The Moth Presents Kimberly Reed: Life Flight

ladies and gentlemen Kimberly Reed some knives and um so I get a phone call from my mom and she tells me that my father is about to get on an emergency life flight from our home in Montana to go to Denver to get an emergency liver transplant my mom is kind of perennial II optimistic and she's telling me don't worry it's going to be okay we're going to pull through this it's going to be all right but I know something is really wrong so I get the next flight I can to go from where I'm living here in New York hoping that I get there before my father dies and I'm really gay really glad I got that flight as fast as I did because I was able to spend a couple hours with my father before I passed away and before I know it I'm at this side of his hospital bed with my mom and we're sobbing because he's passed my dad was it he was a strong silent type he was um he was a grew up on a farm and he was the town one of one of two town I doctors so he can fix anything you know he could fix tractors or eyes he can you know no matter what and he was always doing it like behind the scenes you know we never wanted to take credit for it um it was apparent that my mom and I and my two brothers were going to have to be fixing things ourselves this time around and the first thing my mom did was was to call my two brothers ones a year older one is a year younger and it was going to be really comforting to see my younger brother we were really close it was gonna he was really going to support me um it was going to be much more complicated seeing my older there we'd always had a really complicated relationship and there was something really big about me that he did not know and that's that the last time he saw me um years and years before I was male he was not aware that I had transitioned from female to being female and you know I always wanted to to tell him I was trying to find the right time right place trying to you know get up the nerve um I was worried about his reaction maybe that you know he was a bit conservative he had a temper I didn't know how it's going to happen and I just kept putting it off and never found the right time and here we are at the time where I have to deal with all this stuff mark wasn't the only one who didn't know my story my whole hometown didn't know about me either and you know I was trying to find a way to tell mark I just kind of figured with my hometown I just I just would never go back there again so my mom calls my brother and in one fungal tells him that he lost his father and that he now has a sister and I have to say I mean mark was he was really great um he got off the plane we met him at the airport he gave me a hug but it was awkward as he can't imagine and you know I think we did what a lot of families do at times like that you just kind of fall back on tradish tradition and we wanted to do something that my mom and dad had always done every year because you see it was my father's birthday he had passed away 20 minutes before before his 65th birthday so we all went to Applebee's and we got a slice of sizzling apple pie and put a candle in it and my brother Mark who really worshipped my father got the honor of blowing out the candle and when he was blowing out the can I still remember the expression on his face he was you know trying to process my father's passing he was figuring out why it had been so long that the two of us hadn't talked something that really frustrated him and it was just all kind of coming together I I took a business card out of my purse it was for this job that Mark didn't even know I had I had my new name on it and I wrote my cell phone number on it and I gave it to mark I said look you know we haven't talked for so long but here any time any place no barriers call me anywhere you know we can talk anytime you want and my mom started crying because her you know her children were reuniting and also because it was you know for years she had been running interference between the two of us and using every excuse in the book to explain why I wasn't getting back to him or why you know packages to me were being returned because they had the wrong name on them and you know her job running interference was over so mark was in shock we were all in shock I was chok because i was thinking about the fact that you know nobody in my hometown knew and I'm wondering if I can go back for the for the funeral if I should go back if my mom and my brother's really want me to really deep down and I'm thinking that you know I never even thought I was going to go back to my hometown and now I'm being I'm being pulled back right into it as contradictory as it may seem as soon as there was a reason to go back I had this really deep strong yearning to go back I mean I had gone to school in New York in San Francisco and traveled all over the world and this place that I thought of his home that I think I've really repressed knowing that I couldn't go back there right I don't know I don't need to go back there but as soon as there was a reason for me to go back there are very strong reason I really really wanted to go I wanted to see the house the only house I had ever known growing up I wanted to go back to my hometown and these people that you know comprise this community that I thought of his home right and my mom reassured me that she wanted me to be there that she in fact needed me there