#they were cremated and their family wouldnt let us keep their ashes. we made a memorial at the house they built but we no longer live there

[theygender]

I recently started playing stardew valley again and downloaded some mods to make my game better. One mod I downloaded makes it so that you get letters from your parents more often and lets you choose your family style to include single parents, gay parents, etc. I thought it would be nice bc my mom in real life is a lesbian so I downloaded it. Then it asked me to pick the names my parents would sign off with. In real life my mother is remarried and I call my stepmother by her first name, but it wouldn't feel right for me to put her actual name in there bc this isn't a 1:1 recreation of my life. I also didn't want to put in a parent name that I hadn't used in real life though. My original second parent, my mom's first partner, died when I was a kid. When they were still alive, I had called my parents Mom and Mimi. So I put Mimi in as the second parent's name. Yesterday I got a letter from Mimi for the first time, telling me a story from when they were young. I almost cried

#rambling #dont mind me just. getting wistful about some pixels #i wish i could talk to them #i wish i could find out what pronouns they want me to use #they were transitioning but this was so many years ago so they still used the pronouns for their asab and idk if thats what they would want #but ill never get to ask them #do they see me? do they know im trans too? are they proud of me? #do they know im studying social work like they were? that ill be graduating from the same school? do they see me? are they proud of me? #they were cremated and their family wouldnt let us keep their ashes. we made a memorial at the house they built but we no longer live there #the college ill be graduating from has their name in the sidewalk with all the other graduates from the year i was born #my name will be there with theirs some day #which name am i putting there? the one i was born with? the one they chose? the one thats named after them? #or will it be a chosen name that matches my gender better #how would they feel about me changing my name? im sure they would want me to be happy but its the only thing that ties me to them #the only thing i have to prove that they ever existed as a part of my life. will i ever change it? #i want to get a tattoo of the memorial that we had when i was young. it was a plaque on their favorite tree stump #i want to prove that theyre a part of me beyond just my name. that theyre with me no matter what #but i dont know what name should go on the tattoo. my mom put their legal name on the plaque. but is that what they would want? #i can never ask them