I open this space all the time to write to you all but find myself a tired, timid thing.

Ram Dass said, “We are all just walking each other home.” So, won’t you walk with me a bit this afternoon?

The first psychogenic seizure I had after my dad died occurred about a month into my “grieving journey”. I took a half-day off from work and was driving up to Menominee to drop off his cell phone and laptop with his coworkers. I was looking forward to checking in and seeing how they were doing.

I’d spent the better part of the week leading up to this backing up his phone on an external drive as well as online. I went through about a decade of his photos and videos, over and over again. Seeing the world through his eyes and what he might like to remember.

Lots of photos of my Mom and her various knit creations. Photos of me and Elliott pulling silly faces. An infinite number of photos and videos of the dog, Hildy, from puppy to senior. Pics of friends and their babies or grandbabies, his siblings at dinner, and countless videos of his mom saying “hi”. A video of a double rainbow over Lake Michigan. A shorter video of the camera pointed straight up at the night sky, silent except for his breathing and the snow falling. A lullaby to my ringing ears.

I made it about twenty minutes into my drive up north when I started experiencing symptoms that I attributed to a heart attack. I’m naturally an anxious person and have dealt with significant health anxiety in the past, but I was prepared to work through whatever panic attack symptoms might pop up. This was different.

My vision started tunneling, so I pulled over off an exit and into the parking lot of an abandoned church - or was it a funeral home? - and started breathing exercises. I had waves of nausea and hot flashes and then involuntary muscle spasms and at that point, I had no clue what to do, so I called 911.

It was mid-July and over 90 degrees outside. I felt my dad so close to me that surely if I reached behind myself I could have grabbed him. I left my driver’s side car door opened and thought about the video of him breathing in the snow.

When the ambulance arrived, it was a cavalry of three women who I immediately apologized to (of course). They helped me into the ambulance and were incredibly kind and comforting. I chewed on baby aspirin and focused all my energy on not projectile vomiting. I ripped the skin off of my fingernails and dug the tips of my fingers into my thighs until it burned.

The EMT closest to my face brushed my hair from my forehead and asked me what’s been going on lately. She asked me what I was doing today, what errands I was running. I told her I was returning my dead dad’s cell phone and laptop. Internally, it felt like I was severing this last connection to him.

She continued fixing my hair and placed her hand on the back of my head. She said her dad had died almost exactly a year prior.

I looked at her arms and focused on the sleeve of tattoos that crawled from her wrists all the way under her scrubs and onto her neck. Flowers and leaves - lilies and orchids, maybe? - curled around her, moving with each breath.

“How are you alive,” I said to her, which was less of a question, and more of a plea on my part.

She understood and laughed and I smiled.

“I genuinely don’t know. It’s been a year and I don’t know how I wake up sometimes.”

I nodded and cried and her warm latex hand pressed my tears into my cheek.

So much of me wanted her to have the secret answer that would unlock something magical and profound within me to fix it all right now. And she understood that.

Dealing with the concept of the body in grief has been difficult. I’m no stranger to loss, but losing my grandma, Sabrina, and then my dad all within a nine-month span has been excruciating.

My grief is much less mental than it is physical. It curls behind my ribs with heat and sears my head and my face. The seizures add a new level of discomfort and strangeness. My body unfurls in its response to loss, uncontrollable and without my permission. A cramp of the psyche which forever lives in my head, yes, but also my gut and my chest and my throat.

I think about the hour after my dad died. My mom got me to come downstairs, to his makeshift bedroom. Just an hour before, I had administered his final prescribed morphine dose. Every time I gave him his medication, even though he couldn’t hear me, I said it out loud.

“I’m giving you this now. It’s to help you feel more comfortable with your breathing. You’re going to feel so much better when you wake up.”

I filled the plastic syringe and remarked how it was the same kind used to give us kids the bubblegum antibiotics when we were little. I held my dad’s chin and reminded him again.

“I’m giving you your medicine now. You’re going to feel so much better when you wake up.”

I squeezed the plastic stopper onto his tongue and gently closed his mouth, resting the side of my face on his forehead. His breathing pattern had already transitioned at this point, but he was still so warm. I was so tired. I went back to bed.

An hour later, we watch the hospice nurse sign her papers and call the funeral directors. I lay next to him and take a warm washcloth and gently wash his face, being sure to clean his eyes and nose and mouth. I peel the bandages off his chemo port and his arms. I am endlessly fascinated by his ears.

He looks so much like my grandpa. His ears are exactly the same. I count his ear hairs, what’s left, not stolen by chemo or malnutrition. Twenty-six, maybe a few more. I trace the outline of his earlobe with my finger and I can’t stop thinking about my grandpa.

It’s been nearly five months. My “grief journey” is me waking up each morning and untying proverbial cinderblocks from my feet but for some reason the knots are too tight. I find that so much of me has atrophied. My empathy gap shrinks and in its place blooms rage. The rebirth of myself in the wake of these losses has not been transformative in the ways I had anticipated but rather something violent. Without my consent I seize and ache. Pressure thrums and builds and I hold the rope tied to my past with a blistered grip.

What a tangled web we weave,

Hannah

P.S. - song of the day - The View Between Villages (Extended Version) by Noah Kahan

The things that I lost here, the people I knew
They got me surrounded for a mile or two
Left at the graveyard, I'm driving past ghosts
Their arms are extended, my eyes start to close
The car's in reverse, I'm grippin' the wheel
I'm back between villages, and everything's still

I naively, stupidly, dumb-assedly didn’t think it would happen to me.

It’s been about three months since my dad died. I’m no longer grieving just the loss of my dad, but the loss of friendships too.

People I have known for decades pretending they don’t see me in the grocery store. A text message I sent to an old coworker: “Hey, want to grab dinner this week?” Read at 7:02PM same day, never responded. A scheduled FaceTime hang left unanswered.

~

I haven’t dreamed about my dad yet. Both my mom and my brother have, but I haven’t. The closest I’ve gotten is a few weeks after he died when I got sick with COVID and pneumonia. I had a high fever and was going through some kind of fever/chills hallucinatory episode in bed. I heard my dad in my bedroom doorway saying, “I’m here to pick you up.” Um, okay. Terrifying. I heard him say this over and over, and I strained my ears to hear his honey sweet voice, soothing to my feverish mind, until I fell asleep.

Shortly after being sick, I started experiencing psychogenic nonepileptic seizures. This seemed to shrink my world even more. Driving became dangerous. New medications, appointments, and treatment experiments have been stressful and scary. My episodes don’t resemble typical seizure symptoms. I retain some general awareness. But I lose my sense of hearing completely in the seconds or minutes the seizure is taking place. I enter a dissociative state with uncontrollable tremors. A panic attack is almost guaranteed to follow.

My therapist is experienced in dealing with patients who have this diagnosis. I have a solid group of doctors who I trust and who trust me.

But the loneliness that has found me since my dad has died has been all-consuming.

~

I understand that I now represent a lot of my peers’ biggest fears. All of my greatest fears came true right in front of my very eyes. I can imagine that it is difficult to want to be around someone who has been through that because it would make a person feel too close, too vulnerable to that experience in their own life. Maybe it’s because I’ve experienced loss before, so I can understand how the divide is now presenting itself in my own social life.

But why do I have to be brave by myself?

It’s overwhelming. You don’t know what to say, to do, or how to help. I know.

I would love to just hear about your day. I don’t think anyone who has experienced loss is asking the people in their lives to fix them. I’m certainly not. I pay good money to a lot of trained professionals to help me do that.

I just didn’t want to grieve friendships too. But this is a tough one for me to come back from.

~

In the three months since my dad has died, I’m learning even more about how alike my dad and I were. I think we both had the capacity for an emotional depth that knows no bounds. We both were deeply sensitive. And maybe we both had a tendency to not see the forest for the trees when it comes to our interpersonal relationships. Forever giving everyone the benefit of the doubt is a loaded gun pointed at our own feet. I almost hate to admit that I expected his death to soften me to this world and open me to a period of life of receiving and acceptance. Rather, I find myself hardened and deeply sad as the days go on.

~

I’m thankful for the people (complete strangers and friends of my heart) who have made the effort to continue loving me even if my life makes them uncomfortable right now. The kindness and generosity I’ve experienced in the last few months is unforgettable. I have met so many people who have experienced parent loss and the bottom line is always the same: it changes you in ways you didn’t expect. Forever.

~

In the last hour or two before my dad slipped into unconsciousness, he was agitated and anxious. Hooked up to a catheter and uncomfortable, the only way he could get rid of that restless leg feeling was if we moved him from the laying down position to sitting on the edge of his bed every few minutes. This was our routine for the evening - up and down, up and down. I took twenty minutes to go shower and wash my hair before scuttling back downstairs to move him again. We sat side by side on the edge of his bed, my hand on his back holding him up. My heart swells remembering. When he felt too weak to sit up, I’d scoop him up to lean him back down on his pillows.

He noticed I’d just washed my hair, and he grabbed me and said, “Lay your head on my chest so I can smell your hair.” So I crawled onto the other side of the bed and laid on him, listening to the sound of his heart beat far away in his chest. He closed his eyes and breathed and I pressed a kiss to the side of his head.

“I’m gonna find you in every single life, you know that, right?”

He nodded, falling asleep.

Hannah

~Song of the newsletter: Wild Horses by The Rolling Stones. Played at Bruce’s funeral visitation.

I watched you suffer a dull aching pain
Now you decided to show me the same
No sweeping exits or offstage lines
Could make me feel bitter or treat you unkind
//
Wild horses couldn't drag me away…

I want to talk about it. Almost 100% of the time I’m awake, I want to talk about it. And then almost 100% of the time I start, I don’t even know what I want to say. What is left to say?

I keep experiencing the weirdest sensations, like - I will be cleaning my apartment and feeling pretty normal, productive, active, and then it’ll be like a light switch goes off and all the energy drains from my body and I would genuinely be able to sleep for twelve hours. It’s inconvenient and messy and difficult to explain.

We used to have this daily routine. If I wasn’t staying with him, and I was at my own place, he would call me at night. Every night. After Jeopardy. Just to talk about the day, or something he saw online, or to talk about what we had for our respective suppers. Then we would always make the same jokes. Say the same lines about talking tomorrow (we’d still text and send videos later that night anyway). And repeat.

Now 6:30 rolls around and my stomach feels like it is going to fall out of my ass.

