2. This is a hoodie that she had with a picture of her and her mom on it. I don’t know the story behind the hoodie, but I remember when she showed it to me a while ago. She always hung on to it through all the moves over all the years. Her and her mom had a complicated, sometimes tumultuous relationship, but they loved each other very much and this hoodie meant a lot to her, especially after her mother passed.
3. Speaking of her mother, here are some things that Erin kept after her mom passed. There’s a cigar box full of some of her mother’s jewelry, there’s a wedding picture of her mother back when she married Erin’s dad, and there’s her mother’s pocketbook, with all her IDs and that sort of thing. When Pam died, it was really hard on Erin. It was 2010 and Erin was 24 years old. Pam committed suicide after a long battle with health issues and a hard breakup with the man she’d been dating at the time. I remember lying there in the guest bedroom of her grandmother’s house, Erin crying for hours, and I wanted more than anything to be able to do something to help her with this pain, but all I could do was lay there with her, rubbing her back and telling her it was going to be okay. Of course it hurt Erin a lot, with just the simple fact that she would never see her mother again, plus the guilt that inevitably comes from suicide where people wish they’d done more and had been better to the victim. Pam had left Erin a note telling her that she was sorry and that she just couldn’t bear the struggle anymore. As hurt as Erin was, she understood that Pam had been suffering; we’d talked about it many times since then and I believe that Erin had forgiven her mother for what she’d done. Still, the loss had a tremendous effect on Erin and she’d always kept her mother in her heart after that. When it happened, we went out to Florida where Pam had died and I remember going through her mother’s place with Erin, collecting her things and deciding what Erin wanted to keep. We drove her mother’s car back with us to LA and Erin drove that car for the next 5 years. We’d always planned to make it to Lake Havasu to scatter her mother’s ashes but never got a chance to. When Erin died, I spread both her and her mother’s ashes together in the same spot at Lake Havasu, which I thought Erin would’ve liked. The below pictures are just a few of the things that Erin kept of Pam’s and I think they show how much she meant to Erin, which is why I’m keeping them, myself.
4. One of our favorite memories from our first year together was our senior prom. It’s funny because we were only at the actual prom for about half an hour, and most of that was just saying hi to friends and walking around. We danced for a couple songs, one fast and one slow, and then we got out of there. What we really wanted to do was spend time alone, in the limo that my parents had gotten us. We made love in the limo while driving to Newport Beach, then we sat in the sand, her wearing my tux jacket and cuddled warmly in my arms as we talked and looked out at the dark waves. It was such a beautiful moment, we were so happy together and just really enjoying our special night and I can see her so clearly in my mind, sitting in the sand, bundled up in my jacket, radiant in the moonlight. She was so beautiful in her dress and the pictures I have from that night are some of my favorite pictures of her. You can see the pleasure in her smiles. Going through her stuff after she died, I found this butterfly-shaped keepsake box that contained the corsage I’d given her that night, over 11 years before she died, and the ticket we’d used to get into the prom. The photo shown below is us on that night, and she’d kept it up on a shelf in our home. We both loved that picture so much.
5. This next item is an old piece of paper that I found folded up in her pocketbook after she died. It was falling apart into tatters, tucked into a little pocket separate from everything else. When I carefully unfolded it and saw what it was, I was overcome with emotion, tears streaming down my cheeks as a huge smile spread across my face. It was a list I’d written when we were in high school of things I loved about her. I still remember writing it and giving it to her, how much she’d loved it, how happy she was that I’d written it. We were so young, still getting to know each other, and of course that list has grown and become so much richer over the years we spent together, but I was so happy to see that she’d kept it and was carrying it with her.
6. A big part of Erin’s life for a long time was her job as a crew member at Trader Joe’s. She started there at a store in Manhattan Beach when we were still living in the LA area and she absolutely loved the job. Her coworkers there were such a fun group of people and she made some lifelong friends in her time there. She was good at the job, too, always earning the respect of those she worked for and with, always dedicated to doing things the right way and having fun while doing it. When we moved to Chicago, she transferred to a store in Orland Park and of course got along really well with so many people there, just like before. Some of her closest friends were people she met there and she always loved it. After years of working there, TJ’s was a big part of her life and always would be.
