I've been thinking about D lately. I met her around November of 2002, when I'd recently moved to town and was just beginning to venture out to tap into the local feminist community. D was among the first people I met here, and she was the first transgendered person I'd ever met.

When I first met her, she was in the beginning stages of transitioning. She was in between jobs, and took that as her prime opportunity to start living as a woman full-time. She and her pre-transition wife were in therapy to try to salvage their marriage, but D was not optimistic. She knew it wouldn't work because, as she put it so plainly, "[her wife] is not a lesbian." D was a lesbian and would have liked to continue the relationship. Within the first few months that I new her, she got her name legally changed and was extremely proud of her new drivers license and social security card. She was happy to start looking for a new job under her new name, as a woman.

At first, D was shy in the woman-only spaces I encountered her in. She was careful to assure newcomers that she was not a drag queen and tended to keep herself in the background. Over the next couple of years, I got to see her become the kind of woman she wanted to be: self-assured and confident. Her marriage did end, and she delved into the local lesbian dating scene. She got involved with several feminist, lesbian, and transgender organizations. She lobbied for gay rights and organized protests. She wrote letters to the editor of the local newspaper to check people on their ignorant views.

D eventually did get a job with her new name and identity. This gave her the economic empowerment to work toward what she so longed for - gender reassignment surgery. She had everything planned out, from how much money she would save from every paycheck to how long it would take her to accrue enough paid time off from work to have the surgery and recuperate. She dieted steadily to get down to the weight the doctors said she needed to be at to have the surgery safely. She set a date with a surgeon overseas and had a running countdown of the number of months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds until her surgery on her website.

In the meantime, she fell in love. She met a woman who accepted her as she was. D told me once in confidence that this was the only person she had let see her completely nude since she began her transition. This, to me, was so telling of the deep bond that they shared. D felt like she was still stuck in a body with male genitalia, but even that had an abnormal appearance due to all the female hormones she had been taking. For her to share herself as she was then must have taken a tremendous amount of trust.

I'm sorry I don't have a happy ending to this story. D got sick probably 6 months before her surgery was scheduled. And to make a long story short, she did not get adequate medical care. I don't think its far-fetched to assume that this was probably because she was transgendered. What she had was appendicitis, but it was not diagnosed as such until her appendix actually ruptured. She went through surgeries to clean up that mess and its aftereffects, but I guess it wasn't enough.

I miss her unique spirit. I'd never known anyone like D before I met her, not only because she was transgendered, but just who she was. She was so strong, resilient, dedicated, blunt like you wouldn't believe, sensitive, and a damn good friend. I really wish things had been different for her, but I can take comfort in knowing the huge impact she had on many others like me. Thanks, D.