I have a hard time doing things I know that he would like too. Eating food I know he would like. Seeing new things or laughing at new jokes that I think he would find funny. That’s what is getting me the most right now - this weird reverse dead dad living daughter fomo.

“But he wouldn’t want you to feel like this! He would want you to be happy and experience life.”

Yeah, no shit. The guilt is immeasurable.

The guilt around that. The guilt that I did not die because cancer betrayed my body. The guilt that maybe there was something more I could have done. Another call I could have made, another up-and-coming surgeon who could have taken another look at his case. The guilt that the month after he dies, the trial for the pancreatic cancer vaccine shows “promising results”.

I feel so guilty that I am so sad.

I don’t want to be changed forever. I don’t want to be a different person. I’m no stranger to loss. To insurmountable grief. To letting time help me grow around the magnitude of it all.

After I led the funeral services, I went and dropped some of the flowers off at my grandparents’ graves in town. I kneeled in the dirt in front of my grandma’s side of the headstone. Not yet grass. Just dry Michigan dust and sand.

In my dress, with my hair pinned back, I laid down in the dirt and wept. I dug my fingers into the earth until my nails burned. The nearby stinging nettles clung to my forearms and left welts. I let them mark me; I let the one green thing sink its teeth into my skin. I cried for my dad and my mom and my brothers. I cried for my grandma. My papa. My aunties and uncles and my family. I wanted so badly for my grandma to magically witness my pain and reassure me that it was all for something.

I cried for myself because I know it is for nothing. It’s just life. It just happened. Pain is just pain.

It’s not fair. It is fair. There is no fair. What difference does it make, exactly? We have to go to work anyway.

There was a time,

Hannah

It would be impossible for me to say everything I wanted to say in the time that we have here today. The time that we had together with Dad ended up feeling like no time at all, in the end. And I ended up feeling like all of eternity wouldn’t have been enough time anyway. We always would have found something else to talk about. To laugh about.

I’m going to speak from my perspective of things, of course, as I saw it. Looking back I realize how quite enmeshed we were, especially over the last two plus years of his illness. But there was no hesitance in that, no question about the exchange of care or the switch up in roles - I am so privileged to have cared for him in the way that I did.

Okay, so. I’ll be referring to him both as “Dad” and as “Bruce” which is what it was like in life. Someone asked me once: “Why do you call your Dad Bruce?” I said, “Well, that’s his name.” That’s funny to me, because he rarely called me by my first name. I think I can count on one hand the times in my life he actually called me “Hannah” - it was always a nickname: Doodle, Nan, Punkin, Dolly…and it seemed like he had a nickname for everyone. Always speaking a term of endearment. Always creating a familiar, comfortable conversation to settle into.

Bruce Warren Neece. His mother Betty chose Warren as a middle name after her older half-brother, Edward Warren Ross. I am particularly fond of this fact because Bruce too grew up to be the father in a blended family. It’s like somehow, Betty knew this name would suit him. There is something about fated names in this family.

For example: the way that Bruce and I actually met. It was about 15 years before I was born. Bruce told this story to me over and over throughout my childhood: that when he was in the 8th grade he had a recurring dream that in his future, he had a daughter that he named Hannah and she had long blonde hair that whipped behind her when she ran on the beach of Lake Michigan. She had a cupid’s bow on her upper lip. This dream came to him so often and with such clarity that when he met my mom a decade and a half later, got married and pregnant, he told her assuredly that it was a girl and that it was me. Sure enough, here I am.

He was so certain about the fact that I met him in this dream. Even towards the end of his life, he would tell me - “it was all always going to be like this.” He never took anything for granted because he knew it was always promised to him. The good, the bad. The inbetween. It was all a gift.

Even his cancer. What punishments of God are not gifts? Hebrews 12 verses 5-6: For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. Last September I stood right here and told many of you that my theology was ambiguous at best but that I experienced the divine mostly in my grandmother’s presence. And while I myself might sink more into that ambiguity these days, I can’t help but mention my dad’s strong, unyielding faith. So, what punishments of God are not gifts? For the Lord disciplines the one he loves.

I’m thinking about when he had a feeding tube placed right before he started chemo. I was in charge of feeding him with formula about every four hours. I remember one night I waddled downstairs to him after an alarm went off around 2:30AM and I loaded up the tubes with the chalky mixture and said to him: “you must’ve been doing this exact same thing for me this time a couple decades ago, huh?” I placed my hand on his prickly bearded cheek and prayed to whoever could hear me for mercy.

Bruce Warren Neece. My dad grew up in that house right over there, the fifth child born into an already bustling and busy family in 1963. His closeness with his parents and siblings is something that remained constant throughout his entire life and was something of a north star for him. Always a priority, always looking up. Always guiding him home. As a child and teenager he loved being outside and getting into “good” trouble. I know he kept Betty and Harold busy. He spent a few months at Northern Michigan University and even a few months living in California but ultimately was pulled back to the Upper Peninsula where he settled permanently, finding his peace in the pine trees and on Lake Michigan.

Bruce Warren Neece married my mom, Melody, on June 15, 1991 at age 27. Yesterday was their 35th wedding anniversary. He immediately stepped into the role of stepfather. This was truly such a joy for him. At Betty’s funeral in September I heard a story about Bruce at Sunday school - he was always the one they recruited to help out with the babies and little kids. He was just naturally good with children. His gentle patience never ran out. Soon enough, myself and Elliott came into the picture. Our family was complete.

Bruce was everything we could’ve asked for. I just genuinely enjoyed hanging out with him. I loved his company. We all had fun together. We made each other laugh. We went on countless road trips as a family, and he let us stop at all the tourist attractions we wanted to. He made himself available for every single event. Best of all, no problem was ever too big to fix. And if it was, he knew how to get there to fix it. We were never alone. We were safe under the embrace of his security and protection.

He was open with his emotions around us. We would often see him laughing loudly at seemingly nothing. On the flipside, he openly cried in front of us. I learned from him the power of sensitivity and of having a big heart. I learned about the importance of standing your ground and loving the underdog.

My dad walked through his life as a loud act of grace. He truly never met a stranger. I mean, it was amazing. We would be vacationing thousands of miles away and he would run into someone he hadn’t seen in thirty years and catch up like not a day had gone by. And this had happened many, many times. During Christmastime, we loved to go to thrift stores. He would drop cash on the floor and then pretend the person next to him had dropped it just so he had an excuse to hand literal wads of cash out. He would buy up the angel tree at Walmart in Marinette and then call me from his car so we could schedule a time for him to come to my apartment in Green Bay so we could hit up all the Walmarts there the next day. This was never, ever performative, it’s truly just what he did. It’s what I grew up knowing to do. Bruce understood intrinsically that love is holy and easier than we realize and if you can love somebody, then you should. And he knew there was a reason to love everyone.

He knew how to talk to anybody. On his last day earthside, his oncologist, Dr. A, called him to say goodbye. Bruce wasn’t exactly lucid, but he knew what was going on, somewhat. We had Dr. A on speakerphone and Dad got to hear his voice. After awhile, and hanging up the phone, I laid my head on his chest and he kept repeating: “Love you, love everyone. Love you, love everyone.” I kissed the top of his shoulderblade and told him I know, and that it was my favorite thing about him.

When Elliott was diagnosed with cancer last fall he moved back to Menominee and started treatment under the same team that our dad was with. Lightning strikes twice. Not even a fork in the road to choose from but a completely new path to be forged. Our dad threw himself into overplanning, grand protector mode once more and it was all hands on deck to get Elliott set up for success. After a difficult week last week where Elliott had a big surgery, Bruce went home on hospice the same evening that Elliott returned home from Milwaukee. Bruce waited for him to be okay.

I want everyone to know what Bruce has been to me and the thing is, I really think you all do. After he died Tuesday morning, the hospice nurse Nikki and I had the chance to clean his body. I was washing his face and examining his features up close for the last time. Really taking them in. I was fascinated suddenly. It’s like I had perfect vision. I was looking at his body and I thought to myself, “you were everything you were in this life with this body. This body that you felt had betrayed you and punished you at times, that had hurt you and took you to your heaven sooner than you anticipated. But you were Bruce - really Bruce - with this body. And it’s just a body.” It was such an interesting experience, as I’m sure we have all dealt with varying degrees of self esteem issues - these bodies that we self punish or talk so negatively about - they carry such divine miracles. Such strange grace it took for all of us to get here, to this moment. It’s just a body.

So now Bruce adds his own bit of clay to this verdant Michigan earth. We carry on having been forever changed, but we were like that from the beginning. Dad was so grand in his “muchness” - such a presence. His light was constant, and we all turned over in it. There are so many stories I could tell, so many things I could say. I must admit I do feel a great pressure as both a writer and as someone so close to his heart - as he was the closest to mine. But you all know him. He lived life with his heart wide open, with a big loud laugh and a giant smile. He was an absolute miracle in my life. He read my mind, he saved me when I maybe didn’t even deserve saving, he bailed me out of every horrible situation I got myself into. He was the first person to show up for me. The first incoming call. On the day I was born, he got me flowers. When I asked him why, as an adult, he said “well, I imagine you had a really long day that day.”

He was something special. Cancer sucks. It just hurts. But he was adamant that he wanted us all to hold space for joy and remember how strong of a Christian he was. He particularly loved the last chapter of Revelation, chapter 22 verses 1-5: And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.

In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him:

And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads.

And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.

Oh, Dad. We had so much fun. Being your daughter was the honor of my life.

More later,

H

The oak trees in the small patch of woods in my backyard have bright, lime green buds that burst through the otherwise muted earth tones of the swamp. Paired with a bright blue sky, it is truly a poetic sight. Why am I so nervous?

Driving around Shawano Lake the other day with Elliott and Lee, we saw a bright sunset. All pinks, and purples, and oranges. I told them it was a Sabrina sunset - that every time I see a sunset like that, I know it’s Sabrina.

“It’s hard to explain,” I said, staring directly into the setting sun, forcing my eyes open. Absorbing her.

“No, I get it,” Lee said. Elliott asked us what we would want to be remembered as when we died.

I said that I couldn’t think of a specific thing but I think that I would want to be remembered as a pleasant light. I said that when our dad dies I think I will remember him as the feeling of warmth.

Lee talked of hummingbirds and music. Elliott said he doesn’t attribute such things to death and humanity, but I think he would be a big laugh. The kind where all the air goes out of your lungs and the lines scrunch up next to your eyes.

I don’t think it’s too much to talk about, these living death things. We stopped at a cemetery and wandered around, looking at the names and dates on the stones. We came across a stone of a husband and a wife with two giant trees arching over the gravesite and meeting at their tops.

