accept and be brave enough to keep going.
Please keep speaking out for marriage equality if you have time and strength. My beloved and I missed out. But for a tremendous amount of luck and neighbors who stood by me, thanks to Amendment One in NC, the doctor could not have disclosed to me that my partner had died, I would not have been allowed to see the body, I could not have started the funeral arrangements, I could not have received the death certificates, I could not have begun to wrap up his affairs.
As it is, it has been a nightmare because we are still "legal strangers". But for one, tiny, incredible piece of serendipity that happened to work out in my favor, it would have gone much, much worse. As it has been, if we could have been married, the process of taking care of all of his final business would have been ever so much easier and I would have been cross-examined so much less.
Can you imagine walking around in this sort of PTSD state, trying to hold yourself together, AND being made to feel like some identity thief or criminal at every turn? Injury, pain, then insults.
It doesn't need to be this way. All I'm asking for my DU family to do is talk about the effects to your friends and family. I'm living what happens when marriage isn't equal. Civil partnerships aren't equal, hold no benefit in these situations. Being denied even that in NC turns the grief and loss into a nightmare that just won't stop.
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