sage at her most glorious:
a proud artist and fighter.
Sage came out as a lesbian when she was fourteen (I was the first person she
told), and completely embraced that part of her identity. She founded a
gay-straight alliance group at our high school, and campaigned for awareness
of homosexual rights throughout her life. This was the focus of much of her
art, revealing the prejudices that gay people face in society. She also
fought against censorship, getting into an extended battle with our high
school principal over her senior project – a mural depicting Michelangelo’s
painting of God touching Adam as Dumbledore touching Harry Potter, with just
a golden snitch covering Harry’s magic wand, if you
know what I mean.
Although Sage’s transformation surprised us all, when I think back there were
definitely signs. Before leaving for MICA, Sage’s art had turned toward the
macabre. Two of the works she completed before college were life-size
portraits – one of a hanged naked woman and one of her, crucified on an
easel. It is impossible for me not to read some commentary on the dead and
abused female bodies in both of those paintings. After hearing the news from Sage,
our mom sent me an email: “As you know, she is my child, and I will always
love and support her, no matter what choices she makes about
sexuality/gender. But I have to be honest, this feels horrible
for me. Nothing like when she disclosed she was lesbian. That
was honestly completely fine. Now I feel sad and this huge sense of
loss. Almost like a child dying. Not that I won't accept her,
whatever happens. But if she decides she is no longer a girl, that is a huge loss for me. The Sage I have
known and loved for 18 years will be gone. My daughter will be
gone. That is hard.” The first well-known transgender
person in America was Christine Jorgenson, a male-to- female (or M2F, in the
jargon) who got the operation in the early 1950s. The New York Daily News
ran a front-page story declaring Jorgensen the first sex change recipient.
That wasn’t true, but it cemented Jorgensen’s fame. My grandmother actually
met Jorgensen, and she thought Jorgensen made the transition well: “she was
so graceful, so feminine,” she told my mother.
We all have yet to meet my brother. He is forming on the other side of the
country, participating in therapy sessions and making wardrobe changes and
exploring hormone treatment options. I think we are all a little scared of
seeing each other again. But in the time before we do, I have found it
comforting to remember my sister. She always fought for what she believed in,
and she loved making art that supported her convictions. In this
transformation I see those values shining clearly; her last, self-terminating
act not an act of destruction, but rather one of creation.
She will be missed.
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Do you like this? Then feel free to send an email message to Graham at: giaddon@gmail.com