I had a weird dream this morning.

 

I was in the back seat of a limousine with two rows of back seats. DeForest and Carolyn Kelley were in the front. I was in the farthest back seat.

 

We weren’t driving anywhere at the moment. De passed back to me (via a middle-seat intermediary) a manila folder wordlessly.  I opened it and found his Last Will and Testament in it.

 

My mind went kind of hysterical at that point, so I wasn’t able to read most of what was listed on the pages. I did see that the total amount of their estate was 3.2 million dollars. I saw some tens of thousands of dollars going to other designees, but nowhere near enough to extinguish the whole 3.2.

 

I saw the last name name McNiven (my nephew’s name) but couldn’t see the amount on that line.

 

It appeared to me, in the dream, that De and Carolyn were waiting for some kind of verbal response from me, but I couldn’t see enough to generate one, and I was fighting the idea with my mind, anyway!

 

That’s when I figured out that they had probably left the bulk of their estate to me… and then I was gobsmacked and voiceless, except to start crying and saying, “No! I’d rather have you! No!  No!  I don’t want this. I want you!’

 

Sorta begging them not to die.

 

When I woke up, the dream haunted me for a while until I finally figured out its message:

 

Even 24 years after De’s passing — even after almost a quarter century of learning to live without his physical, emotional and spiritual presence — I retain the exact same feeling I had before he died: “No!  No!  I’d rather have YOU here than millions of dollars!”

 

What would I do with millions of dollars? Help so many other people and animals. Be a financial blessing to hundreds of people  and animals I have wanted to support over the years.

 

And still…  I’d rather have De.

Selfish, yes. But I loved that man waaaaayyyy  more than 3.2 million dollars! 

 

BACK STORY (I HAVE ONLY TOLD A SMALL TRUSTED HANDFUL OF PEOPLE THIS BEFORE TODAY)

 

I was in De’s will. Carolyn had the attorney take it out after he passed away and she got full control of the estate. That hurt my feelings, but I understood her frame of mind.

And I didn’t step in to help them to be financially rewarded for it. I stepped in because I was asked and they needed reliable help.

 

The sad part is that Carolyn took me out because I stepped in to help when they needed it most at the end of their lives.  I was in it before that happened (which thrills me to know).

 

In her declining mental capacity to understand, Carolyn imagined that De and I had begun a love affair after she fell and broke her leg. (She had always feared he would find someone “better” than her, but he never went looking — HE LOVED THAT WOMAN WITH ALL HIS HEART! And I’m trans, so any opportunity to “steal” De from her wasn’t even an option or an inclination! I respected the marriage they embraced!) She confronted me endless times, seeking an admission, which I could not give her because it wasn’t true.  I’d sit patiently and explain the kind of love I had for De (“remember all those Father’s Day and Mother’s Day cards I sent you?!”) and she’d feel better and apologize then.

 

But she had dementia and kept forgetting. She’d accuse me again and again in an endless loop, so I’d explain, again and again, that my love for De was love for a father figure, not a lover (contrary to my portrayal of a lustful female at conventions and during stand up comedy routines years before I came out publicly as trans) — and she’d understand and apologize — until the next day, when it would happen all over again, because she would forget!

 

I finally decided (after seven additional months of caring for her after De died) that I wasn’t doing her any favors by staying if she kept believing (day after day like Groundhog Day) that De and I had fallen in love. So, I told her attorney that she would be better off with a caregiver/companion with no previous history with the Kelleys. He eventually found someone wonderful, and she stayed until Carolyn passed away three years later.

 

Another Imagined “Betrayal”

 

I had also told the social worker at the hospital about Carolyn’s expressed wish to die and that she had asked me to help her, and that I had told her I would help her live but I wouldn’t help her die – to give the social worker a heads up about the request, since I felt she might need to be put on suicide watch. But I told the social worker NOT to tell Carolyn I had squealed — as she had asked me to keep her request to help her die private — or she would hate me.  She promised and then told Carolyn’s doctor about the request. He walked in a few hours later and confronted Carolyn with, “I hear you want to die.”

 

Of course, Carolyn knew where that info originated. So, when I came back the next day, she confronted me with my “betrayal” of having told on her when she had asked me not to. That was kinda the straw that broke the camel’s back, in addition to her suspicions about my imagined relationship with De.  I told her, “Carolyn, if the situation was reversed, and I was in that bed and you were helping me, wouldn’t you have done the same thing, to try and get me some help?”

 

I knew that what she had asked of me was waaaayyy beyond my pay grade and that I had to call in the professionals to get her the help she needed.

 

Yeah… so she took me out of the will for these reasons. And I understood, even though it hurt my heart for a very long time that she would ever even imagine that I would want to — or try to – break up their marriage or betray her in any other way.  In her right mind, she knew better than that.  In her later years, she didn’t.

 

It was tragic.  De was true blue to her, and still she never felt “sticky” enough as a personality for him to want to stick around if he found someone “better” (in her mind).

 

The weirdest thing about this whole thing is that Carolyn told her best friend (while both she and De were in the hospital), “If I die before De, he should marry Kris. She is a terrific partner — so smart, so capable!”  Although her friend assured her that De wouldn’t marry again if she died first, she let that thought eat away at her mind, I think.

 

It was all an imaginary worry.

 

But here’s the good news…

 

I got a spiritual visitation from both De and Carolyn within weeks of her passing in 2004. (It was a very long four years of angsting over Carolyn’s imagined fears and her resulting “dislike of me!) Their spirits, side by side, leaned over my bed and I could feel them both sending me intense love, appreciation and affection.  That’s when I relaxed because I knew that NOW Carolyn knows the truth and understands that she was imagining things at the end of her life.

 

Best. Visitation. Ever! 

I will love both of them forever!!!