7. Another big part of Erin’s life where she made a lot of friends was the View Askew message board. It was an online community on Kevin Smith’s website where fans of him and his work hung out. I joined it while I was in college and Erin ended up joining a little while after me. We both got pretty involved with it, making a lot of friends and having a lot of really good times with these super nice, interesting people. Of course, everyone loved Erin, as they always do, and she became really popular with some of the “boardies,” as we called ourselves. Apparently she was known for liking a lot of VA related things on facebook, so one of the boardies with whom she had become especially close, Brian Maxwell, had this sign made of her liking something on facebook and got it signed at a View Askew event by Kevin Smith and a bunch of View Askew celebrities. She was so happy when she got it, not only because it was signed by all these people, but because it was a sign of how accepted and loved she’d become by people in the VA community. Also shown is Erin’s Mooby beanie baby. Mooby is kind of a mascot for the View Askewniverse, showing up in a lot of movies like Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and Clerks II. I’ve got a ton of pictures of Erin with this little Mooby doll, most of them with her, it or both of them in very lewd and compromising positions.
8. As I said in #7, we met a lot of really cool people on the View Askew message board and were able to get close with them and share some really good times. One of those times was when a couple of boardies went with us to Disneyland. One of them, Gavin Ap’ Morrygan, flew all the way out there from [Baltimore?] just for the day and then flew right back home for something he had to do. Gav was this legendarily generous and sweet guy that Erin and I both loved. He was always helping other boardies, financially or otherwise, and was always up for anything. He was just a really great guy. When we found out he was coming to Disneyland, Erin had the idea to have matching t-shirts made which said “I ♥ Gavin Ap’ Morrygan,” which we both wore that day to Disneyland. Here’s her shirt, which makes me remember how much fun we had with these boardies and how sweet and enthusiastic she could be when she met someone she admired and respected.
9. Erin’s favorite drink was a Moscow Mule; I think a big part of it was the cool copper cup that they come in. Almost every place we ever went and had a moscow mule, we would steal the cup and take it home. Over the years, we amassed a fairly respectable collection of copper cups. This is one of her favorites, which we stole from a Greek restaurant in Chicago after a really nice day of walking around the city, going to record stores and just hanging out, followed by a night at a comedy club. It was a really nice day, a really nice dinner, and I think the cup meant a lot to both of us because it reminded of us of that day. The day that I scattered Erin’s and her mother’s ashes at Lake Havasu, my family and I went out for dinner and we all had Moscow Mules and had a toast in Erin’s honor. I stole my cup and that was the last one Erin and I ever added to our collection This will always be my favorite one, though.
10. Speaking of cups, this was Erin’s coffee mug of choice. I don’t remember where she got it, but it was her favorite and I think it’s a good example of her sense of humor. She also got me a matching one that said “OCK” instead of “UNT” (HINT: don’t forget about the handle).
11. The story behind this knife begins on Erin’s first trip with me down to Georgia, where I’m from. We’d flown into Atlanta and instead of going straight down to south Georgia, where I mainly grew up and where my Mom was, we went up to north Georgia in a little town called Summerville, where I lived for a little while. While there, we spent a lot of time just going around and enjoying the nature. It’s really very green there with lots of rivers, mountains and beautiful nature to enjoy. Erin said she’d never been anywhere like it and we both really enjoyed ourselves. Some of my favorite pictures and memories of her are when we were exploring that area, which I barely remembered myself at the time, and she was just so beautiful and full of life during these days. Once, while we were driving around, we passed a yard sale and decided to stop and check it out. There were a bunch of old knives and we bought two of them for like $3, including this one. It was so ugly at the time, all grey and covered with oxidation or something, and I was convinced that if I spent some time polishing, it would look really nice. I’m sure she was rolling her eyes at me. Fast forward years later, I joined an honor society called Tau Beta Pi while I was in college and part of initiation was polishing this big brass watch key that was a symbol for the society. With all the tools and polishes in hand, I finally pulled out this knife and started working on it. I would sit there on the couch next to Erin while we watched TV or did whatever and I would absentmindedly polish it. The handle was brass and it started to look really good. One time I was sitting next to her on the couch with the knife and jokingly kept poking her with it in the thigh (I could be really annoying, sometimes). She went to playfully hit me with the back of the hand, telling me to stop, and I got scared she would hit the knife so I tried to pull it away really quickly. My hand pulling the knife away and her had slapping me came together at just the right point and I sliced open the back of her hand in a gash that was at least 3 inches long. There was a huge flap of skin hanging down and so much blood. I was staring at her hand, my mouth hanging open, and she didn’t realize at first what had happened. Without saying a word I just grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her into the kitchen to put her hand under running water. We got the flap of skin settled into place and wrapped it up tight to keep it from bleeding too much before we sped to the emergency room, trying to get our story straight so I didn’t get arrested for domestic violence. We laughed about it a lot after that and she had a huge scar on the back of her hand for the rest of her life.
