Everything Happened | vol. 199

My friend Lauren

I won’t make you fall in love with her only to devastate you, so I will put the horrible part here at the beginning: my friend Lauren and her husband Kamel were killed in a car crash last week on their way to get their kids from school.

Lauren and Kamel met when they were both living in San Francisco and he was a photographer putting out a request for models on Twitter. It sounds like it could be sleazy but because he was Kamel and she was Lauren, it was actually so weirdly sweet and wholesome.

I met Lauren a few years later for the first time when she in an editorial role for a website I read. I pitched her the essay and she immediately responded that she loved it. I think I got her email at like 10 pm my time and it was less than a half hour after I had sent her the pitch. She didn’t hold back. Why wouldn’t she immediately tell me she thought it was great?

Lauren’s backyard in Seattle was a steep incline, not ideal for play for her kids, just an awkward space. She took great care within the last year creating stunning terraced flower beds on that hill, delighting in her plant babies and nurturing them to bloom. It’s not whiplash to see someone go from twentysomething glitter-soaked party kid to woman in soft draping cardigan getting nourished by the sight of her abundant yard. When you watch it happen one day at a time, it makes perfect sense. You love it. You root for it.

Lauren loved to make nachos for dinner once a week. When she baked, she would sit cross-legged in front of the oven and watch, like she was a little kid. She was disciplined and driven in a way that wasn’t for show. Lauren quietly rose at 5 a.m. to exercise at home, quietly worked on ambitious writing projects in her vanishing free time. She was serious about having fun and creating adventure days for her kids. Like who loves taking their kids to the zoo? Lauren did.

When you’ve been extremely online as long as I have, you collect a lot of dear relationships with people you may never come to meet. When we used to travel, Nick was always prepared to hear about the fact that we were going to get dinner or drinks with people from Online who would probably know a whole lot about him. It seems like the pandemic has flattened this distinction, thankfully, between “internet friend” and “friend.” How can it be that someone you talk to every single day, whose grudges you nurse, on whose children you dote, is only a friend with a qualifier.

I did get to meet Lauren in person during our ten years of friendship but even if I hadn’t.

I just remembered that Lauren thought Nick was hot and would comment freely to that effect in my Instagram Story DMs. Nick is a legend and obviously I simp but it’s not as though this man is causing baristas to lose their train of thought. Just the thought of her commenting “nice” while stoned on an image of Nick will always make me laugh out loud. Lol. Lauren!!

I have had some moments in the last week of my grief where I wondered what the point of anything was. What was the point of terracing her backyard. What was the point of her and Kamel going without for years as they struggled to pay off crushing debt. I thought of all the butt-wiping, the disrupted nights of sleep, only to never get the chance to see their children grow into adults. When you don’t believe in God, you can’t get angry at God. So I’m just angry with no target. A ball of flame in search of a single fiber of dry kindling to annihilate, but I’m suspended in space. Burning myself out of fuel.

Caregiving is not a contract, where you provide a service in order for your well-adjusted grown children to validate you when they reach adulthood. The point of caregiving is that you do it. You are alive. The point of caregiving is that it needs to be done and you love your children.

I keep trying to not be a writer. If I’m not a writer, I don’t have to care whether I’m any good. I can just do something else. Whatever everyone else does. The last few months, I’ve been thinking about closing the tab of my life which is What You Should Be Writing. Consciously uncoupling myself from the idea that I am “supposed” to be doing anything at all. It sounds like a relief.

Lauren would disapprove of me trying to not be a writer because 1. she was my biggest fan and 2. she would rightly call it out as bullshit. Lauren didn’t quit things. I wish I could tell her so much, like how I just bought a minivan, and I love it, and how I want to trick it out to look like the greatest van I’ve ever seen in my life, which was an airport shuttle in Panama with pom-pom fringe across the windows and ABBA music videos playing on a loop on internal TVs.

My interactions with my children have been imbued unbearably with meaning the past few days. The night tuck-ins, the scammy requests for water, the mispronounced words, the cuddles, even the screaming in stereo in the back of said minivan — it’s all been extra sweet and extra sad. I’m not Supposed to be anything. I’m supposed to be with them, and to be myself. Just being here is the point.

yr mate,
Evie
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Please consider donating to this fundraiser for Lauren and Kamel’s children and the ongoing support they will need.

If you haven’t yet, and especially if you have children, please make your will. Please make sure your life insurance policy is sufficient. Most employer provided plans are not, meant only to cover funeral costs and outstanding debts. You want to aim for 10x your gross annual income.