“I’ll take his brains and heart,” I whispered to my sister when the funeral director presented us with the ashes of our father. One half was enshrined in a plain blue box, the other in a tube resembling a wine bottle gift holder, a photo of a golf club adorning the outside. My father had never golfed a day in his life. His interests were more suited to belting out show tunes or shopping for drapes.

Our share of Dad’s ashes was really a bit less than half each, as a handful of him is forever trapped inside a golden rose his partner, Benny, chose from a catalog at the funeral home. He will keep this on his dresser alongside other mementos from their nine-year relationship. Since Dina and I will both be scattering Dad’s remains, we chose between the two free temporary containers Sax-Tiedeman funeral home had laying around.

I picked the one Dad would hate the least.

Once I returned home, the box sat beside my TV, where an elderly Frankie Valli sang, “Can’t Take My Eyes off of You,” a song that flowed from the stereo in the dining room of my childhood. I’m pretty sure Dad performed that song in a talent show at Nippersink Resort in Wisconsin when I was twelve. Handsome and confident, he sang with gusto while my mom, Gram, my sister, and I applauded from the audience. We were his biggest fans.

That was the summer before I found out my father was gay.

No one actually told me this, my parents having been very careful to keep it a secret. Instead, I sort of figured it out by osmosis. Being gay wasn’t widely called that yet; queer was the term I remember, or fairy or homo or fag. There were a few references on television shows, like All in The Family, but even those were vague or steeped in shame or bigotry. Perhaps there was a dialogue about being gay in the early 1970s in New York or San Francisco; but in the Midwestern suburbs, no one talked about it. And especially not in front of the children.

My suspicion came a year after my parents’ divorce when I noticed Dad wasn’t dating. Instead, he had a constant companion in Terry, a cute, young guy in his early twenties who joined us for Sunday visits and then moved in with Dad. Add that to my father’s pickiness about cleaning, never watching sports or wrenching on cars, and his love of musical theater, and well, it didn’t take much to start asking questions.

For the next several decades, we took turns rejecting each other and longing for one another, each of us wanting something that didn’t come easily. I wanted a “normal” dad, the kind who dropped everything to protect his little girl, who moved her into her first apartment, who comforted her when she was sick. He wanted me to accept the dad he was: an emotionally distant genius who could do my taxes, and who happened to like men.

Tears flowed as it hit me that I would never speak to him again. For someone I spent many years despising because he didn’t love me the way I wanted him to, I was devastated that he had died. Even though there were many signs his health was failing, the reality of his body reduced to ash startled me. He couldn’t really be gone.

Yet, here he was, inside this boring blue box.

A decorating diva, my flamboyant father could barely stand to see a wall with more than twelve inches of blank space. The plain box just would not do until his next birthday when I planned to scatter him across the lagoon behind my house. There, he would rest for eternity, floating beside the Victorian painted ladies he loved during his years living in San Francisco. Until then, he needed something with a bit more flair.

Pouring myself a second glass of wine, I began pulling out magazines. Pictures of hearts and clocks got ripped out along with a tampon ad filled with butterflies. I tore out clichéd words of bereavement and inspiration. Threshold. Serenity. Wisdom. A love that can endure. The things I wanted for him and those he left behind for me. They all landed in a pile on my lap.

Gluing the words and images to the box, a large, colorful Feeling Good took center stage across the top. This was the thing he wanted most, and what had eluded him for the last decade of his life; so many years were focused on numbing his pain, real and imagined. Like a ransom note, I pieced together the words: Remember your family all love you. A message to be deciphered in the afterlife since I’m not sure he really knew this while he was living, at least not all of us at the same time.

By now, the tears and wine were really flowing. I drained the last of the bottle into my glass and sobbed as my memories of my father softened with each stroke of the glue stick. My love for him and who he was were reflected in the quotes chosen for the sides of the box, the things that he may not have directly taught me, yet I learned from him all the same. Things about believing in yourself and doing what you love.

In the last year of his life, I had come to better appreciate the man my father was and accepted that he only wanted what we all did: to love and be loved. That him being gay didn’t hurt me, judging it did.

Flipping through the last magazine, I found the letters RIP on one page in an elegant, curvy script—an exciting find. I cut them out and carefully glued them beside a purple heart.

Rest now, Dad. Your battle is over. I honor you for the wounds you suffered, especially those inflicted by me.

When a Catholic marries a Jew, time becomes tectonic. Combine a Catholic wedding with pretty much any Jewish holiday, and you’ve got a good six to eight hours of guilt and boredom. Only Hindus and the American advertising cabal have more holidays than Catholics and Jews. And if you marry a Jew, you’re getting the raw end of a not-so-kosher deal, which is exactly what happened to my Catholic husband, Bill, when he married me.

It isn’t just the number of holidays on the Jewish calendar that makes them so painful—it’s their duration. Catholic Mass is no match for the brutal Bar Mitzvah. Nothing makes you pray harder than spending three hours listening to a prepubescent zit factory sing in Hebrew. Then there are holiday services for Rosh Hashanah (the new year) and Yom Kippur (a fasting day of atonement), which last longer than most Netflix binges.

Prayer marathons aside, some holidays have nothing to do with religious traditions but rather with secular ones such as patriotism and football.

IN THE BEGINNING:

Our new year starts at 10:00 p.m. on December 31st, right before we fall asleep to “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.” It’s a time to look toward the future and make resolutions, which grow up to be February’s unfulfilled promises. But February is about more than just promises; it’s about expectations, which brings us to Valentine’s Day.

