as her absence fades
Thursday, October 22 
I wasn’t going to do this. Wasn’t going to write about Dede, for fear it might cheapen all she is to me in exchange for a blog post. Yet here I am, despite the fact that there’s no way to write this out of my system.
I can’t even remember how or when I met Deirdre Eitel. Must have been eight or nine years ago. She was a photographer at our local newspaper back when I was managing editor of a regional magazine, then after that a freelance writer, but maybe I knew her first as a fellow athlete. She was a runner and a Nordic skier, gifted at birth with long legs and speed, while the rest of us relied on heart rate monitors and training logs. If you asked her how she did in a particular race she’d say, “Oh fine,” and the only way you’d know she won the damn thing and set a course record was because you read about it. She was annoying that way, a person you’d love to hate, except that she was so nice.
When I separated from my ex-husband years ago I was scared. I had no idea how I was going to support three sons, and knew that in my case, hefty child support wasn’t going to save the day. I had to figure out how to pay the bills. I was waiting tables, coaching Nordic skiers and freelance writing when our local paper offered me a job managing their monthly magazines. I worried that to work for them would be to “sell out,” and give up my freedom to write for whomever I wanted. But Dede worked there, and I took comfort in that when I took the job.
Dede and I became closer friends over the years from regular contact at work. Both into gardening, both journalists with a foolish sense that we could make the world a better place, both athletes and lovers of the outdoors, I felt like Dede and I got each other. I never had a big sister. It wasn’t until Dede was gone that I realized that I had looked up to her as one.
We teamed up on projects together. We spearheaded a calendar of local, naked women athletes (tastefully photographed by Dede) to honor an inspiring fellow athlete before she died of breast cancer. The funds from that calendar helped build a trail in our friends’ name. We covered a story on a family adopting AIDS orphans from Ethiopia. We shared lunch breaks together training with Macedonia’s former Olympic Nordic coach to become better cross-country skiers, and spoke to each other in the office with bad Macedonian accents. We brought our families together for a 240-mile relay race completed over three days with a nine-person team of our families and co-workers. And when I told Dede I was marrying Shawn, she hugged me and promised to be there with her camera and her kids.
When she killed herself though, nearly a year ago to this day, it seemed like she had already left me. We weren’t on the same path anymore. She was still working for the newspaper, but she was doing big things in the world. Five years older than me, I looked at myself and said, there’s time; someday you can do what she’d doing. Dede had spent the last two summers traveling in Pakistan, documenting the work of Greg Mortenson, founder of the Central Asia Institute and author of Three Cups of Tea. Mortenson builds schools and hope for Muslim girls in parts of the world where the two are unheard of, and Dede was there with her camera, telling the world about it.
She had returned from her latest trip to the Middle East in August, 2008. I hugged her the day after she returned and noticed how thin she’d gotten. She told me this trip had really been difficult for her, but returned to work as usual. In September she came to my 40th birthday party, full of the buoyant spirit that was Dede. But then, in the weeks after, she seemed “off.”
I stopped by her desk and spoke with her about deadlines and stress, she told me she was struggling. I wrote it off as passing stress; we all have it. Then it seemed to drag on into October, and I rushed by her desk, busy myself, giving her space to work through whatever was bothering her. Then one day, a Saturday during the third week in October, she asked me to walk outside with her, told me some things that were upsetting her, and I listened, but didn’t push. What I didn’t know was that there was more. And the next Monday, I rushed by her desk, asked her if things were better, holding my thumb up in hopeful suggestion.
On Friday, she shot herself on a trailhead north of town.
She was upset for a specific reason, and yet there’s no reason good enough for someone who dedicated her life to making the world better to die at her own hands. People gasp at the seeming selfishness of leaving her husband and children. I can’t hear it. She loved her babies just like you and I and most everyone who has them does. But she wasn’t in her right mind. She was overworked, wasn’t sleeping and her brain chemistry was altered by darkness at that point. And she was so much harder on herself than I ever knew.
I regret my busyness that week, my “just give her some space and let it pass” way of relating. Sometimes in a car or at the store I see someone out of the corner of my eye and there’s hope — it’s HER. But then I gently remind myself that it isn’t. I often replay what I knew of her last hours, how she actually came to work that day, and change the story, this time with me being there the way I would’ve wanted to.
Weeks after her death became months, and for a while I thought of her every day. Now sometimes I think of her and struggle with the painful truth that someone as exceptional as her can die, and life just goes trucking right along.
Somehow, this realization left me pissed and thinking that I didn’t want to do anything to observe this one-year date since her death. But then I found myself doing what I haven’t been able to do until now. I went to the place where she said, I’m done, I’m out of options. I called the search and rescuer who found her, and he met me at the trailhead with his dog.
He showed me where she’d died, and I tried to connect with her the only way I knew how, with my camera, and by taking a trail run. I stopped by her spot again after my run, spread wildflower seeds and marked it with a cairn. When I left, it wasn’t with what I’d hoped for. I don’t know exactly what I wanted, maybe new insight or some feeling or sign that she and I are still connected in this world. But maybe my expectations were too high.