12. Erin smoked weed for most of the time I knew her. She wasn’t a huge pothead or anything, but she enjoyed a bowl or two at the end of the day. I don’t remember her often smoking during the day, and she didn’t do it every night, but for much of her life she would smoke in bed before she went to sleep. It helped her relax and wind down. This was her favorite stash container and she had it for a long, long time. She also really loved energy drinks and drank them all the time. When she died, I used this to carry some of her ashes because I spread a small amount of them off a cliff into the ocean at the Sunken City, this cool little spot outside of Point Fermin Park in San Pedro where she and I used to spend a lot of time. I remember airport security giving me a little bit of a hard time carrying this thing onto the plane, but they ended up being nice and letting me through when I told them what was in it and why.
13. This was Erin’s engagement ring, custom made for her. I had known exactly what she wanted because one time, just spontaneously and for fun, we decided to go to a jewelry store and pretend like we were engaged and shopping for a ring. At this point we were living together but hadn’t really discussed marriage very much, but I’d always maintained that I didn’t really believe in marriage. This was really just for fun and we weren’t serious about it, but you can bet that I was paying very close attention to everything she was saying and I found out that day exactly what she would like her ring to look like. Leading up to our 5th anniversary, I had decided that I was going to propose and I went to a jewelry designer to have this ring custom designed. On the night of our 5th anniversary, we went for “the drive,” which was this cool scenic route through Palos Verdes, up and down the mountains through these winding mountain-road switchbacks, followed by a drive along the coast back around the other side of the hill. On the way back I said something about needing to go to the store and pulled into the Torrance Crossroads, this shopping center where I’d first asked her to be my girlfriend exactly 5 years before then… I’m pretty sure she knew exactly what was happening. I parked in front of the Pick Up Stix, this Asian fast food place where we’d been that night years ago (so romantic, I know!). We went for a little walk, and it was cold so she was wearing my jacket. When we got to the exact spot on the sidewalk where I’d asked her to be my girlfriend, I got down on my knee and realized that the ring was in the pocket of my jacket, which she had on. I grabbed one of her hands with mine and my other other hand went into the pocket to pull out the ring box. I was shaking, not because of the cold, but because I was so nervous. It’s crazy, I was pretty sure of what she would say because we’d talked about it before, but I was still so nervous. When she saw the ring she started crying. I told her that I loved her more than anything and that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. She said yes and we kissed and cried and held each other in that spot where it had all began 5 years before. She loved the ring, of course, because it was exactly what she’d told me years before that she wanted, white gold with 3 pear-cut diamonds arranged exactly how she’d described. When we got married a year later, she didn’t want a wedding band, just wanted to always wear the ring that she felt was so perfect. After she died, I put the ring on her butterfly necklace and wore it like that for a long time. But then one day I was vacuuming and saw a bright little spot on the carpet just before I went over it with the vacuum. I looked and there was the center diamond from her ring, which had apparently fallen out without me noticing. I freaked out, ending up curled up on the floor in a ball, crying. I got the ring fixed and since then I’ve kept it safe in this box.