“I’m wondering if it’s them,” Lee said, motioning towards the swaying branches, moved by wind and undoubtedly, love.

Last month, I was shaving my brother’s head in our parent’s bathroom. Post-chemo hair regrowth can be uneven, and he likes to keep it buzzed short. I was using ancient clippers on him as he sat perched on the bathtub, in the bathroom - the same one we grew up in. The same one where Allie sat me down when I was fourteen and showed me how to put on black eyeliner and mascara. The same one where I hid my first tattoo when I was eighteen and examined it in the mirror while slathering it in Aquaphor. The same one my parent’s bathed us in - the only (and holiest) baptisms we’ve ever received - where we’d lean over and look out the tiny window into the neighbor’s yard below.

I held the clippers and gently shaved his hair, watching the new growth fall onto his chest. I was careful around his ears, tender, when I was hit with a flashback memory of when he was a baby and he had translucent tiny baby hairs covering the tops of his ears all the way down his neck. I remember being fascinated by this as a child. Now, here we are. The same bathroom. Dad’s old clippers. No more baby hairs, but chemical regrowth. Regrowth. What a concept.

“Till the wheels fall off,” I’d say. And I mean it. But in a different way than the traditional phrasing implies, because there is more work to be done when the wheels fall off. We can repair the wheels, I always think, or we can go buy new wheels. Or we can ask our neighbors if they have a wheel to spare, or if they mind giving us a ride today.

These are the most difficult days of my life. I’m spinning plates that are spinning plates. I’m not holding it together as well as anyone thinks. I can barely get through the day, most days. But the wheel weaves as the wheel wills. And if I was put here for a reason, then the least I can do is approach it all with some semblance of loving kindness.

And if I was put here for no reason, then the least I can do is approach it all with some semblance of loving kindness.

Here now,

Hannah

March is a tender time for me. I’d like to tell you a story. This time last year I wrote a bit about my friend Doug. He died on March 4, 2019, months before his wedding to Genna.

I met Doug and Genna while waiting for a Wilco show in Madison, WI in 2015. They were first in line, I was second. I like to think I’ve never met a stranger, and Genna had a cool shirt on, so I told her so. The rest is confetti.

After Doug died, Genna asked me to go with her on their honeymoon trip, which was Solid Sound Festival (Wilco’s biannual music and arts festival held in North Adams, MA).

This was such an honor. A gut punch. All the air leaving my lungs at once. My heart swelled. That June, we loaded up Genna’s car and drove from my apartment in Wisconsin to our little room in the back of some eccentric woman’s house in North Adams.

I was really, really going through it that summer. We got somewhere east of Chicago and had to stop at a gas station because I was having a panic attack. The attendant knocked on the door and his big voice boomed through the metal hinges.

“You okay in there? Me and your friend are asking.”

“She gets panic attacks,” I heard Genna say, soothing both of us at the same time.

I opened the door and sat on the curb in between the attendant and Genna. I put my head between my knees and started trying to name the states in alphabetical order. Nameless Attendant tenderly put his hand between my shoulders.

“I get those too. I feel for you, man. It’s tough to live in this world.”

Genna and I looked at him at the same time. We went inside and bought extra large lemonades and bubblegum and drove and drove and drove.

We stopped in Niagara Falls and got Wilco themed tattoos while wearing our matching shirts. We were dead tired from the drive and spending too much money and being sun-burned.

After settling in and meandering through the actual festival days with friends, we hit a good routine of checking out the live shows and side stages. I randomly met Peter Buck of R.E.M. in line for a hot dog (and he was unbelievably cool). I physically smacked into David Spade in the crowd one night, noting that we had the same haircut. I even went on an incredibly awkward (but earnest) first date with someone I had met earlier that morning. We went to the John Hodgman show and only spoke about a dozen words the entire time we knew each other.

But one of the greatest things about that weekend wasn’t just the music. Solid Sound had various art installations throughout the grounds of MASS MoCA. It was like this scavenger hunt to seek out work from artists like Jenny Holzer and Annie Lennox.

Genna and I needed a break from the heat one afternoon, so we linked arm and arm and decided to check out James Turrell’s exhibit Into the Light. You can read more about the work here, but essentially, it was this giant room you walked into, in sections as to not overwhelm, that seemed corner-less and infinite.

In my years, I’ve written a lot about my relationship with light as a concept. It’s something that is so meaningful to me. The tattoo I got in Niagara Falls is literally the Wilco lyric “that illiterate light”. I’m obsessed with the art of illumination and shadow, highlighting and hiding. We both had butterflies as we sat down on the matte white floor and waited.

James Turrell’s installation is one of a series of works that uses light effects to draw our attention to the way we perceive our surroundings and, ultimately, to recognize the uncertainty of perception. Throughout the 10-15 minute experience, a bath of changing color fills the room, punctuated by periodic bursts of strobing light. As the light changes, viewers watch the boundaries of the space disappear before their eyes as if the room has been shrouded in a cloud of mist.

For the Solid Sound weekend, we were told that the light effects were random and that theoretically, each group or pairing got a different combination or pattern of lights. So, Genna and I sat and watched, and let ourselves be absorbed into this womb of color, of belonging.

On our drive to Massachusetts, we had talked briefly about what it would look like if Doug sent us a sign that he was with us that weekend. Would it be a hint from Jeff Tweedy himself? Would we see hummingbirds everywhere? Would we meet someone who looked like him, who happened to have a penchant for ska and peach pie?

No. We met Doug in the light. In the misty glow of a late Saturday afternoon, the colors switched - slowly at first, but then with rhythm, from a red to an orange to the most perfect gold you can imagine. My mouth fell open. I couldn’t squeeze Genna any closer to me.

“It’s him,” she said, turning to me with those big glassy eyes, magnified by her glasses and the glare of the bursting bulbs around us. I nodded. I knew. I know. He sent us the lights.

We cried together in the yellow light. We cried for Doug, for everyone we have lost too soon, for everyone we didn’t know we had yet to lose. We cried for ourselves. Genna took my hand and cupped her own face. I collected her tears like ocean pearls.

The lights stayed warm and golden, alternating between tan and orange, bright yellow and fiery red.

We were sitting in Doug’s future. He was standing still in our past.

Each March I’m reminded my friend, of the love he leaves behind, of the idea that no one ever dies who’s name is still repeated by the living. There’s a really great quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer season five finale:

It replays in my head a lot, especially now, especially lately. And so if you read through this and think of someone in your life that has held your heart in such ways, I hope you are brave and remember that life is for the living.

All my love,

H

The chorus starts out, “For auld lang syne, my Jo, for auld lang syne. I’ll take a cup of kindness yet for auld lang syne.” “Jo” is a Scots word that can be straightforwardly translated to “dear,” but “Auld Lang Syne” is more complicated. It literally means something like “old long since,” but it’s idiomatically similar to “the old times.” We have a phrase in English somewhat similar to “For auld lang syne;” the phrase is, “For old times’ sake.”

You can listen to it or read the transcript here. In it, Green speaks to the history of Auld Lang Syne alongside his relationship with his deceased friend Amy Krouse Rosenthal. He mentions, “In 2005, Amy published a memoir in the form of an encyclopedia called Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. That book ends, ‘“I was here, you see. I was.’”

Auld Lang Syne was popular perhaps most notably during The Christmas Truce of 1914, where British and German soldiers left the trenches of World War I to exchange gifts and sing. But, as Green then says, “…by Christmas of 1916, soldiers didn’t want truces--the devastating losses of the war, and the growing use of poison gas, had embittered the combatants. But many also had no idea why they were fighting and dying for tiny patches of ground so far from home. And in the British trenches, soldiers began to sing the tune of Auld Lang Syne with different words: We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.”

In 2024 and 2023 I wrote end-of-year newsletters attempting to summarize the months prior. I remember writing last year’s essay feeling like I was running to the cliff’s edge and then jumping off without pausing to check if there was a safe place to land. I don’t think there every was, but I don’t think it would have made a difference anyway.

I’ve grown to love having a Christmastime birthday. I like looking forward to the new year with friends and fantasizing about what worlds we will conquer and what dreams will come true. A theme for the messages I received this year went something like: “Hannah - I hope you can find peace in everything that has happened.”

Oh, dear reader. We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.

When I laid in bed with my Grandma as she passed away in September, I talked to her in whispers. The room felt like it was 100 degrees. All of our family filtered in and out of that room for days. When I laid with her, she was feverish. I laced our fingers together. I wanted to stare at her but I didn’t want to freak her out - like, “why is this lady sitting in my bed and holding my hand and staring at me?” I didn’t know what to do, so I just hummed a nonsensical tune. It was more like some weird ancient girlish Gregorian chant. I used the back of my hand to swipe her hair from her forehead and press my lips against her temple. She hummed in response.

When I pray, I don’t have a clear picture of who I am praying to. But then, I was praying to her, and to the earth, and to the stars and the sun and moon, for making us together, Grandmother and Granddaughter. We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.

This fall, when my brother started chemo, all I could think about was how our dad taught us how to swim. We never had any true professional lessons or classes. In fact, what I remember is the second the sky started turning a little (just a little) green in the summer, we’d march down the block to Lake Michigan and watch the waves grow taller and taller. Then, we’re in the water and our dad is on the shore yelling, “swim back! Swim back!” Somehow, we did. I don’t remember any inkling of fear. Just pure adrenaline and fun, screeching as the waves smashed our little legs into the lake bottom. We swam in. I can still look over and see Elliott’s big eyes and dimples grinning back at me. We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.

I moved to Green Bay in my early 20s. My first job here was at a daycare as an infant teacher. I shared a wall and dutch-door with this short, loud girl with tanned skin and highlights named Sabrina. On my first day, she leaned one elbow over the door and looked at the state of my classroom. She shook her head and clicked her tongue. “We’ll figure it out. Don’t worry.” I smiled at her with tears in my eyes and spit-up on my shirt. Not my spit-up. At least, I don’t think so.

We became attached at the hip pretty instantly. Sold as a pair, do not separate. Over the weekends, we would clean and house-sit for extra cash. We’d immediately go spend it all shopping, or on piercings and tattoos, or at the bar. She loved this particular Mexican bakery over on University so much they knew her by name. When she walked in, they’d all rush to the counter wanting to be the first to help her.

