I’ve been in a funk for the last couple of days. And not the George Clinton kind of funk. In examining it, I think some of it is circumstantial, and yet I realize that I felt like this last year around the same time. Which is no surprise seeing as it’s a little over a week away from the anniversary of my mother’s death.

This time two years ago I was watching my mother quickly deteriorate from the cancer that had spread to her brain. It’s interesting timing as, of the time of this post, my agent is getting ready to send a novel of mine out on submission. And yet, in a way, it’s entirely apt.

This isn’t the first novel I’ve written, but it is the first novel that seems to be ready. It’s a middle grade novel, a fantasy for kids, that I’ve described before as my homage to all the books I read growing up. And that is largely due to my mother.

She was a fan of stories. She would read to us when we were young. Then, when we were old enough to read on our own, she would encourage me and my siblings to read. She wasn’t critical, either. Unlike others, when all I wanted to read was science fiction and fantasy, she encouraged that as well, seeing, I like to think, the joy I experienced in those books. Whether it was Narnia or Lord of the Rings, or the subscriptions she bought me to comic books like Star Wars and Captain America, she supported whatever I wanted to read.

Later, when I began writing, she encouraged that as well. She was always my biggest fan, in whatever I wanted to pursue, and it’s that unwavering support that I miss the most now that she’s gone.

My novel draws on many of the influences I experienced as a kid – Narnia and Lord of the Rings, Watership Down, even Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, a story I first experienced as part of the cast of my school’s production when I was 12*. That these are the stories that lodged in my subconscious is certainly a factor of who I am. But that I was able to explore these kinds of tales is certainly tied in to the kind of person my mother was.

If she were alive today, I would be on the phone with her right now, telling her how far I’ve come. And I know she would be excited, believing, even when I might not, that someone will buy it, that it will one day see print. And i know that she would be one of the first to want to have it. If that happens, I know I would want to call her up, to tell her the good news. But I can already hear her voice saying, “I knew this would happen.”

The year that she died, I had business cards made up for my writing career. I felt that it was time that I treated the writing life as a profession and I wanted to be professional about it. By the time I brought them home, she was already dealing with the worst of the cancer. But, at her wake, as people were putting things in her coffin, I put the card there, because she was always the one who believed. To her those words, Rajan Khanna, Writer, were already a reality. It may seem silly, but it was my way of honoring that.

I miss her more than I ever thought possible. I lost my rock, the one immutable thing that existed in my life. But if this novel does one day see print, it will be in large part because of her. And I will always be grateful for that. Already, in my mind, this novel is for her.

* She wasn’t only supportive when it came to writing. When I was younger and flirted with theater, she was my biggest fan in that as well. She used to tell me that I should audition for soap operas because she thought I was better than many of the people on the screen (this from someone who watched a lot of soap operas).

I had a sad day this past weekend. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the fact that I just gave up coffee and I was bereft of its mood-enhancing abilities. Or maybe my life has just been so full of happiness lately that I was owed some sadness. It doesn’t matter.

But as I often do at such times, I thought of my mother. And I thought of how she was the one person in my life, the one person in the world, who ever truly loved me unconditionally. Don’t get me wrong  – the rest of my family loves me. I don’t doubt that. But my mother loved in a way that was threaded through with acceptance. With the idea that I love you for everything that you are and everything that you can be and despite all the things inside yourself that you might consider flaws or weaknesses. It was a love that said – you can be yourself, and I will always be there for you.

Only she’s no longer there. And that pretty much sucks.

It’s a tough realization. To know that the safety net is gone. To know that when you’re scared and lonely, when the world turns its face away, that there’s nowhere to go. No safe, warm embrace to take shelter in. It makes the world more cold and lonely.

Then I was reading about the series of suicides lately by LGBT teens (Raymond Chase, Tyler Clementi, Asher Brown, Billy Lucas, and Seth Walsh) who have been facing persecution and intolerance and it just pushed me over the edge. I can’t claim to know what it’s like to grow up gay in an intolerant climate. I can’t really imagine what it feels like to face that kind of hatred and lack of acceptance at every turn. I can only claim to know what it’s like to feel different, to feel alone and misunderstood and like something of a Changeling left behind in a child’s place. And if that is just the tiniest fraction of what these kids are feeling then that crushes my heart into tiny pieces. I want them all to have someone like my mother who will love and accept them for who they are. I want them all to have communities that will stand up against all aspects of homophobia. I’m heartened to see LGBT adults like Dan Savage and Ellen Degeneres reaching out to these kids and trying to explain that things will get better. I hope it reaches people. I hope it helps to bring some light into dark places.

When I was a freshman at university, living on an all-male floor in a dorm, there was this one kid, Jim, who came out during the year. As far as I know he wasn’t tormented, but he was certainly treated differently. And the other guys would talk about him behind his back. I never did. But I will always despise myself for not defending him. For not speaking up. I saw him a few years later at a pride parade in NY and he seemed happy and doing well and we talked for a bit and I was glad. But I will always remember him and how I basically failed in being the kind of person I want to be.

Doing nothing is not enough. Doing nothing right now is leading to kids dying. Doing nothing means leaving people alone to suffer while the world tears at them from all sides. I don’t know what it is that I can do right now, but I want to do something. I need to do something.

So I will. Why don’t you join me?