Even before her father's passing, death is a constant presence in Alison Bechdel's life because she grows up around the funeral home (from which the book gets its name, Fun Home). Nevertheless, Alison and her mother assume Bruce's death was a suicide - connected somehow to his latent homosexuality and Helen's request for a divorce. The traumatic moment of Bruce Bechdel's death is a mystery to his daughter, since the only witness is the truck driver who hit him. Ultimately, the chasm between their experiences leads the bonding moment to fall short of Alison's hopes - Bruce's shame is too deep for him to truly reveal himself to his daughter. Bruce struggles through his shame in an effort to show his daughter some support - something he never had - and Alison tries to connect with her father on the basis of their shared proclivites. The scene in which Bruce takes his recently-out daughter to a gay bar embodies the differences between Bruce and Alison's ways of dealing with their homosexuality. The process of writing the memoir has clearly allowed Bechdel to look back at her father through the lens of hindsight, thus giving her the opportunity to uncover hints about her father's hidden sexuality that she was unable to decipher at the time.
In fact, it is Alison's own coming out that prompts Helen Bechdel to reveal Bruce's hidden affairs to her daughter. However, Bruce Bechdel's homosexuality, which arguably forms the emotional core of Fun Home, remains a secret for most of Alison's life. While young Alison faces certain struggles as she attempts to embrace her sexuality, she is able to do so in a supportive community. In her memoir, Alison Bechdel writes about the process of discovering that she is attracted to women and coming out to her family at 19.
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