14. One of the best times of Erin’s and my life was when we took a trip to St. Martin in the Carribean. It was sort of a delayed honeymoon for us, a couple years after we got married, and the first big vacation we’d ever taken like that. My parents gifted us the use of a timeshare they had and we spent 9 days there not too long after we moved to Chicago. Words can’t describe how amazing our time there was. We mostly just played it by ear, doing whatever felt right at the time and staying relaxed and spontaneous. We rented a 4-wheeler and drove it all over the island, stopping at cool spots to go snorkeling. We went to a Carnivale parade in the city. We went on a horseback ride to watch the sunset and roast marshmallows, following by riding on the beach at night. Most of the time, though, we spent on the beach. There was this little beach just a couple-minute walk from our hotel called Cupecoy Cove, and it was secluded and surrounded by rock cliffs. The sand was pristine, the water was warm and clear, and it was absolutely perfect. It was a nude beach and Erin and I spent the majority of those 9 days lying on that beach, completely naked and drinking beers from a bucket of ice. When she did have to put clothes on, usually she wore her bikini with a light sundress that she’d bought there on the island. This is that dress and I love it because it helps me to remember how free and beautiful and happy she was during this trip. There’s also a shot glass, one of two that we bought while we were there.
15. Erin and I met in at Torrance High School, the place where they filmed Beverly Hills 90210, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, She’s All That and a bunch of other things. I moved there from south Georgia, where I’d just spent 14 months in a lockdown drug treatment center for boys. I was going through severe culture shock and she was engaged to a guy in the Navy when we met, but there was this instant connection and we got along so well. We had french class together but never really talked. We would both spend our lunches sitting in the same quad, me reading a book and being generally antisocial and her sitting with her friends, this group of lovable rejects. The whole time we were surreptitiously checking each other out, trying not to let the other one notice, and wondering what each other was like. It took a mutual acquaintance, Stephanie Defirmian, introducing us for us to finally talk to each other. I made a dead baby joke within the first 5 minutes. Since she was engaged, we hung out just as friends for the first few months, but it was obvious to both of us that there was something special between us. Eventually, she left the Navy guy, I took the next chance to ask her to be my girlfriend, and we dated for the second half of senior year. It was an amazing and exciting time for me and I have all the letters and notes she wrote me while in class. So crazy that we found each other in this way, I never would have expected it after what had been going on in my life before I ended up at Torrance High. This is her diploma and a picture of us at graduation, together.
16. Erin’s favorite shoes. She wore them all the time and they’re a good example of what a little badass she was. When I met her she was just getting out of her “goth” stage and always seemed to wear dark, baggy clothes. Over the years, she grew and changed a lot as far as her style. She wore more bright and colorful clothes, she put a lot of effort into her makeup and her hair and appearance, in general. But Erin always had this badass twist to her style, with studs and skulls and things like that. When I picture her, she’s often wearing these shoes, some L.E.I. flared jeans covering most of them up, with a short-sleeved plaid top and some dangling earrings, her beautiful hair casually flowing over her shoulders with the underside died black.
17. Speaking of Erin’s badass converses, here’s a pair of knee-high chucks I got her for her birthday, one year. She loved them and I thought they were perfect for her style and personality.
18. In high school, Erin had a friend named James Cassick who was an artist and wanted to sketch her. This is his sketch, with butterflies all over Erin (if you haven’t figured it out, by now, Erin absolutely LOVED butterflies). We both thought that what he drew was really awesome and I remember being so impressed and so happy that he had done it. Over a decade later, we still had James’ sketch up at home and even though it’s a little worse for the wear after so many years and moves and we never had it framed, it always brought a smile to our faces when we looked at it. When I looked at it after Erin had died, it was even more powerful, because not only was it a beautiful depiction of Erin, but it also reminded me of those days in high school. Maybe this is just my imagination, but I noticed that his sketch seems to look more like Erin in the later years of her life than how she looked in high school when James drew it. Like he could tell the future and see what she was going to look like.
19. Speaking of Erin’s artist friends, she became friends with an artist named Ben Salus, whom she’d worked with at Trader Joe’s. Erin really admired Ben, as a person and as an artist. We went to an art show of his once and bought this really cool piece he did about Israel. Once, we even commissioned a piece about our dog, Layla, and we had these two paintings up in our bedroom ever since then; we both really loved them. Ben was teaching an art class at a co-op in Chicago and asked Erin if she would want to be a model for his class. Erin was intrigued by the idea. Besides her desire to contribute to and support the artistic community, her being artistic herself, as well as wanting to help her friend and be apart of his art class, she also viewed it as an opportunity to confront her body image issues. Many people might not know this, but Erin struggled her whole life, to varying degrees, with body image. Sometimes it would get so bad that she would become bulimic. When she was presented with an opportunity to get completely naked in front of a room full of strangers, we talked a lot about it and she told me that she thought it might help her to confront these issues, to some degree. I went with her to the first class to support her and ended up getting to sit on the class and participate. It was a positive experience for Erin, she said it felt great to have her naked body treated like a work of art and to be viewed in an almost detached way, free of judgement and sexual connotations; that she felt more confident and open after modeling for the classes. These are the charcoal sketches I did of her… of course they’re not very good because I have no artistic talent whatsoever. Believe me, any redeeming quality they may have is due partly to the expert guidance of a very talented artist and teacher, Ben, and because the subject of the sketches happens to be the most beautiful woman I’d ever met who I happened to love more than anything.
