Ashley and I went to the same school from kindergarten until 11th grade, but we didn’t become friends until we went on a school summer trip to Beaver Island, a small island in Lake Michigan, as 8th graders. We might not have known each other well before that trip, but after it we became inseparable.
Ashley was one of those people you felt comfortable to be around instantly. She had such warmth about her that it didn’t take long for you to feel like you had known her for a long time. She radiated joy, she had the biggest smile, and she gave the best hugs. But her joy and warmth weren’t signs of weakness; she was also so incredibly stubborn and feisty as hell. She had my back, no questions asked, on multiple occasions. Honestly, she would have anyone’s back in a fight if they needed her.
She loved to write; fanfiction, poetry, lyrics, anything. I still have all the fanfiction journals that we’d pass back and forth in-between classes in high school (ask me about the Jonas Brothers kidnapping story sometime). She loved animals and music and her Converse sneakers (though to be fair, we all did… it was the 2000’s). She wanted to major in English and Biology in college because she was a huge nerd. For our 16th birthday, because we were both February birthdays, we went to a Jonas Brothers concert. For our 17th birthday we went to see the Jonas Brothers concert film at the cinema (I will never apologize for my love of boy bands). She was like a sister to my siblings, even going on family holidays with us. My family and I still love the memory of us hiking in-between the Tahquamenon Falls in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on one holiday. We weren’t sold on the idea in the first place and then it started raining right as we started. My mom still cracks up at the memory of us yelling “WE’VE ONLY GONE ONE MILE?!” when we reached the one-mile marker. I think the whole hike was under 3 miles, but we hated every second of it. She was the glue to our friend circle in high school, and we all knew it. All the lunchroom chats, hanging out at each other’s lockers, sleepovers, movie nights, high school dances, and so many more memories that she was central to for so many of us.
We ended up going to the same university and decided to room together for our freshmen year. We had to figure out a new dynamic that was a bit hard for us at times and our friendship wasn’t the same after that. She took a year off from college after that, so we drifted apart. The last time I really spent time with her was the summer of my junior year when she needed a night out. We drank cheap beers, danced, and laughed the night away. It felt like old times.
I saw her in the final weeks of my senior year on campus. I remember running across the road to give her a hug and talking about making plans to hang out soon.
She died that July in a motorcycle accident.
Hello, beautiful
It’s been a long time
Since my phone’s rung
And you’ve been on that line
I’ve been missing you, it’s true
-Jonas Brothers, Hello Beautiful
Ashley was born on Feb. 6th, 1992.
My brother was born Feb. 6th, 1997.
My cousin died on Feb. 6th, 2005.
My nephew was born on Feb. 6th, 2021.
Life is full of connections, whether you’re looking for them or not.
If I die young, bury me in satin
Lay me down on a bed of roses
Sink me in the river at dawn
Send me away with the words of a love song
-The Band Perry, If I Die Young
It’s funny what the brain remembers vs what it doesn’t when experiencing true grief and despair. I can’t remember whether it was me or my sister who picked up the phone that Sunday morning in 2005 when my Uncle called and asked to speak to my dad. I can remember feeling very nervous because whether I had heard his sad voice or my sister had and she expressed her concern to me, I knew something was wrong. I remember my dad calling us all into the living room to tell us that our cousin had died early in the morning in a car accident, but I don’t remember anything else from that day. I can remember seeing my uncles crying at his funeral; one of the few times I saw grown men cry during my childhood. I can’t remember any conversations I had with my family during that time. I can remember going to school that week and my choir teacher making a comment in class that the consequences for driving drunk are severe and to let this be a lesson to us. I remember feeling a white-hot rage that this woman would pass judgement on my cousin in front of my peers. My friends encouraged me to report her to the Principal, which I did, and she had the audacity to say in the next class that, “What is said in this class, should stay in this class.” I dropped out of choir after that.