I miss her. And I hate that she is gone. It will always seem wrong, like such an unfathomable mistake.
Dede photographing my bouquet after my wedding at Hyalite Lake, Montana, 2007. Photo by John Porter.
Reader Comments (18)
Beautifully written and so, so sad.
So sorry for your loss, I dont think I ever expressed my sympathy to you before and for that I am sorry. She sounded like an absolutly wonderful woman.
Thank you FaveAuntie and SDA...
I'm so sorry to hear about the loss of a friend.
Very poignantly written.
Megan,
That was a very well written tribute to your dear friend. She sounds like she was remarkable and made a very positive impact on this planet.
Hopefully she didn't give up hope based up things that she had seen in the Middle East.
~Josh
Very beautiful post. What a sad,sad thing. Hopefully,Dede was with you.
Josh: She was definitely having a hard time readjusting after her time over there...The unanswered questions will always be hard for those of us who loved her. Thanks for your note.
Shanna and Mom: Thanks for your kind words :)
I'm so sorry to hear about your friend. This is a very kind tribute to her. It makes me so sad, as a newish mom, to hear that her kids were left without her. Very sad indeed. Thanks for sharing her/your story.
Stacy: That may be the worst of all of this -- seeing her kids now and knowing how much she adored them, how she never would have left them if she was her normal self. Too many "firsts" left that the kids won't get to experience with their mom by their side. When I left the trailhead, I wanted to go home and hold my kids.
Megan, it is a great memorial to a great friend.
Erik: Nice to see some guys are reading my site :) Thanks for your note.
I barely knew her, but I admired her. She was a beautiful, strong, creative woman whose love for her children was brightly apparent. These were all things you could see in her instantly, without even knowing her. I want to be like that.
I always thought that my own struggles with depression would go away as I got older. I figured that as I got closer to being like her and her age those feelings would just cease appearing. I'd know how to deal with things--they just wouldn't get under my skin, into my head, deep into my heart anymore. Her death was a difficult realization that I am capable of being like her in more ways than I thought possible.
But now I know, better than ever before, that I'm not the only one who sometimes feels this way. Her death was a sharp reminder that things are NEVER as bad as they seem when you are unwell. I know I'll have some difficult journeys in the future but I can't help but feel that I'm a little better prepared to face them with this knowledge. I just wish I could have learned this in conversations and a friendship with her instead.
I've been thinking of her a lot lately and this was very nice to read. Thank you.
I remember when Rob told me about this and showed me the write up. I'm very sorry that she felt this was the way to go. I'm sorry for all those that she left behind.
This was a fabulous tribute to a friend, despite the unresolved feelings and questions left behind after the choice she made.
Those questions and feelings remain with me, just over a year later, after a friend and co-worker took her life.
Can we ever really understand what drives a person to this place? Unless we truly know what they think and feel? Even then, with details shared, is it possible? Somehow I think not. Life does move along, seemingly oblivious to that loss, yet the ripples flow out for eternity. Felt by those of us left in the wake.
Catootes: I so completely agree. We can't with our brains, our own lives, understand (let alone judge) someone else and what they're going through. We try. But something like this, all I can come up with is compassion for the pain that would take someone to that point...
I'm sorry you've been through this loss of a friend/ co-worker as well. Thanks for your kind words.
I went to college with Dede and ran cross-country with her. After college, we kept in touch. Tom and Dede visited on a trip south to kayak. About 7 years ago, we stayed with Dede and Tom, while on our way to take our kids to Yellowstone. I remember when she first met Tom and I was there for their wedding. They were meant for each other. I have thought of Dede often this past year and I have searched to find answers about her but stopped searching about six months ago. Tonight I was drawn to look for anything on the internet about her. And then I found an obituary that reminded me that she died one year ago today. And then I found this post. You don't know how much it helped to hear someone else share their feelings about Dede. I thank you for sharing. You did not make cheapen anything about Dede, you showed how we are all connected by having known Dede. And to add to your observations, what I know about Dede is that she was so strong for all those around her, and she was never one to complain or whine about anything. Maybe, just maybe, she was too strong to ask for help when she needed it. She was the giver and sometimes those that are so good at giving are not as good at receiving. I will miss her and her funny stories that never ended that were always told in some funny made up voice. And I will miss those long long legs that always ran downhill faster than I could ever manage except one time when I was determined to stay with her no matter what and I think she let me. That was Dede and so much more.
Thank you for your post. Dede was my aunt. Every day I hear another story about how she positively impacted someone's life but her influence never ceases to amaze me. She was a strong woman and we all miss her very much. Thank you for sharing your stories, it helps me learn more about her and understand her better as my time with her was cut short.
Reader: Thanks for writing. I'm so sorry you lost your Aunt Dede. She was so special to many.
Just FYI, since I wrote this post there have been people visiting this site from all over the nation who find me by Googling for info. about Dede. Some of them email me or have left comments here. All of this is just to confirm that your aunt is still on many peoples' minds, and that there are all sorts of fine folks orbiting around her memory, wanting to hang on to a bit of her.
Take good care...