for support my brothers too and my mom had a plan to get us there you know our family had been separated for a long time so she had the idea for all of us to rent a car and drive the 20 hours from Denver back to Montana so before you know it there we are in the car you know my brother hasn't seen me for years especially not as female and here we are and we had so much to do we were planned we were planning his serve my father's funeral service we were writing his obituary my mom wanted to figure out and I do too wanted to figure out how we could introduce the information about me while still keeping the focus on my father so she had me driving down the you know across from Wyoming 70 miles an hour she I mean take dictation of her friends and she wanted to invite them over for tea so she had this really strategic list it's like you invite Judy and she's going to tell all the people in the arts community that my mom was involved in and you're going to tell June and June is going to tell all the people at dad's office and we'll find somebody else and she's going to tell everybody at the church and the next night there they were eighteen of my mom's best friends and the minister from the church where the service was going to be performed they're drinking tea my mom says you all know very well by now that I've lost my husband and I know a lot of you have wondered what happened to my middle son who seemed to disappear and she said I want you to know tonight that yeah I have a daughter and her name is Kim and this is my child and I love my child and I hope you do too and we can focus on this tonight we can talk about this tonight you all are my ambassadors if someone has questions at the funeral and I'm caught up in things I want I'm going to point them to you and like you tell this story because you can talk about it in a sensitive way and she um you know took a couple a couple questions from the people there and the whole tea party and dude slightly different than the tea party we hear about in the news the whole thing ended with everybody raising their teacups and saying hip-hip hooray for Kim hip-hip hooray for Kim there were a couple amens and some applause and and then everybody went home and I swear there was a brown out from all the simultaneous phone calls that were being made dispensing the information right so then the next night there was a viewing of my father's body at the funeral home and I had elected not to go because you know I didn't want to focus to be on me I was going to keep it on everybody and keep it on my father but my best friend Tim from high school was at the viewing and he calls me up he had only known the new me for a couple days I hadn't even told him but he knew me really well and he knew I was chickening out and he called me from the the funeral parlor and he said hey I got a lot of people here they really want to see you I should probably tell you that the people he's talking about are the football team because I used to be on the football team and so applause what happened um and so Tim says where are you I got a lot of people want to see you I'm like a I don't want to go and you know I want to keep the focus on my dad I don't want to be like yeah whatever either you come down here or we're going to come up there what's it going to be I said I come up here I guess so before I know what the football team is at my front door and a couple of them have cases of beer under their arm one case gets tossed in the snowbank to keep it cold it's just like high school and all the sudden they're in my living room and it's this wake instantly and show of support for me and for the memory of my father right and they're in my living room this living room I never even thought I would see again and people are either laughing or crying mostly laughing and I remember looking around the room and there's Kevin he was one of the co captains of the football team with me and I look over there and there's my brothers Mark and Todd and they were you know we were all very close in age so we had friends in common and they're telling stories about my dad and there's a look over on the couch and there's Frank I probably should have all do also told you that not only was I on the football team but I was a quarterback and so I look over the couch and there's Frank he's an offensive lineman is the job of an offensive lineman to protect the quarterback and Frank is protecting me once again 20 years later under very different circumstances and he's got his arm around my girlfriend they're laughing and knocking back cans of cheap beer and that was the moment that I knew things were going to be okay somehow and there was one more person there that night and that was my mom and she told me something that we ended up repeating quite a bit that weekend through the services she came up and she said you know dad was always fixing things and it looks like he fixed this too she said you know even though your father has died you've been reborn thank you very much [Applause] [Applause]

Channel: The Moth

Views: 290,895

Keywords: The Moth, The Moth Radio Hour, The Moth Podcast, kimberly, reed, kim, life, flight, prodigal, sons, documentary, transgender, trans, transwoman, lgbt, football, quarterback, montana, uplifting, inspiring, story, storytelling, storyteller, mothstories, moth, stories

Id: U2LePWwkZzg

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 10 2011