Transgender Day of Remembrance

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Empty Chairs at Empty Tables


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoeV1rHYfzs


For those who have gone before us; folks whom we knew. Friends and even family. Taken too soon. Or those who lived long in such a way as to give courage and hope to we who remain. Remembering especially our friends here.



There's a grief that can't be spoken
There's a pain goes on and on
Empty chairs at empty tables
Now my friends are dead and gone

Here they talked of revolution
Here it was they lit the flame
Here they sang about tomorrow
And tomorrow never came.

From the table in the corner
They could see a world reborn
And they rose with voices ringing
And I can hear them now!
The very words that they had sung
Became their last communion
On the lowly barricade..
At dawn.

Oh my friends, my friends forgive me.
That I live and you are gone
There's a grief that can't be spoken
There's a pain goes on and on
Phantom faces at the window
Phantom shadows on the floor
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will meet no more.

Oh my friends, my friends, don't ask me
What your sacrifice was for
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will sing no more



Empty Chairs at Empty Tables
from the Musical Les Miserables
Songwriters:
Alain Albert Boublil / Claude Michel Schonberg / Herbert Kretzmer
Sung by Julie Denn

Comments

For us all

BarbieLee's picture

There have been so many who have gone before us. As you mentioned, some because of time and age, others sickness, and those lost through violence. Sometimes as I remember the ones lost through violence and those who found their life too hard to live and ended it, I feel those like us are in a war. Some are support, some are just there, some don't want to be, some murdered, exactly like war. And just like a war, most outside never even give us any thought. Why should they? We are after all the smallest minority. What we do or don't do won't affect them or their lives. Until it does. Every life on this screwed up Star Ship we call earth and home affects everyone and everything but most never understand or want to understand.
Hugs Andrea
Barb
Life is a challenge, there are no free rides.

Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl

as I said in my story "a Tapestry of Stars"

I've always felt those who ended their own lives because of the awful way they get treated for being trans should added to the list of those murdered. To all of my fallen brothers and sisters, rest in power.

DogSig.png

Insignificant

joannebarbarella's picture

That's what we are to the population at large and I include most of the LGB who are only too happy to throw us off the bus when it comes to "rights". Bugger you Jackie, I got mine. "Bugger" being the appropriate word since we are all disgusting perverts anyway. How could any "normal" male desire to live as a woman? Or any "normal" woman live as a man?

As Barbie Lee said, we are the smallest proportion of the people and as such are beneath sympathetic consideration. We just don't count. Things may have improved since Stonewall, except for the last four years when we have had whatever we achieved eroded, but until society becomes more compassionate we will always have to struggle for acceptance.

Still, let's not give up. Today in particular I will remember my dear friend Alison Mary, who was the bravest of the brave.

We'd All Believe Him

joannebarbarella's picture

Wouldn't we? He's the guy that claimed all the dead people voted and then had to recant when "the dead" rose up and said "Hey! Here I am."