Joshua was my baby brother. I buried him a few days ago. He was only twenty-one. We aren’t supposed to bury our baby brothers or sisters. My Joshua was both.
Joshua was a beautiful child. Always laughing and smiling. Always hugging you. He wanted you to be happy and that would make him happy. He was always asking me if I was ok or if I wanted something. I never heard him complain. You couldn’t help but love him.
I got my first hint that something about my brother was different when he was ten. He spent the night with my son and a cousin. My son came to me and told me that Joshua was gay. I asked him why he would say something like that. My son said I just know that he is. I told my son that saying things like that was cruel. I sent him to his room to think about his behavior.
Five years later, Joshua came to visit me out of the blue. He asked me if I loved him. I told him of course I love you. No matter what he said. No matter what. Tentatively at first, he began to explain to me that he always wanted to be a girl. When I didn’t get upset, he told me of his plan to live his life as a woman when he grew up. Apparently, he couldn’t wait. A few weeks later, my daughter came home from school and told me that her uncle had come to school wearing a mini skirt and a halter. She said that the other kids were picking on him. Though she tried to help, it didn’t stop. But he stood up tall and dealt with it. He had taken a stand and I was proud of him.
I was very proud of my Pops. When Joshua told him, though his heart must have been breaking, Pops told Joshua that he was the same person he was a few minutes ago and he loved him as much now as he did then. Pops told Joshua that the world was full of mean people and that they may try to hurt him. Pops told him to always be safe.
Pops fears for his son came true a little more than a week ago. A man killed my baby brother for being a “fag.” He stole his smile. He stole our hugs. He stole a part of our family. He took it and we can never have it back. He took my baby brother from me.
I sit here crying for the first time. I couldn’t cry before. I was too shocked. Too hurt. Almost numb. I say almost because there was this voice whispering in the back of my head that he was gone and he’s never coming back.
We buried him in his favorite orange sweater with the gold belt. We made sure that his hair was almost as fierce as it was when he was doing it himself. We all dressed up nice because he liked for us to look good. And we smiled because he liked it when we smiled.
I’m writing this because I want people to know what happens when we teach our children to hate what they don’t understand. You don’t have to like people who are different. You don’t even have to acknowledge that they are there. But hate is a dangerous thing. To some people a “fag” died. But to us, our brother, son, nephew, cousin, friend died. And we miss him.