I don’t remember who called me to tell me that Ashley died; was it my mom? Was it Ashley’s mom? I know I spoke with both on that day, but all I can remember that day is standing out on my porch, slightly hungover because the day before had been the Fourth of July, hearing this news that didn’t make any sense to me. I remember screaming and crying on my living room couch. I remember trying to go to work the next day at my job on campus but leaving barely a couple hours in and driving to my parents’ home because I was not doing well. I remember releasing lanterns with my family in Ashley’s honor and getting drunk at the local bar with our high school friends on the day of her funeral. I can’t remember much about the day-to-day life in the months after Ashley’s death. I moved back to my parents’ house, which was the right move, but I was not happy about it. I worked a couple temporary jobs in the year after her death while I tried to get my feet on solid ground. I was carrying so much pain and anger that I tried to mask through alcohol, partying, fighting with my parents, and just making poor decisions. I wasn’t in a career I cared about, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I wanted to move anywhere else besides my hometown, but I didn’t have any money to do so. I was still involved with a man who was emotionally abusive and couldn’t seem to break free from him. I was grieving the loss of Ashley and trying so desperately to make sense of why she had to die. Why did she have to die in that way? Did she suffer? Why did we stop hanging out? Am I a bad friend? Why did she go on that trip? Why her? Why my cousin? It’s not fair.
It’s never fucking fair.
I wish someone had held me and offered to help me find a therapist, but unfortunately sometimes we have to be the ones to break the generational curses and trauma. I was eventually able to find a stable career that I cared about which allowed me to save up some money to buy my own house and move, even if it was only 30 minutes away from my hometown. I did break free from the toxic relationship. Unfortunately, I did continue to drink too much, and hurt others with my self-destructive tendencies. It took me four years of navigating anger, anxiety, grief, and reoccurring panic attacks for me to finally admit I needed help. It was either in my first or second session with my therapist after I had explained what I was feeling and going through that she looked at me and said “Wow, you’ve been through a lot.” My first reaction was to fight against that statement, because I knew people who had been through way worse than me. But it didn’t take long for the tears to come instead and the realization that no one had ever said those words to me or saw the pain I was so clearly in. I know therapy isn’t the cure for all societal ills, but it was a lifesaver for me. I was able to get my drinking under control, learn more about my triggers, and how to process emotions in a much healthier way. The grief and anger I had been holding onto lessened over time and I was able to listen to the songs that reminded me of Ashley without crying (most of the time).
I step in the bar, it hit me so hard, oh, how can it be this heavy?
Every song reminds me you're gone and I feel the lump form in my throat
'Cause I'm here alone
Just dancin' with my eyes closed
-Ed Sheeran, Eyes Closed
My sister’s partner died this March in a car accident. I knew, in my body, that when I got that text from my mom at 7:30 AM Irish time that it was not going to be a good phone call. My first thought went to her dad, my only living Grandparent. When she told me that Luke had died in a car accident the night before, my brain didn’t even first connect to my sister’s partner. It went to my cousin’s son; his son who was only a year old when my cousin died and who shares the same name as my sisters’ partner. He’s now a grown man and I thought, “Wow, this is some dark fucking joke.” And then she mentioned they were in Chicago, and I realized my mistake. It’s so odd the connections that the brain and body can make sometimes. I didn’t know Luke that well yet; my sister and him had been dating for over a year and I’d only been able to meet him twice. But my other sister had told me that the first time she met him had been when her and the kids drove through Chicago and met them at a McDonald’s off the highway for a quick lunch. He entered the restaurant, found them a table, and cleaned it off for them. That small, thoughtful gesture meant a lot to her as a mom with two young kids and I think speaks to the kind of man we all knew Luke to be. He had started a scholarship for graduating seniors at his high school to help fund their college pursuits. He was only 26 years old and he was already trying to give back to the youth in his community. My heart breaks for my sister and everyone who loved him, because he’s left a Luke-size hole in their lives that won’t ever be replaced.
I do remember that day more clearly, since it’s much more recent, but I’ll be curious to see how much I’ll remember in ten years’ time. Will I remember talking to my sisters on the phone? Will I remember how it felt to walk to campus just so I could see my friends, because I couldn’t bear to be alone in my apartment that day? Will I remember sitting on a bench along the river feeling so incredibly numb? Will I remember not moving from my bed the next day as my body was just reeling from releasing the grief I have stored up inside it? I knew that my reaction to his passing was because I was being triggered back to the aftermath of Ashley’s death. It took a couple days before I was able to move in the world without feeling like I was walking in a fog.