One summer I was dating this horrible guy. She was so sick of it. He was at my place one weekend and she was determined to make me see the light. She slid into my living room window while we were sitting there watching TV and stands with her hands up. She said, “I’ve had enough. This is MY dojo.” The dude and I broke up shortly after.

We had a kid at the daycare who needed some extra attention. She poured her entire life into this kid. She was doing so much for him that we all ended up getting involved to support her. I can’t speak too much to this for privacy’s sake but her heart was never just on her sleeve. Her heart was wide open, always. She would’ve given those kids the entire world if she could’ve afforded it. We were so young.

In Sula, Toni Morrison writes, "We were girls together. Do you know how special that is? We talked all night about falling in love, but that was the love story. We were already in it.”

Sabrina and I found ourselves in and out of trouble, on adventures all over the place. We stood up for each other. We took care of each other. She taught me so much about being Hannah. She taught me so much about being a person who was really alive and really enjoyed it. When husbands and big-time careers entered the picture, our distance was blessed with softness and understanding. Never malice. Never from Sabrina.

Just a few weeks ago I was doing reference calls because she was fulfilling her lifelong dream of starting her own childcare facility. Now we’ll never hear her voice again.

We were girls together. We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.

I often write about the theme of personal resilience and living with grief. I joke about having bad luck: Hurricane Hannah. I got a tattoo this year inspired by lyrics from one of my favorite songs, Mystery of Love by Sufjan Stevens.

How much sorrow can I take?
Blackbird on my shoulder
And what difference does it make
When this love is over?

I feel tender. I feel a million lightyears away. In 2026, I’ll live by my “old time since”. For everything I’ve lost and everything I’ve learned. We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.

Hannah

P.S. - thank you to everyone who has donated to Sabrina’s gofundme. Your generosity moves me to tears.

“Contrary to popular misconception, lightning often strikes the same place twice. Certain conditions are just ripe for a bolt of electricity to come zapping down; and a lightning strike is powerful enough to do a lot of damage wherever it hits.”

Lightning Often Strikes Twice, originally published by NASA in 2005

I am remarkably resilient. I chalk this up to several factors, including but not limited to the following: living my entire life in a place where the sun has probably fully set by 4:00PM, coming from a long line of people who came from a long line of people who lived where the sun definitely fully set by 4:00PM, and one time I ate one of those grow-your-own dinosaur pills from Dollar Tree just to see what would happen and it’s been like 6 years and nothing has happened yet. I’m just saying.

But seriously, I have been in and out of some situations. My experience living with PTSD for decades is a sharpened blade - I know how to recognize problems. I know how to approach and gentle them. And if I can’t, I know how to get answers from the ones who can. This is my strength. I am the proverbial tunnel boring machine here to get us out of the cracked earth and back on the surface.

You can build your entire life around this act of martyrdom that no one assigned to you. Remember the sharpened blade I mentioned above? Twist it in your own back now. There are some things that are just too tender.

I can’t find any statistics about a father and son having cancer at the same time. Truthfully, I haven’t looked that hard. The statistic I have for you is that it is happening to my family right now.

In the sphere of caring for my dad and his cancer, I had to become a version of myself that could survive without him if I needed to. Selfishly, and naively, this was a version of myself I never let actualize. But the bubble was popped.

I’m writing about these tender things because that is what I do as a writer and as a Hannah, and as a sister and as a daughter. I want you to read this and not feel like I am a victim of my circumstances, or that we are doomed, or pitiful or whatever. It is really something how life can take root in these horrific, unfair, mysterious, painful ways and we are tasked with the job of molding it into something worth keeping alive.

My brother and I never fought in our childhood. “Thick as thieves,” our mom would say through gritted teeth. And she was right. We had our own language. As I grew up, I brought him with me everywhere, like Paris Hilton carrying her chihuahua in her purse. Actually, I probably genuinely carried him in a bag at some point. As a bit!

The mind is so funny. Even though we are grown, it is impossible for me to not view him as a child when times are rancid like this. I wish I could reach through time and grab him. I would shake him by his shoulders and say, “Let's just stay here for awhile! The rest of it can wait!”

I know there is no way to predict the future. I know that without such trials, there can be no virtue.

There is a verse from Daniel that is stuck in my head constantly lately:

You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting.

And yes, I have, haven’t I?

H

But I’ve never felt called to heal her or view her as this separate entity. I’d argue most of the time I feel like my current 32-year-old self is just my inner child in this adult body. In fact, viewing other adults in this way is what sharpens my compassion and stops me from imploding on a regular basis.

I feel most connected to this tender, squishy part of myself when I am most restless in my identity. It’s like all of my insecurities collect in this very specific part of my body below my ribcage. And instead of some sword of self-respect emerging from my chest to aid me in my quest to self-actualization, all I get is a prescription for omezperole.

I had someone ask me recently what I was planning on doing in the near future as it pertains to my goals with creative writing. I have been doing some form of copywriting for the last decade, whether it be freelance or corporate. I copyedit essays and research documents for engineering students who are about to become astronauts and politicians. I build resumes for my friends and write letters to insurance companies appealing claims and write social content while serving on a board for a dilapidated auditorium in my hometown.

These are acts of service that make me feel useful. My inner child is holding my hand at my side and she looks up at me and beams. But what about creatively?

I try to meditate my way back into writing poetry. But ever since I sat at my grandma’s bedside and watched her die, even a few lines of poetry springs tears to my eyes. Not for any bad or sad or mad reason, necessarily. It’s just so, so much. And if I touch it at all, well. I don’t know what will happen to me. It scares me.

So, okay. I go outside and I listen to good, loud music and let the frigid northern air burn my lungs. I look at the trees and night sky and still - nothing.

Where is my pièce de résistance?

I talk to all of my brilliant, creative friends. Writers, artists, sculptors, painters. I look up their websites and read their resumes. I am privileged to be among them.

My inner child squeezes her nails into my skin.

I look at her and think of everything I have done. With her.

All of the odds we beat. Over, and over, and over. Tiny fists pounding and slamming, “Take that! Take that! You can’t defeat me!”

And it has to be enough.

Exposure therapy for perfectionism and imposter syndrome are nearly the same methods. Basically, we’re going to just have to do the work anyway, lads. So let’s get to it. I GUESS!

Better luck next time,

Hannah

I think the last of the geese have fled to their winter homes, somewhere far south of here by now. But I can hear turkey vultures and robins yet, and just behind the first wall of forest in my backyard I can see the shadows of young whitetail antlers bending to search the ground for sustenance. He uses his damp, black snout to gently overturn a pile of brush. Through a break in the tree line I can see the shine in his beady black eyes. He moves cautiously, hungry, listening for predators. I hold my breath when I watch him. I think I am soothing him in this way.

When we move through this world so acutely aware of our fear and shame, what little grace is left for the rest of our days? Not much at all. When I was learning the teachings of Ram Dass in 2019, I was struck by this quote:

“One way to get free of attachment is to cultivate the witness consciousness, to become a neutral observer of your own life. The witness place inside you is simple awareness, the part of you that is aware of everything — just noticing, watching, not judging, just being present, being here now.”

There have been times in my life where this mindset has brought me great peace. The idea of detachment via neutrality felt appealing. But I don’t know that I am capable of complete neutrality. Perhaps when I am feeling particularly pleasant or lighthearted, yes. It is markedly more difficult when I am in the trenches.

If I were to get on the bridge right now and watch my life float by, what would I observe? Have I observed all of this before, and will I observe all of this again? Almost certainly. What do I see when I am neutral and witnessing?

Pain, perhaps. Fatigue, of course. Anxiety, worry, uncertainty. Wishful thinking. The most radical of acceptance - just to get through the day. The bridge is a mountain. The bridge is a quarry.

In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky writes about young Alyosha witnessing his beloved elder and mentor on his deathbed. The mentor Zosima, in his final hours, says to Alyosha:

“You will behold great sorrow, and in this sorrow you will be happy. Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow. Work, work tirelessly. Remember my words from now on, for although I shall still talk with you, not only my days but even my hours are numbered.”

The bridge is still a way across and it has been provided to me. And so, I cross it anyway.

With love,

Hannah

A few months after my papa died in 2017, I was on the phone with my grandma Betty. It was probably a weekday evening, just after supper, both winding down for the night. The conversation was naturally wrapping up and I sighed loudly and said, “grandma, do you know how much I love you?” I could hear her smile on the other end as we sat in silence. “No, but do you know how much I really love you? Can you feel it?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, okay then.”

In the last five or so years of her life, Betty dealt with significant memory loss. In a way, we were all grieving a living person as we started to have conversations with her that resembled nothing of the conversations we were so used to. We all got trained on how to handle this by nurses and doctors: go along with it, don’t agitate the patient, don’t ask too many questions. Play nice.

There was one time I was sitting with her when she turned to me and said, “Oh, don’t you remember that party we threw that one weekend in 1982?! And you had all those young kids. But it was such a nice party. Wasn’t it?” I was so touched that I could resemble a person who brought such a positive memory to her. I nodded and smiled and said, “We had the best time, didn’t we?” She smiled back at me and said, “But too many people…”

My grandma was gifted tremendous loyalty - which makes sense, as she dished it out just as easily. She was never alone, not even in the end. I’m in awe and honored by my aunts who sacrificed much to protect her dignity and provide her immeasurable, exhaustive grace.

We all had the unique yet heartbreaking privilege to sit vigil with Betty. She was visited by pastors, had phone calls pressed to her ears from old friends, and many, many messages of prayers, compassion, and joyful memories shared. It is incredibly difficult to describe this experience with words or at all, but the moments I was able to sit alone with her, in her bed, looking in her beautiful big eyes and communicate with sly smiles and her hand squeezing mine so tightly - they are etched into my soul forever.

A few days before her funeral, I was sitting outside with Evan and I said to him in a sing-song-y voice, “if Betty sent me a little cat right now I wouldn’t be mad! A little black cat walking right out from the woods, I would just scoop it right up!”

A few days ago, look who was standing outside our door:

We fed and watered him, and he came back the next night too. We’re keeping a healthy distance, for now…but I’m still giddy from this.

My dad and I had the honor of representing the family and speaking at Betty’s service. Here is a copy of what I said:

First, I would be remiss to not mention the gratitude I feel for my family for the care that has been provided to our grandma. Specifically, I learned what I know of caregiving through illness from my Auntie Janet, of which my skills have unfortunately been put to the test as of late. But every act of grace and dignity I have grown up witnessing in this family just helps me feel even more solidified in my place in this world, and makes me proud to carry this name, and Betty’s honor. I do believe what we have together is such a rare and precious thing.