20. Keeping with the theme of Erin being the subject of beautiful art and making friends with artists, we once made a friend who was a professional photographer. I won’t drop names or anything, but he was kind of a big deal, apparently, and had done some really cool work in the past. We had some of his photos, this pair of really cool black and white prints of the Doors, one of the entire band and one of just Jim Morrison, hanging up in our bedroom. Well, this story may seem kind of crazy or weird to some of you (some of you not so much 😉 ), but Erin and I had always been kinda crazy and open for new experiences, especially earlier in our relationship when we were younger. It’s one of the things I loved about her and about our relationship. Anyway, our friend once invited us to come up to his place in the Hollywood Hills and do a photo shoot with him… already starting to sound kind of sketchy to you, huh? Well, it was really nice. His place was awesome and had this great, rustic, kind of hippy-ish energy, and of course he was a really nice and positive guy. We started the photo shoot, mostly kissing and holding each other, and we just sort of went with the flow and one thing led to another; before you knew it, we had our clothes off and were taking these really beautiful, passionate pictures together. Erin and I were just lost in the moment, so absorbed with each other and just letting things happen naturally. It was so great to have this talented photographer there to capture the love and passion that we both felt for each other. It was a really positive and enriching experience that we both enjoyed so much. A couple weeks later, when the prints were done, we were both so happy with the results. I still have about a dozen prints from that photo shoot, most of them blown up pretty big, and there are many that I probably shouldn’t share on this website. But here’s one of my favorite ones that isn’t too risqué.
21. There have been a lot of posts so far talking about Erin’s unique style, which is bound to come up when going though her things. She was just such a unique person with this great combination of “badass chick,” who liked skulls and converses, and “adorable cutie” who loved butterflies and animals. This hat of hers, which I honestly can’t remember when or where she got, is a great example of the latter. It’s a little bear beanie that she loved so much and I have so many great pictures of her wearing it, just being her adorable self. Maybe you’ve seen one of these pictures on the homepage of this website… she’s got this beaming smile and just looks so happy and full of life. I put this hat on the table at her memorial services because she loved it so much and I think it captures the fun, playful nature of her personality in such a great way.
22. Our wedding was a small and simple affair, so chances are that you weren’t invited. Don’t feel insulted, there were only 5 people there besides Erin and I: my dad, my stepmom, my sister, my grandma and my college buddy Sean. We had wanted her father to be there, but he was sick at the time (among other reasons that I won’t get into) so he couldn’t make it. It was a fairly last minute thing. We’d been engaged for a year and were planning to wait until I graduated college to get married, but when our 6 year anniversary came around (1 year after I’d proposed), we looked at each other and said “what the hell are we waiting for?” Neither of us wanted a big wedding and we’d been living together for 5 years by that point. For us, it was really just a formality… we knew that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together, this was just a paper that proved it to the rest of the world. We made this decision on our anniversary, December 16th, and barely over a week later, on December 24th, we got married. We set an appointment at this little chapel in Torrance and my parents scrambled to put together some semblance of a wedding reception at their place… cake, champagne, etc. They did a great job with the time they had and with Erin and me saying the whole time “don’t worry about it, we don’t need any of that stuff.” I’m really glad they did, though, because now I have all these pictures and mementos from that day. Here’s a picture of the two crystal champagne flutes that we toasted with, the bow she wore in her hair in one and her garter belt in the other.
