Friends,
Hello, and welcome to Unpacking. If you’ve been enjoying this newsletter, please consider forwarding this email to a friend.
Carrie here. It’s no secret that in the macro sense, there’s a lot to unpack in the world around us, especially leading up to Jan. 20.
Today, though, we’re going micro, and a heads up: there’s some sadness here. I am unpacking the death of a friend. Many thanks to newsletter co-conspirator, Emily, for graciously giving me this space to take a beat from our regular programming, so I can talk about Rosie.
A friend to many, AnnaRose King was ebullient with love. She always showed up, and she always brought the fun.
While receiving cancer treatment, she recorded and edited a dance-exercise video to this song, all the while an IV line swayed alongside her. One time AnnaRose made a surprise visit to our holiday party, and left at 2 a.m. We didn’t even know she was in town! She rocked incredible outfits. At the premiere of her feature film Good Enough, she wore a spectacular navy one-piece suit that, at least in my memory, had wings that fluttered behind her when she walked. Her text messages were generous with emojis and exclamation points.
When you were with AnnaRose, she made it clear that you mattered. She had a way of knowing what was worth giving time to, and this laser beam of attention gave her a wisdom that you could sense more than you could say. It was, I believe, the quintessence of a presence.
I attended a remembrance for AnnaRose over zoom this week. I logged onto zoom with a click, just like I do for work. This time, the screen filled with dozens of tiny boxes full of tears, people’s sweet, teary-eyed faces looking back at me.
On zoom, I saw my own emotions on the screen before they fully registered in my mind. The experience was strange, but it was comforting too. There were pauses between stories. The zoom meeting would stay focused on the face of the most recent speaker, and we participants would hover with them in their rooms, their lives, their emotions.
The silence, in fact, was rich with meaning. It reminded me of a book that a friend gave me recently, in which the author posits that silence can be a friend.
In the book Silence: In the Age of Noise, the Norwegian explorer and author Erling Kagge unpacks three questions:
What is silence?
Where can it be found?
Why is it now more important than ever?
The book is short, beautiful and important.
“Even if we were to live for a thousand years, our lives would feel short if we threw away the time we actually had at our disposal. We exist, but few of us actually live.”
And so, readers, a tribute: AnnaRose King lived 35 brilliant years. In that time, she made countless people feel like the sun shone on them. She lived in the moment better than most. She had, as one person on zoom put it, “a healthy disregard for the impossible.” In her last message to me, she wrote: “Always connected in love.”
Wishing you a bright weekend full of rich silence, friendship and living.
Your pal,
Carrie