Betty was the only grandma I got to have. I lucked out. Some of my earliest memories are of her face, voice, and hands. I hope I never forget her voice. Betty insisted on being the one to teach us grandkids how to read and write. Her investment into me in this way had such a profound impact that it became my livelihood even today. It’s what I went to college for and what I make my living doing. I felt deeply connected to her in this way, often receiving books as gifts from her with little notes in the cover, saying things like “Dear Hannah, I hope you keep reading forever,” or cards in the mail on special occasions saying things like, “Hannah, keep writing! I can’t wait to read what you write next!” Grandma’s house was a safe landing point, where we could read in the tree out front, or read on the couch next to Papa, or walk down to the school playground and read there too.

Betty remained steadfast in her advocacy for my work throughout my entire life, as a poet, a writer, a storyteller – and I can’t emphasize how significant of an impact this has made on me. I love words. And sometimes when I comb back through my life’s timeline close enough, I can almost feel myself on her lap again, on that couch at the house, with that little flimsy book about counting cherries and apples. Her voice strong in my ear and her hand pointing at the page. To feel proud of myself because Betty was proud of me is something I’ll still carry on.

My favorite verse and one that has followed me throughout my life comes from Job chapter 5 verse 7: “yet man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward.” It is known that I have faced challenges and waded through dark waters. More recently, in 2019, right before Betty started having trouble with her memory, I was going through a lot. Typically, I would prioritize calling her and writing her letters weekly, if not more often. But in my own ego and pride, I had been avoiding her due to my own struggles. Finally, one day, I was driving and just pulled over into a gas station parking lot and called her up. She picked up the phone after just a few rings and said, “I knew you’d come around when you were ready.” Her voice was so sure, she trusted me so much. I laid it all out for her and she reminded me I’d figure it out. And I suppose I did. Betty taught me that love is holy because it is like grace - the worthiness of its subject is never really what matters.

I must admit that while these days, my theology is ambiguous at best, some of the moments I have felt closest to the divine in my life have been in the presence of my grandma, in conversation or in silence with her, laying my head on her shoulder or simply enjoying her quiet company. I believe my first encounters with God occurred during those teaching moments as a child where she sat me in front of the woodstove and taught me how to read and write, her voice steady in my ear like my own heartbeat. The fire crackling and eyes glowing. Sparks fly up.

But I don’t want to remember her just as the things that she did for me, and for everyone else, even though those things would make up an infinite list. What I loved about Betty that was so intrinsically her, in my eyes, was how she always filled every room she was in, even if she didn’t say anything. She was like this glowing light just walking around among us. I liked how she could always talk. I like that she could talk to anyone. I like how she never met a stranger. I try to emulate that in everyone I meet too. I like how she did her hair, did herself up. I like how she carried her purse everywhere. I love how much she loved to read and loved to learn, and some of my fondest memories of my life are when she would braid my hair with ribbons in it.

In 2009 my mom interviewed Betty for the Michigan Oral History Project. Betty was 75. There are a few quotes I’d love to share with you, and I’ll make this available digitally, both the transcript and the audio as well, but my mom asked about Betty’s childhood, and she remembered this story:

Betty: My dad, I remember one time and I will never forget it, a girlfriend and I were at the house and we were talking and giggling, we were about eleven or twelve, about something and I don’t know who it was, but probably it was our neighbor girl, because she had long stockings that were baggy and hair that wasn’t so well taken care of, and he, my dad, got up from his chair and he came over and took me by the arm and he took my friend by her arm, and he said, “I don’t ever want to hear you make fun of anyone. Don’t you ever, ever do that?” And that has stuck with me through the years. To this day, I never go after the underdog. He was so held up on that because when he landed in this country when he was getting off the boat on Ellis Island he could not speak one word of English and he could not understand one word of English, he and his friend, had to go to the bathroom, and they were trying to talk to someone on the street, trying to make signs or whatever, “Where is the bathroom, and where to get a cup of coffee, and the people just laughed at them. And he said, “Don’t you ever, ever do that to anyone.”

Later in the conversation, my mom asked Betty, “what do you believe is the key to a successful marriage? You and Harold have been married a long time.”

Betty said: “First, be realistic. You have ideas, hopes, and dreams and you are going to do this and you’re going to accomplish this, and you are going to do whatever. And you have to realize that it is not all going to happen. And you have to be satisfied when things don’t go as you planned. Don’t make a big deal or blame each other for disappointments. You know, like we would never have had this if you wouldn’t have done this or whatever. Most important, don’t spend more money than you have. Last but not least laugh a lot. Don’t make a big deal out of stuff. You have to go with the flow. When you have kids, enjoy the kids. I mean have fun with them and spend time with them. I can say that we have had a lot of fun with our kids when they were little and growing up and we still do.”

At the end of the conversation, my mom asked, “what is one thing you most want people to remember about you when you are gone?”

Betty said, “Well, you know I don’t care if they remember me.”

My mom laughed and said, “You don’t care?”

Betty said, “No. Well, I would wish they would remember that I enjoyed people. I liked being with people and around people and I would like people to remember that we raised pretty good kids, worked hard, paid our bills and never had one check bounce in all our married life. I mean those are just little things but that’s what I would like people to remember. Not that they care if a check bounced or not.”

I’m reminded of this quote from one of my favorite books, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. A pastor, who is aging and understanding he is soon facing death, is writing letters to his son. He says,

“I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all…if only I had all the words to tell you.”

My Betty, to me, you have been something more than a miracle.

Our Betty Jean was a true matriarch, a woman I have admired, respected, and adored from the day I was born and will continue to do so long after today. My closeness to her heart feels like protection. She is more than home, she is the thread in our quilt, the light in our lighthouse, the ink in my pen. I love her real and true. May God rest her soul. Thank you.

Again, it is impossible to summarize the impact of this life, this loss. A meteor on my heart. My grief is like quicksand as life pushes me through. But I just wanted you to know about her, and know that we will never stop thinking about her, and that if there is someone in your life who has shaped you, held you, made you even a little better - maybe you can go look outside, at the sky, and see them there today.

Mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?

Can I handle the seasons of my life,

Hannah

dear readers,

speaking openly about sexual violence is not easy and it isn’t my goal to write an essay that wraps up my experiences or my life in a pretty bow, or some easily consumable content. as an intuitively creative person, i am drawn to working with my pain through art, poetry, and writing. paired with the fact that memories are not only stored in the brain, i’m inclined to move through this weekend anniversary with urgency i don’t always feel in control of. a quick moving heart, a biting lip, kicked-up migraines, and nightmares that have me googling carl jung quotes.

fifteen years ago this weekend, the summer before my senior year of high school, i was raped. and the thing is, it wasn’t my first experience with sexual violence. revictimization is the “phenomenon where individuals, particularly women, who have experienced sexual victimization endure repeated instances of such assaults, often leading to increased psychological distress and complicating responses to risk reduction interventions.” almost half of sexual assault survivors experience revictimization.

a way that i understood it was basically like - okay. you’re at this fork in the road. you’re either going to become normal and somehow heal on your own and the scars from this prior childhood abuse are going to be fine or you’re going to cope by putting yourself in all of these crazy risky scenarios where you open yourself up to repeat trauma because that part of your brain that recognizes fear and safety and protection is completely fried. and also you’re 17.

guess which path i took?

on this weekend, fifteen years ago, the earth cracked open. the foundation shifted, and i fell into the hot, molten lava of hell beneath.

on this weekend, fifteen years ago, i took a two hour shower, burning my skin with welts as big as quarters on my thighs. i bagged up my dress and shoes and walked to the free health clinic and waited for them to open. i threw the bag away at a gas station on the way.

i was absolutely humiliated. they gave me what they could and a pamphlet on victim’s advocacy but my face was hot with tears. i remember this response in myself feeling bizarre to me. these women at the clinic were very kind. all i could think about was how i got my baby booster shots in the same room.

betrayal and agony settled like nausea but in my womb. a profound disassociation washed over me and would stay present for years to come. my body was not my own. later, my blue, plastic, razr-knock off phone vibrated in my pocket. a text from him.

“dnt txt me. got enuf baby mom drama as it is lol”

“wdym? cant we just talk about what happened??? pls????”

“guess we all have our demons n now u have urs.”

i swore myself to silence as a form of self-inflicted punishment and didn’t speak of what happened for six months. i don’t remember the first half of my senior year, but i stayed in the same circles as him and our friends, somehow holding out hope that it was all some weird, perverse nightmare, that i could go into the main menu and reload the last save file before it happened.

but then i started talking about it. on accident at first, with my mom. it just came out. she never once questioned me. that was by far my biggest fear - if i started speaking up about this event, would people believe me?

she encouraged me to file charges and i resisted at first. i remembered that pamphlet from the health clinic, now stuffed at the bottom of my backpack. i grabbed it and dialed the number. they were in a town north of me, but a woman was willing to meet me that next day.

we sat in the back room of a coffee shop in my hometown where i told her everything. i didn’t spare her any details for her comfort or my safety. she was tall and had short red hair, and took notes in a tiny turquoise spiral notebook. months later, on my own time, we went to the police.

after a few weeks of working together, the police officer who was helping me with my case called me with an update.

“miss hannah, we’re dropping charges - we just don’t have a case here.”

“wait, can i talk to my advocate first? she can-”

“no, listen - we wish you the best. take care.”

last year, that officer was sentenced to prison for sexual assault of a minor.

in the years that followed this pin in my life’s timeline, the path at the fork in the road grew darker and more dense, like walking through a forest of thorns and poisonous snakes. i felt disconnected from myself and completely detached from my body, from the concept of a body, and certainly, my actions reflected that. i was deeply hurt, viscerally, like if you stripped me naked you’d surely see a black hole through the center of my torso.

this went on in waves, peaks and valleys, for nearly a decade before i was able to hatchet through thickest of it.

it’s a difficult watch, but this quote from the show baby reindeer guts me because it perfectly encapsulates what it was like for me during those times:

“in reckless pursuit of the truth i would put myself in fucked-up situations where i’d almost risk being raped again in an attempt to understand this time. like if i’m passed around like a whore, then i might at least shed this idea that my body is a part of me somehow. like who cares if it happened before? it’s happened a ton of times now, so what does it matter? but it mattered.”

an impossibly huge mountain i was certain i’d never acclimate to. and yet.

i like going swimming in lake michigan on these weekend anniversaries. this year, the waves were fierce but fun. the sun was hot and the sky was a perfect blue. the lake bodied me and held me afloat and carried my tears and my laughter. as she does.

i find myself in the waves, and she is 17, and she is wearing that dress. i pull her up before she sinks too far into the dark wet sand. we lock arms and jump and laugh hard as each wave pummels us backwards. we made it. we make it. we make it. we make it.

hannah

i’m across from martin who purses his lips in a quiet frustration. it’s humid in the room and our english lesson is almost over. we’re stuck on the word poignant.

