Written in September.
This morning, groggy, I opened my email to find out that my friend, Sarah Kmon, died on July 7th. The date today is September 10th.
I found Sarah’s Substack sometime in March of this year, when I learned she had been living with colon cancer for the past four rotations around the sun. It has been more than ten years since I last talked to her.
The last six months knowing she would die has felt like a background density. There were random moments when I have wondered if she was still alive. I sent a text to a number I was no longer sure was hers on July 17, but Sarah had left this plane ten days earlier.
It makes me wonder, why doesn’t an instant divine telepathic telegraph go out to every human who ever loved a person the moment their heart stops beating?
Disbelief doesn’t fit. How can an angel incarnate physically perish?
I wrote a simpler version of the piece below after Sarah asked for friends and family to contribute to a book of written memorials she would give to her children. The writing of it has helped me process her death, and for that I am grateful.
I know, that in memorializing Sarah, I gloss over whatever human flaws she did carry, though I can honestly say that I didn’t see many…or any. I’m sure there were the normal areas of human weakness. I imagine she was displeased with Trump. I bet she was sometimes a bit too hard on herself. Maybe she had a penchant for sweets.
Regardless, the planet lost an extraordinary human this summer. If human was what really she was. I’m still highly unconvinced.
Between the years of 2012 and 2014, Sarah Kmon and I exchanged hundreds of emails on 95 separate threads through our jobs at Red Ants Pants. Most were quick messages about editing website photos, posting words onto the website, and exchanging interesting links to share on the company’s social media platforms.
Occasionally, in the non-summer months, we would start these work emails with a short catch up. She was training for a marathon, I had met a new guy and just started an online sewing company. She told me 50% of her heifers had been impregnated. I replied with awe and adoration; inspired by her out-West, fearless lifestyle. It felt to me that Sarah was capable of anything.
You see, when I arrived in White Sulphur Springs early in the summer of 2012, Sarah was one of the first people I met. I was a mid-twenties, egocentric MBA candidate and I had just joined the team in that quiet little town for my summer internship. I came to help market the huge (for Montana) music festival they held in a cow pasture every year. And I was swimming in a sea of culture shock.
I had come from Boulder, CO and the realization of how small and earnest White Sulphur turned out to be was a jolt to my system. It was sometimes sweet, and at times unnerving. There were few people my age in town. And most were conservative, didn’t couldn’t compute with my “liberal” immaturity. There was a haunting level of poverty in that town that truly scared me. And yet, everyone was so kind, so willing to get to know me.
It was a summer of discomfort and growth, and Sarah Kmon was a soft place to land.
She sold pants and packed orders and kept things running smoothly in the store. I’d sit at an old wooden table in the former 1880’s saddlery and update the festival website over tortoise-speed wifi while we’d chat. We connected over writing (hers was articulate and witty) and I’d watch her lovingly engage with customers, nearly everyone leaving entirely charmed with their interaction.
I, too, was delighted by her British accent and her warm, welcoming presence. She was married to a local rancher and immersed in a community of very traditional values, and yet she gracefully wore many of the ideals of the talk-about-your-feelings, woke generation. Her rugged, Western cowgirl blended seamlessly with her burning desire to see a more loving world on her small, fair frame. She seemed to know (and genuinely like) everybody in town. She was ease embodied.
I remember asking all about her life; about how she ended up in this tiny Montana town, and what it was a like to be so far from home. She recounted all the details with a matter-of-fact air and pure humility. It felt like she was born without an ego. She felt ageless.
There wasn’t a trace of a desire to be special or outstanding or different in Sarah. Instead, it seemed her aim in life was to simply live with integrity and kindness. And to keep learning new things. That was all.
Shortly after we met, Sarah invited me to come to her and Matt’s cattle ranch. White-knuckled, I made the long drive out the winding dirt road and landed in what felt like another country or another time.
Their small herd of cattle roamed the green hills of the secluded property they were leasing. As we walked through the long, wet grass down to the stream, and then over to the ravine, it felt like we were roaming the green hills of Ireland.
And then, not long after arriving, she let me bottle feed a baby calf.
Walking around that land, Sarah was confident. She knew how to do everything around the ranch and she was so strong. She had endless, steady energy. She was the opposite of helpless.
The experience stirred something within me. It was so quiet and peaceful there. And so was Sarah. I hadn’t realized that it was possible, for one to live in such utter tranquility. And then to embody it too.
When someone dies that you don’t know, it’s easy to tell a grieving person that their lost loved one is still around, in the ether, helping them along in life. There is a simplicity in your knowing that they don’t need to worry, because their beloved will visit them as birds, in their dreams, and in shocking synchronicity. All they have to do is pay attention.
But when someone who has a profound impact on your life dies, it’s a different kind of pain entirely. No amount of cosmic trust can ease the searing of their physical absence. The loss of their energy ripples around the planet. Everything droops for a little bit.
I wonder about the ways in which we live on after we die. How we guide those on earth along, able to be everywhere at once. Maybe Sarah’s presence is a little bit everywhere, all the time, with all of us.
How will you visit me? I wonder when I think about her. And how will I know it’s you?
Maybe her leaving, the grief, is what makes meaning of our time together. Gives it value and resonance. Allows it to vibrate through my own form and out into the world.
Perhaps, those that leave us, those that have the greatest impact, live on simply in our remembering what we received from them. Love, affection, and a new understanding of how to move through the world.
I remember how a matter-of-fact British air wrapped in pure kindness was enough to ease my heart a bit.
Perhaps, it’s simply just the memory of Sarah that continues and that’s perfectly enough.
Maybe that is the point.