23. I kept this framed picture, one of my favorites from the wedding, on my desk at work the whole time I worked at G&W. For a little while, I was working this weird shift of three 12-hour days every week, Thursday through Saturday from 6am to 6pm. So every Saturday, it would just be me and one other engineer with the whole office to ourselves. I’m pretty sure I was breaking rules, but Erin used to come see me every now and then during these Saturdays and we would have lunch in the office. Sometimes we would find a dark conference room out of the way somewhere and I KNOW we were breaking rules in there. Anyway, one of the times she came to see me, she was sitting on my desk and wrote “I love you!” on a post-it note and stuck it to my picture. Such a simple little thing, but like so many of the small things that she did for me, it meant so much. I never took that note off of that picture for the rest of the years I worked at G&W. When the adhesive of the note started to wear off, I taped it back up. Every time I looked at that picture, which was often, I would also look at that note and see this reminder of her love for me and of our fun times when we had the whole office to ourselves.
24. Here is the butterfly necklace that I mentioned earlier. This is the first gift I ever bought Erin, and while it’s not the nicest, most expensive piece of jewelry ever, it meant a lot to Erin and it means a lot to me. You’ll notice this necklace in a lot of pictures of Erin because she wore it all the time. I gave it to her on our first Valentine’s Day together in 2004. I bought it at Costco and I remember being extremely excited to give it to her. She loved it and nearly 12 years later, she still wore it all the time and was wearing it on the night of her death. If you were at one of her two memorials, you might’ve seen it on the table with a lot of her other things. When I got the necklace from the medical examiner, along with her ring and anything else she had on her when she died, I put it on and wore it every day after that. When I went to Africa I was told it wasn’t a good idea to wear gold jewelry, so I got a tattoo of the necklace on my chest where it rests, that way I’ve always got it on. I still wear it every day, now that I’m back; I can’t really explain why, I just like having it close to me because it makes me feel like Erin is close to me.
25. In the last few years of her life, Erin started taking up some hobbies as she really started to explore who she was and what she was interested in. One of these hobbies that she really enjoyed was crocheting. She spent a lot of time doing it and got pretty damn good. More than just the actual crocheting, she really loved to be able to make things for people. There are many people out there who have an original “Erin Danhi” and they should know that she put a lot of love and care into those things that she made. I was lucky to have a few scarfs of my own. This is a picture of a couple of those scarfs, along with some works-in-progress that she had been working on when she died. When I see and hold these, I can see her on the couch, curled up and watching TV, usually with Layla pressed against her, and a pile of yarn and her latest creation in her lap.
26. Here’s another one of those simple things that just reminds me of how damn cute Erin was. She had said to me a few times how much she would love to have some footie pajamas, so once for her birthday I bought her some online. Complete with a little hood and a drop-seat, and of course in pink, she was so happy when she saw what they were. I wish so much now that I’d taken a picture of her wearing them, but I’m sure you can imagine just how freaking adorable she was with them on.
27. Many of you might not know this, but Erin actually needed glasses. She found this out while she was in college at El Camino and we went right away to get her tested and get some glasses for her. In the years after she got the glasses, though, I think I might have seen her wear them half a dozen times at the most. She hated them, thought she looked goofy when she was wearing them, but I thought she was absolutely adorable… I’m sure she figured I was biased, but she really was! These are the Ralph Lauren glasses she got but almost never used.
28. While we were living in Chicago, Erin and I took a small vacation down to San Diego. We got this cool little bungalow on a lagoon and spent a few days going to the San Diego Zoo and SeaWorld. It was a really fun but exhausting trip and we both really enjoyed ourselves. The animals at both places were amazing, of course, and most of you know that Erin really loved animals. The zoo was especially really cool and I have these great memories of walking all over this huge place with Erin for the entire day, oohing and ahhing and taking tons of pictures. One of my favorite pictures from that day is on the homepage of the website, with Erin sitting on a statue of some kind of bird. This is a caricature drawing that Erin and I had done of us at the zoo.