“it’s like, if i’m watching a movie and it’s a sad scene, it’s poignant. it’s deep.” i’m using my hands dramatically when i talk and motion towards my heart, like it is aching.

he nods, understanding. i write it out on my whiteboard, with some pronunciation help.

poin-yint

he copies down what i wrote and repeats my slow motion speaking, and we erupt in laughter with how ridiculous that word sounds after you say it over and over.

“okay, okay. poignant. can you use it in a sentence?”

“i feel poignant saying goodbye to my mother back home knowing she’d never see my daughter again.”

from where i am sitting in the office building, i can see the school i worked at when i first moved to this city. a decade ago now, i had a job working an after school program where i would be the stand-in between teacher and parent in those odd hours before being home. on my very first day, one of the first graders took a serious liking to me. she was like velcro every time i showed up. i remember her mousey brown hair and affinity for glitter pens and light up shoes. she insisted on being my assistant, which was necessary, because as long as she was around she was holding my hand - squeezing the blood out of it - and looking up at me like i could solve the universe.

very shortly after i started at that school, the program funding got cut and my job eliminated. but the moment martin’s words rang in my ears i was transported back to a decade earlier, with a tiny (and questionably sticky) hand in my own, crossing my heart that she still seeks out the shiny and bright.

the jenny holzer quote “it is in your self interest to find a way to be very tender” is a personal, daily goal of mine. i think that maybe i learned or inherited this from my dad, who is certainly the most genuinely generous person i have ever met.

to me, tenderness is not naivete. i am electing to see the curve, the roadways and the arteries, and still choosing sweetness - not sickly, but warm. like coming home. like acceptance. like strength despite the yelp of betrayal.

that’s my daily bread.

martin looks at me after he shares his definition of poignant. his face tells me he is seeking to reassure me, so i speak first.

“you don’t think she will see her again?”

“it is hard, with the sick and the elderly. you know how it is.”

he motions towards where a cancer port would be placed in a chest.

i nod. “i do know.” because i do.

“and they are so far away now. but we are here.”

he grabs the handkerchief from his shirt pocket and wipes his brow while checking his watch. our lesson has ended, so we gather our books and pack up.

he thanks me profusely for my time, as he does every time. i tell him he’s getting good at the midwestern goodbye. it’s his time i’m thankful for. just two people trying to fulfill their self-interests.

this isn’t where i had intended this essay to go when i started writing it but i suppose it is one that needed to be written. i would like to direct your attention to an organization that is focused on getting food, supplies, and water into gaza: the sameer project & their instagram - “donations based initiative, led by Palestinians in the diaspora, working to supply aid to displaced families in Gaza.”

we’re tryin’ aren’t we,

hannah

i have had a special interest in the flowery language of poetry and prose from a very young age. i’m not entirely sure what sparked this relationship, but the term “hopeless romantic” never seemed applicable to me in this regard - i’ve always been particularly hopeful about the romanticism in all things. i feel deeply connected to recognizing the beauty in my life, even when it has been difficult. often, sifting for the gold in the troubled waters of my past feels like handling sharp and unforgiving rivers of time.

but, somehow, my heart finds a way. and poetry lends itself to the willing, and i have always been readily available.

my mom wrote a poem about the first time my dad held me. it became one of my first tattoos. she wrote it on a typewriter in the early 90s and submitted it to publications for publishing. i close my eyes and imagine her, reimagining the moment, and pressing hard on the keys, typing the words:

she stirred and yawned and then stretched.
he held her safe and close.
he rocked her gently while she slept,
and sang old songs of rhyme and prose,
heard long ago.
then closed his eyes and wept.

now, how could i forgo that legacy?

a few months ago, my friend alyssa told me about an upcoming exhibit at the john michael kohler arts center in sheboygan, wi. it’s called and i will tell you mine - a nod to mary oliver, who alyssa and i both adore. i decided to take a chance and submit both a poem and something i hadn’t done before - hairwork.

my mom had locks of her baby hair from the 1950s at home. i took a few pieces, and braided it with my own. i placed them in a vintage frame that used to contain a baby photo of me.

i submitted both to the curator and was thrilled to be accepted alongside alyssa. the curator has no idea that we are close friends, and still, alyssa and i ended up placed on the same wall within the exhibit. what a dream come true on so many levels. when we viewed our pieces on display this past weekend, i wore a necklace gifted to me by my grandmother so that she could feel close to us too.

the exhibition runs through november 2025. if you’re in the sheboygan area, i highly recommend checking out the facility. it is free to enter and browse.

on the topic of mary oliver, and friendship and sisterhood and heartsong:

i asked percy how i should live my life
by mary oliver

love, love, love, says percy.
and hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.

then, go to sleep.
give up your body heat, your beating heart.
then, trust.

that poem will always remind me of betty and her unending innate wisdom that floors me and then sweeps me up and places a kiss on my forehead as she tucks me into bed.

here’s the thing, friends. i met betty about 20 years ago on xanga. remember xanga? they had writing groups called blogrings and betty and i, a thousand miles apart, happened to land in the same ones. yes, they were harry potter themed. but listen. we made it out of the blogring and stayed so close for the next 20 years.

her book tour brought her to my homeland in the upper peninsula and i got to join her and meet her in person for the first time. we screeched and cawed like birds and held each others faces. these full circle moments will always knock the wind out of me.

we had the best few days in marquette celebrating her book release and introducing her to my lifelong friends (who were the ones that introduced me to xanga in the first place!). i felt really, really lucky in those days and hours with her. just so divinely aligned and truly happy to be alive.

i am a better hannah because of betty, and alyssa, and my grandmother and mother’s creativity and their artistry. in the constant vortex of hell we deal with so often on a daily basis, i am held by their vulnerability and artistic risk, on every level.

that’s all for now. thank you for reading.

“when it’s over, i want to say all my life i was a bride married to amazement.”

love,

h

listen, there’s so much to talk about. and while i was more of an ethan zohn girlie myself, i was channeling the energy of boston rob all weekend. even though he has lived in pensacola, florida for over twenty years now.

MOVING ON —

the nfl draft took place in green bay last week. evan and i knew we didn’t want to be in town and deal with that.

so what could we do? where could we go, and spend money we don’t have? why not take a relatively cheap direct flight from milwaukee to boston and drive around the state exploring literary landmarks and get traumatized by a public bathroom in salem that genuinely makes me message my doctor to ask when my last tetanus shot was?

the truth is, evan and i have a lot to celebrate. both individually and as a couple. so we planned a long weekend to knock off some bucket list items, and we hit the ground running.

it should be known that i am a terrible flyer. when my parents took me and elliott on a road trip when we were kids, we had an opportunity to get a private helicopter tour overlooking the beautiful lakes of northern minnesota. well, they had the opportunity. i firmly planted myself in the regional airport lobby corner and prayed over and over while reading junie b. jones, or something.

i’m just not good at flying - I’LL DO IT, OKAY? - but thankfully these direct flights helped. oh and klonopin listening to anti-anxiety binaural beats at full volume for three hours straight with noise cancelling over-ear headphones.

we landed at boston logan. here’s the thing - i have never seen the ocean. growing up in Basically Canada, i had all of the great lakes at my fingertips. my trips as a child included the entire midwest. but landing at that airport, directly on the coast, really changed me. what a beautiful airport and city.

we stayed in hudson, ma - it is generally centrally located between where we were trying to go: boston, concord, salem, amherst, and northampton.

our first day started early as we explored author’s ridge at sleepy hollow cemetery in concord. i had spent the week leading up to the trip making little charms out of clay to leave on various gravesites that i knew we’d encounter. they are coin shaped, and have a line from one of my favorite poems on them - not lost, but gone before by caroline elizabeth norton.

we saw the gravesites of louisa may alcott and her family, henry david thoreau, nathaniel hawthorne, and ralph waldo emerson.

then, just a short 5 minute drive away we got to see orchard house - the little women homestead. a dream come true.

this tour was INCREDIBLE. for starters, our tour guide was named hannah (with an H!) and she was wearing a dress that i had packed but chosen not to wear. also, we met someone from the upper peninsula on that tour who had been living in arizona for 20 years but was visiting concord on a whim.

this was an emotional tour. i feel very connected to this house and it represents such a large part of my childhood and my connection to my mom. the home itself is over 400 years old. the docents were passionate and caring. it just felt right.

from concord, we made our way to salem! another huge bucket list stop for the both of us. we parked in a garage and made our way into salem proper, with just a few shops and museums we wanted to make sure we hit.

first, we wandered into one of salem’s many cemeteries and the salem witch trial memorial.

then, we walked over to the salem witch museum, and our tour guide here was named hannah!!! with an h!!! she loved the story about the first hannah of the day. in all honesty, this museum was kind of a bust. definitely felt a little tourist-trap-y, but we’re still glad we went. it felt like a museum you go to on a 6th grade field trip. although one kid did leave crying.

just down the road was our lunch stop, olde main street pub. our server, liv, ended up sitting with us for a few minutes as we exchanged recommendations for our respective parts of the country. this is where we met our second and third yoopers of the trip, seated right next to us. such a small world! i was pretty excited about that, as i like to yap.

next on the list was count orlok’s nightmare gallery monster museum - another one we were really looking forward to that did not disappoint. we had this place to ourselves and it was such a cool experience.

at this point, we were winding down, so we saw the aforementioned Tetanus Bathroom and then to cleanse our souls, took liv’s recommendation of driving up to good harbor beach in gloucester, ma. my first time seeing the ocean up close!

we also saw this bird that looked like our cat winnie:

the ocean was so cold, dark, loud, and beautiful. i felt like my eyes weren’t able to take in everything i was seeing. like my brain couldn’t comprehend it. it was perfect.

the following day we made our way to amherst for my most anticipated point of the trip: the emily dickinson house and museum.

this was truly a pilgrimage for me as a writer, a poet - just as a human - and it felt electric the whole time. the tour buzzed by. emotional was an understatement. luckily, our kind and generous tour guide james stayed back with me and evan in emily’s bedroom for a few extra minutes while the group went on so i could collect myself. james was empathetic and understanding. it’s hard to articulate now the power and maybe it even seems a bit silly but if you know, you know.

