The week before my birthday used to bring a flood of anxiety, frustration, reflection, and dread. A measurement of time became an obsession with it. But truly—what is time?
If we’re lucky, we get to experience the world from many different vantage points along the way. We get to witness ourselves change. A friend of mine—whose wife is now in the final stages of cancer—said something to me recently that I haven’t been able to let go of: “We’re just walking each other home.” I’d understood that sentiment in my head before, but now it lives in my heart.
I think of the many young people I’ve known who didn’t get the opportunity to reach this point in life. How can I regret anything I’ve done when friends I’ve loved never had the chance to see life from this high up? I’m able to honor their voices, and remember their names: Selena, Julie, Nick W., Nick T., Carrie, Brant, Tom, Charlie, Laura, and David. You are not forgotten.
Some of these losses happened when I didn’t yet have a fully formed brain to understand what death even meant. I was in college; they were from my hometown. No one told me how to process it—so I didn’t. Not until I began writing about it all in my mid-twenties. Twenty-six, to be exact. Three years after my friend, roommate, and new-but-real romantic possibility took his own life.
His name was Charlie. He was an Irish dreamer with a big smile, a passion for the world, a writer, explorer, cook—and I loved him. His death changed me. I had no intention of being a playwright, but I found myself three years later in an acting class, performing original pieces I pretended I didn’t write - that let me explore the grief as if it weren’t mine. Writing became a tool. I didn’t set out to be a writer—I just needed to get it out. I found a safe place to do that. I found people I trusted. I found Brant.
Brant Cunningham was as complicated as I was broken. We stayed in each other’s lives for five years, in all kinds of ways. He helped me mourn. He helped me create my theatre company. He helped me shine. He reminded me that you don’t get over grief—you learn to live with it differently.
In May 2011, Brant was traveling—searching for his next purpose in life. He had stopped acting, started biking, and lost his job. So he went on an adventure. On May 30th, while hiking at Victoria Falls, he ran the wrong way from a group of baboons trying to steal food and fell. I used to tell myself he was taunting the baboons and one pushed him. That story felt easier than the simple truth: he took a misstep, and he was gone.
I am now older than he ever got to be. The person who helped pull me out of the quicksand of grief has been gone longer than I knew him. And only recently have I started to truly feel the grief of that. But instead of reaching outward to be saved, I’ve been going within. I’ve been leaning into my own light—and what a beautiful light it is.
I became a playwright by accident, by necessity. And now I understand I can loosen my grip on that identity a little. I am many things. I’ve done many things. I am good at many things. And if I can remember that I’m here to walk my fellows home, I don’t have to grasp so tightly at the next milestone. I can trust. I can soften. I can love it all.
This year, I will honor my birthday by honoring all the lives that have shaped mine, and by continuing to walk forward—with gratitude, grace, and light.