29. In the year before she died, Erin lost her job at Trader Joe’s because she was found drinking in the parking lot at work. This was when I found out that she had become and alcoholic and, to be honest, I’m ashamed to admit that it came as a complete shock to me. I’d had no idea that this was going on, and while my shame causes me to take this to mean that I was a bad, inattentive husband, I know that part of it was just how good Erin was at keeping her issues hidden from others. For example, she had been bulimic for many periods of her life while we were together, going into the bathroom to purge her food, and I had no idea about it until she told me. With the alcohol, apparently she’d been drinking steadily throughout the day, not enough to get noticeably drunk, but just enough to keep a buzz going and to make it easier for her to go on throughout the day. I came to find out that there were bottles of alcohol hidden throughout the apartment and that the whole time I was away at work she would be taking regular sips from a bottle of vodka. When she lost her job, she checked herself into a rehabilitation clinic in California that specialized in “dual diagnosis,” since by that time she had been diagnosed as having Borderline Personality Disorder. The rehab was so good for her and she came out feeling revitalized, with a new purpose and sense of self, dedicated to self-improvement and recovery. She threw herself wholeheartedly into the 12-step program, going to meetings as often as she could and becoming very involved in the community, there. She also made huge strides in therapy, where she went once a week for treatment for her BPD. I saw her grow and progress so much over the 7 months that she spent in treatment and recovery until just before her suicide. This medallion, found in a wooden “prayer box” where she put meditative and aspirational messages she wrote, is her newcomer chip and for me it represents the progress and growth she experience in her time after losing her job at TJ’s.
30. After she lost her job at TJ’s, Erin got a job as a personal trainer at a gym called Blast! Fitness. She had first gotten involved with the gym when she started to get extremely enthusiastic about and dedicated to her own physical fitness. We talked a lot about it and she told me that she saw it as a way of taking this negative aspect of her life, her body image issues and self-consciousness, and turning it into a positive and healthy thing for her. She began to be very conscious of the way she ate and spent a lot of time exercising. While spending so much time at they gym, she made friends with the people that worked there and decided to become a personal trainer, herself. She worked there for a while and really enjoyed her work, particularly working with older or injured clients who needed more rehabilitative work rather than strength training or general fitness. It was in this work that she discovered a passion of hers and it was a big step for Erin in her journey of self-discovery. For a long time, Erin had had this feeling that she wasn’t doing anything meaningful with her life, that she hadn’t found her purpose or found a path for herself. It was something that we talked about a lot and when she discovered this passion for helping elderly or injured people to rehabilitate their bodies and their lives, it was a big deal for her. She decided to enroll in a college for Physical Therapist Assistants at Fox Valley College. It was something we talked about in depth because we had always planned to only live in Chicago for 5 years or so and we had already begun discussing where we were going to go next (Colorado, Oregon and California were high on the list) and obviously her enrolling in a course program that lasted about 2 years would change things. But of course I was happy for her to have found her passion and was more than happy to stay in Chicago for a couple more years. The materials arrived from the college very shortly before Erin’s death, including a set of smocks like the one in this picture. When I see this smock, it reminds me of the excitement and passion that Erin had about physical therapy and how happy I was for her. It’s also sad, of course, because of the fact that she took her own life just at a time when it seemed she was starting to figure things out.
31. As I’ve said before, and as I’m sure many of you are aware from the countless things you’ve read from her, Erin was an extremely gifted writer. She got her AA degree from El Camino in English and had always dreamed of being a professional writer. She had this amazing ability to just pour her personality and her heart into what she wrote and she had such an amazingly interesting, unique personality and such a huge, open heart that it made her writing extremely touching and entertaining. She really loved doing it and it showed. I’m so glad that I now have stacks of her writing, both on paper and on my computer, so that I can read them whenever I want and feel once again connected to her brilliance and her personality. She was funny and intuitive, able to mix her sarcastic and irreverent humor with genuine care and understanding. She must’ve wrote me hundreds of letters over the years and I kept most, if not all of them, including all the notes she wrote me in high school, folded up into those weird little rectangles and triangles. Those notes, in particular, are so much fun to read because I can follow the progression of our relationship through her perspective. There are also some poems in here, which are of course amazing, and which I will put up in a separate blog post so that everyone can read them. Here’s a picture of some of her writing, which I am so grateful to have with me and to be able to read whenever I want and feel close to her and touched by her words. For a while after her death, I spent a lot of time reading her suicide notes to me. I still do, sometimes, but now I spend more time reading these letters. Don’t get me wrong, they’re not all love letters; one notebook, in particular, is full of letters to me which she never intended for me to see, most of which are about things that she was angry at me for at the time. Those letters are hard to read, but I’m so glad to have them, so glad to still be able to hear her voice and to continue to try to understand her and our relationship.