I knew when I moved to Ireland that there would be funerals, weddings, births, and other celebrations that I would miss. I didn’t expect one to happen so soon and so close to my family. It’s been difficult knowing how to show up for my sister and for myself in the aftermath; she and I are quite different people. When I started this blog, I knew I’d be writing about Ashley and my journey with grief early on. So, my hope, is that I can share some of the lessons I’ve learned about grief and love so that my sister, and anyone else who has lost a loved one unexpectedly, can feel some comfort in hearing from someone who’s been where they are.
- It only gets easier because it becomes lighter. The best analogy for grief I’ve heard is from Jessica Watson’s blog called The Stone which I highly recommend a read through. I can say that in the almost eleven years since Ashley died, my stone has become lighter. But boy oh boy, are there times when it gets heavy again. Where I’m back facing uncertainty, pain, anger, and worry all over again. It feels like it might consume me if I just step off the edge. But while my body may keep the score of all the trauma and pain I’ve been through, it also keeps score of the love and joy I’ve experienced too. And the stone becomes lighter again.
- Grief is an extremely personal emotional journey. Yours will not look like others. Even as I share my lessons, I know that they might not help or resonate with others who have experienced a similar kind of story. Grief related to death is about relationships and every relationship is different. How I have grieved the death of my grandparents over the years is different from how my siblings have. How I have handled my grief after Ashley’s death is not the same as her other close friends. How my sister will grieve her partner’s death is her own grief story and no one else’s. But the more people share and talk about their grief, the more opportunities we have to learn and heal with each other. Just because it is a personal experience doesn’t mean we have to do it alone. There’s no right way to grieve; there’s just a way.
- Your life is forever changed and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I don’t know where I would be now if Ashley hadn’t died, but I know that my life went down a different path when she did. After her death, I started to really think about what I wanted to do with my life in a deeper way and knew that I wanted my career and life to mean something; to make a difference somehow, even if it was a small difference. I found my way back to education, the sector I had always wanted to work in but changed my mind in college, when I found an AmeriCorps position with Michigan 4-H. I was going to make a difference by serving an organization I had participated in as a child, and it felt like the right move for me at the time. Fast forward ten years later, I’m now working to get a PhD in Education. It’s still possible that I would have ended up here, in some capacity, even if Ashley was still alive. But it’s also very possible I wouldn’t have. I can’t know where life would have taken me if she was still alive, and damn do I wish she was, but I have tried to find meaning from her death and this is where it’s led me.
- The guilt will consume you if you let it; don’t let it. I’ve grappled with guilt for a while when it comes to my grief journey. In the immediate aftermath, I felt guilty because Ashley and I weren’t as close as we had been once. I worried that she died and there were things left unsaid between us. I felt guilty for never following up with her, not prioritizing our friendship during our freshmen year and after. All the what ifs from that time kept me spinning. I’ve also had to grapple with guilt as my stone has become lighter, and I’ve moved on with my life; does this mean she doesn’t matter as much to me anymore? Obviously, that’s not true. I have had to learn how to silence the what ifs and accept the things I can’t change. I can’t rewrite our story and that wouldn’t be fair to her memory anyway. She loved me and I loved her for a time, and I will be forever grateful for the time we did have. Gratitude should, and can, outweigh guilt.
- Asking for help and accepting care isn’t weak. We aren’t meant to get through unspeakable tragedy alone. Find your people and talk with them. Find a good therapist. Accept help and care. Rest. It will get lighter, I promise.
The beautiful and tragic part of life is that when you meet someone there’s no way of knowing the impact they’ll have on you. I didn’t know that the young girl who made me laugh so hard I was crying on that ferry over to a remote island would eventually die too young on the back of a motorcycle coming home from a weekend holiday trip. We had no way of knowing when we said our goodbyes in front of the library that day in the spring of 2014 that we’d never see each other again. But the impact that Ashley, her life, and her spirit has had on me shows up in the way I love, the way I try to make sense of the world around me, and why I am living the life that I am. She is forever a part of my story, and I am eternally grateful that our paths crossed in this life when they did.
...But Not With Haste 