Death is a black hole, something so dark and encompassing that it not only engulfs the one that has passed, but also swallows part of the community.   With recent passing of Kayah, a whole swirl of emotion has over come me.  First it was disbelief, I couldn’t believe the lady I had hugged 12 hours earlier was now dead.  As the news peculated and social media had gotten ahold of it, sadness washed over me.  The morning after I received the news, I was on facebook, and I had this experience where it felt like my head had disconnected from my body.  It was like I had taken too much cough medicine.  I was being sucked into the death hole.  I didn’t know what to do, because at this point, not many people knew what had happened and I did, my boyfriend was at the scene of the accident.  I had to talk to someone, anyone.

The conversation that I had over and over and over with people was at first healing and then it became annoying and damaging.  I had to explain what had happened, my theories about why it had happened, and then the inherit danger with climbing.  I normally added how much I disliked Hidden Valley in the first place and knew something bad was bound to happen there, but how I wished it wasn’t my friend who had to suffer from the bad energy of the place.  Breaking the news to people became a chore, one I did not want to do anymore.

The social support for Kayah and her surviving children is absolutely amazing.  Everyone in the climbing and environmental community have really gone far and above what I had previously experienced when a community member dies.  In two days, they raised over $40,000 for her kids.  There has been an outpouring of beautiful messages and photos of Kayah doing all the things she loves to do.   She was such an amazing lady- which makes dealing with her death a lot harder than say dealing with someone who has been an arrogant bastard most his life.  The community has really proven to come together, using social media as our platform for dealing with our grief.

So on one hand, social media has been a great vehicle for sharing stories about Kayah, but on the other hand, it really messes with my emotions.  As I scroll down my newsfeed, I see pictures of old friends that I miss, cute babies, funny memes and intermixed with all this, I see posts about Kayah.  My emotions go from light & smiling to heavy & crying all with a swipe with my two fingers (I have a MacBook).  The morning I first logged into facebook, an old friend of mine messaged me asking if I had knew Kayah.  I said I did, that she was a friend of mine.  Instead of allowing me space to greive, she immediately changed the subject to her car and my school, trying to catch up on time lost.  Bless her heart, I love my friend, but using my friends death as a catalyst to get ahold of me in order to catch up, wasn’t good timing.  So, its been weird.  Facebook & social media has been wonderful for posting memories about Kayah, but almost tormenting because with the holiday and end of the year coming around, everyone is posting these happy memories.

Another challenge to dealing with the death of Kayah is the fact she died on the 20th of December, just five days before Christmas.  I cannot attend her funeral or memorial service, I have to be in Ohio with my family.  The joy of seeing my family all together again turns dark when they say their sorry to hear about my friend.  Its hard for me to talk about how I feel about the accident and when its mixed into a light conversation, I just cannot express my true, confused feelings.  So as my friends and members of the climbing community join each other to grieve, I am 8 hours away in my room typing out my feelings instead.