The holiday that’s supposed to represent love and romance has sparked more conflicts in our household than the status of the toilet seat. Early in our relationship, Bill actively fought the notion of forced romance. He boycotted the holiday on principle, which made both of us miserable and had absolutely no effect on Hallmark’s bottom line.

All I wanted was a card with a heart on it or maybe some flowers, but Bill dug in his heels. My silent treatments were no match for his inability to process passive-aggressiveness. The closest he came to recognizing Valentine’s Day was when he hit the candy sales on February 15th. I once went so far as to report him to our therapist, who patiently listened to each of us make our case then told Bill to get over it and give me a Valentine’s Day card. (And they say therapy is hard.)

RENEWAL:

Springtime brings on two heavyweights. Easter, The Movable Feast, is one of the most important holidays on the Christian calendar. Passover, The Unmovable Feast, is one of the most constipating holidays on the Jewish calendar. Bill’s family celebrates the rebirth of a savior. Mine celebrates insects and murder. Both holidays serve wine and crackers.

On our first Easter together, I put on bunny ears and surprised Bill with an Easter basket. I learned an important lesson that day: Only one thing belongs in an Easter basket, and that thing is candy. Additions of Speed Stick and Dial only serve to give chocolate strange and unappealing undertones.

Passover, like most Jewish holidays, revolves around food. We refer to the traditional Passover meal as the Seder, but to call a Seder a meal is like calling Jell-O dessert. Instead of ham (for obvious reasons) and chocolate bunnies in colorful baskets, we get matzo balls (Jewish dumplings), mandel bread (Jewish biscotti), and gefilte fish (nobody knows). At especially fun Seders, we’re treated to kosher pound cake, which is like swallowing an encyclopedia made of clay.

An important part of the Seder is telling the story of Passover, which my family does in play format. Bill, our token Arab, is just one scepter away from the real deal, so we always choose him to play the role of Pharaoh. He’s an optimistic method actor who tries to bring the role home with him at the end of the night for some post-Seder slave-girl role-play. Unfortunately for poor old Pharaoh, this suggestion is met with my proposing a different game called, “Guess Who’s Sleeping on the Couch Tonight.”

SWEAT AND GRATITUDE:

Summertime is hot by the pool and light on holidays. July 4^th is an easy, neutral holiday when we celebrate independence and (kosher) hot dogs. Other neutral holidays include Halloween, New Year’s Eve, National Doughnut Day, and Thanksgiving.

For many years, Bill and I argued over where to overeat for Thanksgiving—Austin with my family or Waco with his. We eventually settled on switching back and forth each year, which was how we became aware of the stark contrast between our family backgrounds.

For example, at Bill’s Thanksgiving, family and friends gather for a day of gratitude. At my Thanksgiving, family and friends gather to discuss their medical conditions. At Bill’s Thanksgiving, it’s customary to serve sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie, whereas its Hebrew cousin serves up mortar and insults. Jewish Thanksgiving is the embarrassing brother-in-law of secular holidays, and he can’t hold his liquor.

THE HOLIDAYS:

Christmas and Chanukah get lumped together during the time of year we heathens refer to as “The Holidays.” Christmas is a holy time commemorating the birth of a savior. Chanukah is a less holy time commemorating olive oil and frugality. The only thing remotely similar between the two is the tradition of exchanging gifts, but even that’s not a fair comparison. Contrary to popular belief, eight nights of Chanukah doesn’t translate into eight nights of gifts. It means one night of gifts and seven nights of sweaters and underwear. Chanukah is essentially a festive, candlelit trip to Macy’s.

One year we blew off our holiday obligations entirely and headed to Las Vegas, which was like a trip to the Holy Land but with hookers. We spent a week eating at fancy restaurants, seeing shows and praying over the roulette wheel—and just like any other holiday celebration, we came home poor and nauseated. It was the one and only time we skipped the double trouble of family holidays though. Call us sentimental suckers for punishment, but let’s face it—the holidays are about family, and ours is twice the fun.

When I shop for fresh chicken, I look for the leanest possible. I’m not counting calories. My preference was rooted years ago in medical school, first year gross anatomy.

Chicken fat is remarkably similar to human fat, yellow and pebbly. After soaking in formaldehyde for months, human flesh also resembles that of a chicken—cold, slightly sticky with a slimy undercoat. Finger pokes leave concave depressions.

Contrary to popular belief and the entertainment industry, medical students do not ridicule our cadavers. All the students I knew were subdued, slightly traumatized by the sight of our first dead body.

My table held a very thin elderly woman. We were lucky. On the next table lay a two-hundred-pound male with a Semper Fi tattoo. We named him Sarge.

The smell of formaldehyde permeated our hair, our clothes, our skin. We no longer noticed it on ourselves, but the upper class pegged us first years in an instant. Laypeople probably thought we had poor hygiene.

Under the skin lies a layer of fat called visceral fat, then the abdominal muscles, then the perineal fat. Strength is needed to grip and pull back the layers, our upper body often within another human. I distanced myself with rote memorization. Words like glossopharyngeal and prepuce became the armor I wore to protect myself against feeling.

Unfortunately, it did not always work. Things would bring me back to reality. At night, in the shower, I would sometimes find dried fat tangled in my long curls. Turning the temperature to scalding, a fog would envelope me. I would scratch at the piece until it dislodged and spiraled down the drain, dancing so not to step on it. Scrubbing furiously, my scalp turned raw, my hands and arms red and stinging painfully.

It was after graduation that the nightmares started. Waking up in a cold sweat, I felt compelled to check all the rooms, the closets, the freezer, especially.

Twenty years later, the nightmares are long gone. All that is left is the revulsion I feel at the touch of raw chicken.