There should be a cosmic law in place that prevents the death of a young mother. If I were God, this would be so.
But I am not God. Instead I am a humble passenger alongside the driver of fate, destiny, karma, whatever you want to call it. My life, all our lives, are in the hands of God. We simply do not know how much time we will have in our incarnated bodies.
There are certain deaths though, whether literal of metaphorical that have the power to knock the breath straight out of your lungs. They hold the power to reorient your entire life. Some people, some relationships, some idealized notions about how life is supposed to go are sometimes just ripped from our hands, taken too soon. The harshness of the taking leaves us in a spiral of grief and confusion, shaking our literal and metaphorical fists at that invisible God who is known to both give and take away.
2025 has been a year of immense personal loss. I come to this place, this metaphorical pen and paper place, to give my offering of gratitude and reverence to the God of death. I am learning again to bow in reverence to her unexpected and unwanted arrivals. I am learning to welcome her, instead of resist her. I vow to say thank you when she arrives alongside my very real and feral: but how the fuck could you?
Both utterances are holy. Both are prayers. Both are necessary.
Writing has always been for me a way of working with death instead of against it. Finding the beauty of her arrival, getting to move with her instead of against her. I think so many of us find we must put pen to paper when death comes, it is the practice of remembrance, of containment, of recalling. We offer back to that uncontrollable force of giving and taking both our gratitude and our rage.
This is one of those offerings. This is for Steph. Whose death has all our hearts howling from our depths.
I first met Steph in high school. My life was a mess. I was a mess. And Steph was one of those people who could care less about your mess. Her heart was huge. Her kindness unboundaried. She was the kind of friend that knew how to hold the unwell, the unkept, the untamed parts of you. None of these aspects scared her. She never judged. She just held space for these places and parts of people. Tenderly.
As time went on, Steph grew in this holy gifting. Professionally and personally, she was chosen to walk alongside countless women on their wedding day, yes to help them look and feel beautiful because of her creative skillsets, but more than that, she was just one of those people you knew you wanted in your corner in these kinds of threshold moments. Steph was a priest of sorts, she held the post of welcoming women and men into her creative space as they found themselves being welcomed by a woman who could hold their stuff. As someone who has spent a long time around pastors and preachers and pulpits, I know without a doubt that Steph was in the purest sense both pastor and priest.
She brought the presence of the kind of loving, compassionate God that doesn’t give two shits about “good” living. She was there to talk about the real. The messy. The broken. The most holiest of places where God is actually at work in our lives. Steph brought this kind of God, this kind of presence, to those she encountered.
There is this beautiful and powerful metaphor from the poet Rilke about how most people orient their lives around the brightness of a fire, they need and depend on the light to illuminate their lives. But Rilke flips this metaphor on its head, saying the real saints in this world are not those that live a light-filled, perfect life but rather they are those who orient their lives around the darkness. These souls walk into the unlit abyss bravely and equally terrified. They do not depend on the small point of contained illumination of the fire but rather they build a home in the vastness of the darkness. The people who choose to live like this know God in a way that most pastors, preachers, and priests are too afraid to ever draw close to.
But Steph lived her life in this way. She knew what it was like to live with heart wrenching loss. She knew depression. She was unafraid of the darkness. She lived a life that was not addicted or chained to false perimeters of “goodness” illuminated by the smallness of light. She lived according to the higher cosmic laws of the darkness. And in that way of living she brought the realness of God with her wherever she went.
Steph was the first person I ever got obnoxiously drunk with. I don’t think I have ever laughed or puked as much in one night. She took care of me. She held me before I had learned to hold myself. In that moment, and in other countless moments. Her courageous acceptance of her own inner darkness opened me to greeting the wild places within myself. Again and again. Now at almost 40, I can think of no other truer act of friendship.
Steph was one of the strongest and kindest people I knew. And I go back again and again to that idea that she lived her life unboundaried and unafraid of the dark. Moving past the barricades of limits and judgments so she could move towards others in grace and acceptance, always reminding those in front of her that they could come home to the deepest part of themselves.
She will remain in my memory and my heart as one of the bravest souls I know. She said “yes” to being a mother, a wife, in a profound way. She lived and embodied steadfast love. Her “yes” to holding these posts in her life was an inspiration.
I found out about Steph’s passing while waiting on a flight back home. Something primal in my soul recognized the profoundness of her passing. Instinctively I went to the bar, pulled out pen and paper, ordered a drink and prayed that prayer of thank you and how the fuck could you take her so soon?
Today, more than ever, I bow in reverence to the women, to the saints in this world who vow to keep going into the darkness so others can find their way home. I bow in reverence for getting to know Steph. To love her. To be loved by her. All the while shaking my fist at God, for the rhythms of the giving and the taking…especially of Steph.
Steph. You made a home in the darkness so others could find their way back home. You were in the truest sense a saint. A priest. A pastor. You brought God to the people, your people. We were all changed by your living. Your loving. We all bow in reverence to your life well lived.