[photo from by michael wilson]

I keep turning up the music to try and drown out the sadness.

I’m on a plane from Dallas back to Cincinnati, and I’ve got my headphones on. The good ones. The ones that surround your ear, block everything else out. They’re supposed to anyway. But I’ve been through Fiona, then Fallout Boy, then Metallica…pushing it louder and louder, trying to forget about it, because men on business don’t cry on planes.

I’m trying to stop thinking for a moment about my friend Katie who died this week, and mostly trying to stop imagining what it feels like to be her family right now.

It feels surreal, to tell you the truth. Like an abstract poem I don’t quite understand, but the more I study the words the less I like the shadows they keep casting.

God damn it.

She was so bright, so fun, so powerful, so sweet, and so unstoppably honest. She was brave as hell, too…from her career to her relationship with her partner to her motherhood to battle with this tumor…so brave. More brave than I’ve ever hoped to be.

She was articulate, kind, and creative. She had a singing voice that spelled sugar and push simultaneously to me; a boyish timbre rutted into a Brownie undertone, as if Scout herself bought a guitar and learned to wail. Her recordings became a critical part of the soundtrack of my college days. Her recording of “Blue Like That” still stands as one of my most treasured audio-lockets…and if I think more about that, I will cry on this plane, and I don’t intend to do that.

Katie was giving and adventurous. When I called her in the midst of putting together her second record and invited her, at absolutely no pay, reward, or promise of decent food, to trek out into the wilderness of Indiana with my brother and I to play music and entertain junior high kids for a weekend…she didn’t hesitate. She packed her guitar, donned a preposterous wig and Cruella deVille jacket, joined our silly weekend without fanfare or prodding, and spent the next 72 hours improvising the flavor of ridiculous dialogue that makes 13-year-olds giggle.

When I caught my hand on fire trying to play a lighter-fluid dragon, she did the only thing that made sense to her at the time…shoved it between her thighs and squeezed. We laughed until one of us peed.

The only thing that ever bothered her was when someone would call her by her full-name-as-one-word, like “TigerWoods” or “GarthBrooks.” She was a musician and aspired to sing for the world, but I never got the feeling she wanted to be a celebrity…not like that.

Katie gave out of a very honest place, and she gave a lot. She sang out of a very real place, and she sang beautifully. She was hilarious, and she was lovely.

I have no idea how to think about Katie’s death.

I’m sad, and I’m angry, and I’m doubting. And I’m so, so sorry. Reider family, I am so sorry. Karen, I am so sorry. I feel like you deserve better than this.

Katie, I miss who you are. I’m glad you are not suffering any more, and I know you’re back home with your mom…wherever that place is…but I can’t help but feel like the world was better with you here.

Peace,
Justin