32. For the final memory from my box full of Erin’s things, I’ve got a bunch of Erin’s drawings. Erin was very artistic in a lot of ways and brought that artfulness to everything she did, whether it was her writing, her makeup, her clothes, decorating our home, the food she made, or just the way she lived her life. But she also liked to draw a bit and here’s a picture of a few things that she drew, whether in notes to me in high school or in a sketchbook she always kept. She was always quick to downplay and say that she had no real talent, and I’m not saying she was Rembrandt, but I always enjoyed her drawings and this is just a small fraction of everything she did over the years that I knew her.
I hope you’ve enjoyed taking this journey with me through some of my memories of Erin. You have no idea how much I wish I had the words, the talent, the ability to get across my feelings to you, to really describe Erin and these memories the way they deserve. I know that this is all just my perspective, and even though I knew Erin better than most people, if not everyone, I know that there are other sides to the story, other perspectives, and I would really love if anyone would like to add their own perspective, their own memories, to this website so it can more faithfully represent who Erin was. I truthfully welcome anyone and everyone to join the site and make a blog post, even just a simple quick story or thought. If you need help figuring out how to do that, please reach out to me. Thank you for reading this crazy long post, I never intended to write this much, but I’m glad that I was able to get some more of Erin out there into the world. Thank you, all.
And Happy Birthday, Erin. I love and miss you so goddamn much.
Hey Aaron,
Thanks for sharing this with us and letting us get to know Erin a little bit. She was a good artist (and you’re not bad yourself) and a very special lady. They say that suicide runs in the family, and it’s fucked up how making one bad decision when you are in a dark spot in your life can just end it all, when there are so many other options and paths into the light that she just couldn’t see at the time. They should have a waiting period, then nobody would do it. I have lost some friends to it too, I can’t imagine what you have gone through, though. Looks like you had some good times with her and I believe those memories will always warm your heart. Hope you and I can hang out one day bro. Stay positive, you are a kind, wise soul.
Thank you, Martin. Yes, the issues that led to her suicide were deeply rooted and complicated. She struggled for years with a lot of issues, most of them stemming from her BPD and her past. I hate that it all ended in this dark moment in her life and I wish more than anything that she had been able to see a way through it, or that I’d helped her through it. She was irrational and overwhelmed at the time and the pain was just too much and she thought she was doing what was right. One of the most unbearable things about how she died is that she made such a permanent, irrevocable decision based on distorted perceptions. But she’s not suffering anymore, that much I know is true. And we’ll always have our memories of her. It gives me some solace that she is still touching the world through those memories and the impacts she had on others.
Oh Aaron, I so enjoyed reading this post. Some of the memories were familiar to me, like those knee-high Chucks. She was so excited when you gave them to her! Also, that hat! I also remember the stories about your Carribean vacation and how much fun you guys had. So many of the other memories you shared really rounded out a lot of what I already knew about Erin. She had a magical way of being uninhibited yet down to earth at the same time. Thanks so much for keeping her memory alive ♡
Thank you, Suzanne. I’m so glad that my memories could touch you and contribute to and help keep Erin alive in your heart. If you have any memories of Erin that you would like to share, please don’t hesitate so we can keep Erin’s memory alive together.
Aaron, Thank you for sharing your momentos and stories. They made me smile. I always told her she was an old soul. She said she’s just seen a lot of shit.
I truly came to love Erin one day at work. One of our customers walked away from the counter while she was ringing up her groceries and I was bagging. Erin said some thing like where’d the bitch go, she can’t even be bothered to tell us.? I said, who gives a shit. While we were talking Erin took her eggs and started to bang them on the counter😂😂😂
I said I love you Erin and we were laughing when the lady came back. She asked what was so funny and I told her you had to be there. 😊😊
One of the first thing she ever told me was how much she loved you guys being together. “I love us” she said.
Thank you so much for sharing, Pattie. That’s Erin, all over. She had little patience for douchery, I think because she was so considerate herself and didn’t understand how people could be so inconsiderate. I remember many occasions of righteous indignation, like when she made a video showing how to clean out the lint trap in our apartment building’s drier, or when she would call people out for talking in the movie theater, or when she would call out her bosses on their bullshit. I’ve always been a fairly non-confrontational person and I admired her for the way she could stick to her guns and practice what was, at times, brutal honesty.