after the tour, we walked back to the car in the pouring rain, and it was like everything came to the surface for me. i’m getting teary even typing this. you know when you just want to see, but be seen, know, but be known? all of my mental switches and dials were triggered here.

i wonder what she’d have to say about all that.

we collected ourselves and did some shopping and eating in northampton before heading back to hudson for the night.

the next day was boston! readers, we really had to rally for this. we had a guided walking tour planned but ended up sleeping in and opting for the self-guided walking tour instead which was the right choice. let’s get going!

driving in boston was INSANE - fortune really does favor the brave, though, because it all worked out in the end. time for the freedom trail!

i want to note i wore my new solovairs (that i have wanted since i was 15) all weekend and they held up so well. that is all.

a lot of stuff was closed because it was sunday, like this mary dyer statue i had wanted to see. but we still got a good look at it and there was a beautiful robin nesting nearby.

we walked about two hours on the freedom trail which started at boston common and included the state house, king’s chapel, the first public school site, old state house, faneuil hall, and the paul revere house. honestly, there is so much to do and see, it is overwhelming even for the most organized and planned person!

it was crazy windy this day. it was so fun to just bop around like the little tourists we were and see all these historical sites. it was mostly us just walking around and quietly being like, “damn. that’s crazy.”

now it’s time to eat! we decided on warren tavern, where paul revere and george washington have dined. our uber driver said, “if you’re in boston, why are you going to eat in charlestown?” he was not happy with our choice, and then i accidentally opened the car door when trying to roll down the window, so it was a weird drive all around.

but it was such a great dinner. again, every server/tour guide/etc. we encountered on this trip was beyond charismatic, fun, and energetic. it really set the tone for us. our server at warren tavern recommended bova’s bakery for dessert, so that’s where we ended up next.

cannolis from heaven above. <3 do you remember that tony pajamas segment of the amanda show with drake and josh? elliott and i used to reenact the “i ate the cannoli” scene. there’s video evidence. for some reason the only footage from the actual show i can find is a remix someone made of the clip three years ago?! anyway. worth a look imo.

it was time to fly home the next day, but not before a trip to brattle book shop.

what we didn’t know is that soon we would leave our bag of books in the parking garage on our way to the airport. luckily, again, thanks to the kindness of strangers, they’re being mailed to us as we speak.

what an absolute dream of a trip. obviously, as you all know, the last few years have been difficult and traveling has been impossible. but this one was worth the wait.

if you made it reading this far, thank you for wanting to know more about our trip.

one if by land, two if by sea, three if you made it to the end of this newsletter,

han

as i was making my daily fiber and protein plus smoothie today, scooping in my ancient wellness nutrition formula concocted for pre-perimenopausal women along with a tablespoon of honey from my neighbor for my histamine tolerance, blended with sugar free coconut water and a combination of chia, hemp, and flax seeds, i felt my eyes drift apart in my skull in disassociation.

last night i read a chapter of a book recommended to me by my spiritual counselor about healing my relationship with anger. yes, we have spiritual counselors now. it’s like being visited by a priest or a well intentioned domino’s delivery driver. idk, it’s good for my humors.

anyway, i was bragging to my counselor and my actual therapist about never getting angry. “yeah, like, i’ll get frustrated, but i’m not an angry person! it’s just never been in my nature.”

reader, anger should be in our nature. the whole wheel should be our nature.

anyway, i invest a lot of genuine, well-intentioned time and energy into self-improvement and healing. as a person with ptsd and the state of, well, *gestures vaguely* - it’s worth it to be better. for ourselves and for each other.

but i’ve been running on the fumes of fumes for like 18 months now.

so here’s a bunch of stuff that’s fun to look at, read about, watch, and listen to.

• have you ever heard of bioacoustics? it’s where biologists stick microphones and recording equipment in nature and then study the sounds it creates when no one is around. when is the last time you sat under a tree and listened to her ache?

• atlas obscura is a site/tool that i use anytime i go anywhere to find oddities and (usually) free stuff to do in that area. i’ve landed in some miraculously weird places using this.

• re: dracula “takes the famous horror tale, breaks it up chronologically (every entry of this epistolary novel has a date), and sends the story directly to your podcatcher as it happens. every time something happens to the characters, re: dracula will publish an episode, in as close to real time as it happens.” this RULES.

• speaking of which, i think about bram stoker and walt whitman’s letters often. “you will not laugh at me for writing this to you. it was no small effort that i began to write and i feel reluctant to stop, but i must not tire you any more. if you would ever care to have more you can imagine, for you have a great heart, how much pleasure it would be to me to write more to you. how sweet a thing it is for a strong healthy man with a woman’s eye and a child’s wishes to feel that he can speak to a man who can be if he wishes father, and brother and wife to his soul. i don’t think you will laugh, Walt Whitman, nor despise me, but at all events i thank you for all the love and sympathy you have given me in common with my kind.”

• here’s an article about toads that most importantly includes gifs of really tiny ones jumping in slow motion.

• here’s a list of the movies jimmy carter watched (in order) when he was in the white house. i would’ve loved to know what he thought about kramer vs. kramer, and if he too, like my dad, couldn’t stomach watching anything else with meryl streep in it ever again.

• hello happiness creativity center is a thrift craft store in sheboygan, wi. i LOVE this.

• here’s how curb your enthusiasm saved a guy from going to jail on false charges.

• there’s a bunch of medieval art depicting knights in combat with snails for some reason.

that’s all for now. go stick your face towards the sun.

toodle-oo,

h

Death leaves Us homesick, who behind,
Except that it is gone
Are ignorant of its Concern
As if it were not born.

Through all their former Places, we
Like Individuals go
Who something lost, the seeking for
Is all that's left them, now—

Emily Dickinson

i grew up immersed in musical theatre. i’m sure one of the first movies i ever watched was fiddler on the roof. i have a distinct memory of traveling to see it live with my mom when i was little. my dad dropped us off and we had nosebleed seats, so high up that the heat was stifling. i don’t remember much about the event besides sitting so close to my mom, holding her hand, and quietly dancing and humming together during tevye singing “if i were a rich man”. dad picked us up after and my ears were ringing all night.

even though i grew up in a small town i was surrounded by a vibrant arts community, both at the public high school and at the community college. i auditioned for alice in wonderland at the community theatre, theatre on the bay, when i was maybe seven years old. my mom sewed gingham print onto a dress and i had my hair in braids. i carried a little basket with a stuffed cat in it and sang “good company” from oliver and company. i wasn’t cast, but i knew i’d be back there in some capacity some day.

i just had no idea.

i joined stage crew when i was fourteen both at my high school and back at theatre on the bay. it became my life. my whole family ended up getting involved at various points. i was obsessed with the magic of live shows.

just after i graduated high school in 2011, i wanted to get involved at theatre on the bay in a more professional capacity. me and my best friend dan were attached at the hip and between children’s theatre, summer musicals, and the few straight plays scattered throughout the year, we stayed busy. even when we had time off we spent our hours sitting in the theatre - we’d clean, inventory props and costumes, do our homework, and sometimes i’d play jay z from the soundbooth while dan put on a one man show for me on stage. it was home and heaven and it was where we belonged.

the thing about a small town arts scene, at least back then, was the fact that it was chronically underfunded and underattended. we poured our souls into these shows and the casts and crew were ridiculously talented but the looming threat of “what if we don’t get to do this again” always hung over our heads.

then, john and rebecca thornberry descended upon us and somehow whipped everything into shape.

we met rebecca first. i’m pretty sure she walked into the theatre one day and me and dan were just sitting there like deer in the headlights. we became instant friends and found ourselves having dinner together most nights and brainstorming what the future of TOB looked like. there were so many unknowns as veteran players had been out of the loop during upheavals and changes.

our first show together, almost, maine, was imminent. i called my dad in for his experience in set construction and development - his intro to the TOB world. a small group of us put on this brilliant show and it was the best first production with a new director i could have asked for.

when john was able to get started with TOB, i remember thinking, “these are REAL professionals with REAL experience. here! in marinette! talking to me and training ME! for FREE!” they would do what is necessary for so many small town theatres and arts communities: play major roles, direct, stage manage, design lights and sound, run lights and sound…sometimes all in one show.

my dad and i would truck over in the evenings. he would work closely with john on set design and construction, and i’d work with dan on lighting and stage management and well, anything that needed to be done. there were so many people in those early days that were so excited to make it work with these two brilliant newcomers. and we really did make it work, didn’t we?

when my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year, i put up a gofundme. john was one of the first people to donate. dad went down to the theatre to say thank you in person. just a few days later, john and rebecca told us that john had been diagnosed with the same cancer. we had an ongoing joke over the last year that we kept shuffling the same $100 back and forth between us for “cancer stuff”.

the thing about pancreatic cancer is that it can change in twenty minutes and the lack of resources and community can be overwhelming. my dad and john worked hard to help each other feel heard and supported over the last year. between porch drop offs, backyard chats, and many, many nights i found myself laying awake staring at my ceiling questioning God and Source and The Universe - i thought, “at least dad has john.”

john passed peacefully at home with his wife, family, and pets by his side on march 12.

to my friend and mentor, who taught and challenged me, accepted me and pushed me - i will miss you earthside.

i am holding my dad in my thoughts and my heart as he lost not only a close friend of 14 years but a member of a community neither chose to be a part of.

there are no sufficient words to capture the depth of his character or the characters he portrayed.

john. our most recent tevye.

sunrise, sunset.

hannah

P.S. - required listening: a little bit of everything - dawes

doug died march 4, 2019, a few short months before he was due to marry genna. their honeymoon was going to be a trip out east to solid sound, wilco’s music and arts festival.

genna, her full fitting name genesis, wanted to go on the trip and honor his memory. and she invited me to take his spot and her side. it’s one of the biggest honors of my life, still.

but by the time the trip came around in june, i found myself in treatment. and when you’re a patient in a treatment facility, they really don’t like it when you leave.

i was in treatment because in the spring of 2019 i secretly survived suicide. when the realization hit, i was so ashamed, and so deeply unwell, that i swore to never tell a soul. but the body keeps the score or whatever, against all my protest.

a few short weeks after this event, i experienced what i can only describe as a catatonic nervous breakdown on a bus with my college-mates and professors as we drove to chicago to fly to scotland. the trip of a lifetime melted through my hands like burning hot wax.

but genna said, “please come with me.” and there was no treatment plan compelling enough to make me miss this trip. i had to meet with the director of the hospital and speak with insurance agents multiple times and beg them to let me “take a weekend off”. i had to give them genna’s information, all addresses, and basically promise with my life that i wasn’t going to the berkshires to kill myself. again.

but they let me go. and so we went.

there are pages to write about that trip, about doug and genna and wilco and how the sky in that part of the country reaches down to the ground, so much so that it’s like you’re walking through stars, but this is a story about one night in particular.

after a long and blissful day at the festival we ended up at the airbnb of some friend’s in town. the house was straight out of a john hughes film. there were a bunch of us there. it was late, we were all sunburned, there was a pool in the backyard.

i was sitting alone in the living room with my coke zero, white-knuckling my sobriety and working through the ringing in my ears when a man with an accent sat across from me.

“what are you doing here? and why aren’t you outside?”

“oh,” i replied, “i’m just taking a break.”

“i hear you. long day.”

“sorry,” i said, “i don’t think we’ve met yet. where are you from?”

“scotland!!!” it practically jumps out of him.

it felt like the earth cracked open beneath my feet.

“what, you got something against scotsmen?”

because i’m me, i told him everything. we talk for a bit and at some point i started tearing up. and at some earlier point we wound up sitting cross legged on the floor together. after awhile, we sit in familiar silence.

“well,” he leans back on his hands and shakes his head.

“i have to tell you, scotland will still be there when you’re ready.”

“what?”

“do y’know how long she’s been there? you can go back whenever you want. just be here now.”

oh. okay. right.

he uses my shoulder to hoist himself up and then reaches a hand out to me.

i didn’t fall through the crack in the earth. so, i let him pull me up.

we go and join the others outside. i meet genna in the pool. it’s after midnight at this point, and the stars - the stars in the berkshires…i get why james taylor was always singing about that place.

we float on our backs and count every shooting star we see.

“that one is doug!” we shout and splash at each other, until our skin is prune-y and our eyes ache from chlorine and laughter.

genna and i collapse into bed together just before sunrise. i tell her about my conversation with the scottish man.

“i think maybe doug sent him here for you, too,” she says sweetly and softly and rolls over to shut her eyes.

so there goes doug, in the universe above us, floating as a million shooting stars only could. rescuing us, sending us signs, colors, lights, songs, crystal clear and new like the morning.

tomorrow, march fourth, is 6 years without doug felde. but still, when the first few notes of hummingbird comes on in the car, i know.

remember to remember me,
hannah

do you all remember that frog that got caught in a rocket launch in the photobomb of the century?

2024 was the rocket launch and i am the frog.

would you like to join me in taking a relatively high level look back over the last 12 months? great!

in january i started what would be considered my senior year at uw-superior. so close to the finish line! i was getting into the exciting classes that were more specific to my major, which meant i was submitting poetry and short stories to publications, building my portfolio, and looking towards potential grad programs.

i was living alone in a new apartment in the sticks. around the corner from farms and animal sanctuaries, my long evening walks were meditative and therapeutic. like i could just keep walking off the earth and up onto the moon if i wanted to.

and then?

some context that is helpful to understanding how i have processed my dad’s cancer journey is that i had spent 2022-2023 volunteering at a hospice center and caring for several families and patients who were navigating that part of their cancer journey. i had started volunteering in hospice specifically as a way to navigate my own feelings after being diagnosed with chronic illnesses. i was in the system in so many ways.

so when dad got sick, it felt like i was about as prepared as i could be. on paper.

winter and going into spring were filled with multiple hospital stays, surgeries, traversing all over the midwest seeking second and third opinions, and mostly - figuring out real quick what it meant to take things one day at a time.

there is nothing like a midwestern spring after weeks and weeks of no sun. when the local news station runs a ticker at the bottom of the screen counting the days since last sunshine - you better run to walmart and get those vitamin d supplements tout de suite. this spring held a raw vulnerability unlike any other i’ve lived through.

i was thankful that winter didn’t ask me to bloom. but here was spring, climbing in through my open windows, pulling me out of myself and back into the real world.

i felt like i had spent the better part of the last two months in a caregiving fugue state. and suddenly, sun.

the privilege of feeling naturally close and fond of my family is not lost on me. during springtime, i got my parent’s wedding video digitized. then, i organized a recreation of a childhood photo of my dad and his siblings. i think it’s the hardest i’ve heard some of my aunts and uncles laugh - it was the best, and a much needed perspective-bringer before dad’s chemo started in late may.

more traveling over the midwest - mayo and milwaukee and back again.

i had my first ever published piece! a poem.

shockingly, my beloved cat millie died in my arms. she had developed a saddle thrombus within a few hours overnight one night in late april. it is a loss that has impacted me deeply.

to understand me is to understand my complex and substantial relationship with death. “it’s better to have loved and lost” - i know, i know. but there have been so many. sometimes it feels so very cruel. sometimes it feels like i am an outline of a person, walking around with all of these gaping loss-wounds. most days it does not feel that way but my closeness to grief and the thinnest veil of connection to loss is pertinent. it is relevant to how i move throughout the world and how i interact with those i love and how i care. i guess i just wanted you to know that.

Because I could not stop for Death –

He kindly stopped for me –

The Carriage held but just Ourselves –

And Immortality.

(479) - Emily Dickinson

summer roared and i was grateful for the heat. i get why people worship the sun. dad started chemo in late may. we adjusted and made each other laugh and wiped lots of tears (mostly mine).

my sweetness betty corrello published her debut novel and i got to go to my local bookstores and loudly tell everyone in earshot that i know the author personally and she’s super pretty and really funny.

in the wake of millie’s absence, two kitten-sisters from the manitowoc animal shelter had to come home with me. winry and izumi have been MOSTLY perfect, sometimes maniacal.

the beginning of june was tough. we celebrated bryan’s life, and that week, one of my closest friends passed away after a stroke. denis was one of my life’s greatest blessings and i still find myself grabbing my phone to call him.

i personally think every girl should get a job at a living history museum in their early 20s and befriend someone 50 years her senior. denis was a true saint, listening to all of us and our incessant ramblings and drama, and offering such patience and wisdom and care. i will miss him for the rest of my days.

fall blanketed us in unseasonably warm evenings with beautiful clear skies and sunsets.

dad finished chemo and radiation! have you ever experienced a feeling of pride and relief so big, so profound?

how did we even get here? february feels like decades ago. HE DID IT!

in december, i finally graduated college! i graduated summa cum laude from uw-superior with my bachelor’s in writing, minoring in communication. i have applied to some of my dream grad programs for fall 2025.

i turned 32 on december 29th. i had a big trip planned to live with some monks in a monastery in the desert of northern new mexico, but delta airlines and milwaukee weather had other plans so that got postponed. for now, i’m here reflecting, writing this letter to you.

this is a broad overview of 2024. i can’t believe how lucky i have been this year, even with … *gestures vaguely* . 2024 showed me true loneliness, like depths-of-my-soul solitary loneliness, but then it showed me full and prosperous community. it showed me loss and death and grief, but then my childhood best friend and soul sister had a beautiful baby, and i got to hold him and look in his eyes just to see her childhood eyes staring back at me.

2024 took my plans, gave me the middle finger, and then ran into oncoming traffic. and i will never, ever forget those who showed up for me in my darkest moments.

goals for 2025:

• teach myself the accordion

• get less normal

• cure pancreatic cancer

love you!

don’t look back in anger,

hannah

when i set out to make new year’s resolutions on december 31 2023, i really did mean to write here more often. i wrote it in my journal. i had a little post it note on my mirror.

“write more! submit to publications! clean up your portfolio!”

“2024 is your year!!!!!!”

oh, life. with your colorful surprises.

we’re over ten months into the new year, and i’m feeling plum haggard. there really isn’t much more to say about that bit, is there?

on september 4, my dad had one of his last chemo infusions before he transitioned to a new treatment plan. september 4 was also the first last day of school for my bachelor’s degree.

i’ve always wanted a bachelor’s degree. i’m the first of my mom’s five kids to go to college, and it’s been a huge source of pride for me. i’m about to turn 32, and while being older than the rest of my class used to bother me, it doesn’t anymore. i’m majoring in writing with a minor in communication.

school has been a refuge for me. always, but especially this year. i’ve been able to have this safe little bubble, untouched by the rest of my life’s problems, where i can enter and exit and read and write. it’s been heaven.

my cousin michael was a lifelong academic. he graduated with a master of arts in english in 2011 at syracuse university and a masters of business administration in 2016 at metropolitan state university.

as written in michael’s obituary, he was an avid reader of history and politics; a much-loved colleague, and professor of writing at metropolitan state university - as well as a highly respected and sought-after editor at various medical journals.

it’s been two years today since michael died by suicide.

shortly after his death, i had re-entered the world of academia and posted a screenshot of my GPA for that semester online. michael’s husband messaged me telling me he was proud of me, and he knew michael would be too, reiterating how the love of learning must run deep in the family’s blood. and i agree, it must.

michael and i talked about everything. it was especially affirming to see him succeed professionally. it was endlessly inspiring to hear his stories of teaching and often, after our talks, i’d daydream about a future like that for myself.

i’ve faced many roadblocks in life. many obstacles have been put in my path to prevent - or maybe prolong - the journey of accomplishing what i truly want for myself. michael illuminated the dreams within me. i miss him everyday. i miss him especially this semester, as i am gearing up to graduate. how i wish to hear him beam with pride at me, just so i could tell him, “you put me here, you know!”

i miss you mike. wish it wouldn’t have ended like this.

tonight, went for a walk down the country roads that circle my apartment. the moon, hanging a crescent shape in the sky, felt so close to the horizon. it was like i could keep walking and then just wander up onto it. the sun was setting, and the sky was blending a purple-y orange haze with the crispy moon edges.

i called my parents to talk about my dad’s first day of radiation - which also happened today. typically, i am physically with them for all of his treatments. but my poor, sweet cat eugene had a vet emergency this weekend so i’m with him instead, making sure he heals up in the interim.

dad and i talked for a bit about how treatment went and how nice of a day it was. i told him about my walk and what i was making for supper. turns out, we both made the same thing. how funny is that?

i’ve been listening to this cover of the parting glass on repeat lately. maybe you’ll like it too.

that’s all i have for you today, friends. love you all lots.

but since it fell into my lot
that I should rise and you should not
i'll gently rise and softly call

good night and joy be to you all,
hannah