
Lost My Aunt—and Now, My Job
Donation protected
HERE'S A NEW DISCLAIMER
Since posting this campaign, I have been blown away by the overwhelming support to get us nearly halfway to our goal. As all of you know, the world changed basically overnight, and I was one of those who lost their jobs along with it. In addition to tending to the reconciliation and memorial of my aunt's life, I have now had my livelihood taken from me as well. I'll leave the body of the original campaign ask intact below, but please know that the outlook is grim, which you'll also be able to see from the Update Posted 3/31/20. Please help.
—
HERE'S A DISCLAIMER
The full title for this gofundme is:
I'm an Associate Creative Director & I have funerals to pay for.
Not that funerals can't be fun, but there are usually two too many Puffs and Kleenex boxes going around to indicate tears of joy are the ones flowing down.
The reason I mention that I'm an Associate Creative Director is to say creativity doesn't have to exist just to sell stuff. Recent events in my own life have shown me how kissing ass and hanging on metrics' dead-eyed promises only robs creativity of its power to make meaning and tell stories that show us what we're really made of. Memorializing my aunt, Amanda Witt, my goal is to share the vision quest that was her life with all of you.
NOW, WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT?
Times are tough. And I'm not alone in feeling this, as people everywhere are reeling from the penny-pinched, push-and-shove of our outdated economic system and late capitalism's get-out-of-the-way-my-hair's-on-fire charm. Then, you have the business of death—particularly unsavory is this one flavor that I've tasted more than my fair share of.
IT'S CALLED 'SUDDENLY GONE'
In mid-January, Amanda had a severe brain aneurism, which left her in ICU post-surgery for one week, then hospice for one week, then gone forever. In less than a month, mostly vital but in need of a hip replacement, she was no longer in living human form—now an energetic being set free from Earth's physical laws, boomeranging back to the source from whence we all came.
WHOA ON FINANCIAL WOES
Bills are mounting, and my family is underwater as we pack up a lot of once-sentimental things, divvy up the priceless and useful and wave goodbye to the rest. I won't go into how the healthcare system works or doesn't work or how important last wills and testaments really are (go do yours—right now), but the reality is this. All of it hits you at once when death strikes without warning. Hopefully, you'll see how important a figure Amanda was in the lives of so many people, and how her worldview was derived from an almost supernatural sense of all things.
PUT TO GOOD USE
Your generous donations will be used to memorialize Amanda in a way that's unique to who she was and how she impacted the world around her. To be transparent, some of the funds will go toward covering unpaid leave from my work in order to have the headspace and focus needed to create this memorial. All of the decisions on approach are in service of self-care (because neither she nor I were ever very good at that).
Remaining funds, hopefully in excess of the minimum $5,000 mark, will go toward paying any additional outstanding bills because I know she'd die (I know, I know) if anything were left unsettled and without the most perfect bow tied ever so tightly around it. That's the somewhat-overbearing, Southern-hospitable Witt Way.
—
At Witt's End
Seizing Lifetimes from 75 Short Years
Throwing money at the problem—whether there was money to throw or not—was often a problem. I remember showing up at the end of spring semester to the municipal airport in my college's town with eight bags, bewildered to find there were actual additional charges for checking more than my allotment. A phone call to my aunt and $400 later, she and I had lived through Life's Lesson #272. Many more experiences like this one followed in rapid succession, for she and I were both moving through an existence without grace's greatest teacher: my mother. In a single-car accident against a backwater backdrop of Texas countryside, my mother's death would represent a cruel turn in life's long and winding road; the silver lining has proven to be a kinship between a sister whose sense of duty to her baby sister kicked into overdrive and an only child who'd lost his best friend. Aunt Amanda and Cole were left to survive the best and only way we knew how: just ride the wave, and hold on tight.
Amanda was a pioneer, not giving fucks before anyone knew there could be none to give. An out lesbian in 1962, she was a world traveler by the time she was 21—and not that 18 European cities in four days bullshit but long, luxuriant stays in five-star hotels—all made possible by charming the capri pants off of continental women who knew what better looked like, and Amanda was it.
She'd be gone for months or years at a time, but her open-ended tickets eventually found their way home. She'd come bearing stories of a Basque bomb detonating while she dined al fresco at her favorite Spanish café—shards from her wine glass and a few pieces of shrapnel making a most exotic mosaic across her face. There were gifts of European candies, licorices especially, and tales of tantalizing sexual conquest—an earful for a pubescent gay-in-the-making like me but exactly what I needed to begin shaping the portal that would eventually take me to far-off places, too. Later in my teens, suspecting that I might be a bit light in the loafers, my mother sat me down and told me how Aunt Amanda would be glad to chat about her lifestyle, if ever I were curious to learn more. I just assumed she meant her party lifestyle, not the lady-on-lady action lifestyle. Infinitely more curious about mind-altering substances than body parts I'd only seen once, I haven't looked back since—never feeling shame or scorn for being exactly who I am supposed to be.
After my mother's death, Aunt Amanda wholeheartedly (well, perhaps with some reservations) accepted the challenge of raising me—to become the mother she never had and the one she never knew she had hiding inside all along. My Oma was a firecracker, a hoot and a holler of a grandmother—but as one might expect from a greasy spoon waitress—not the most present or loving creature. Of course, mothering didn't come naturally to Aunt Amanda. At first, we tried beating back the grief with iron fists. It was to be an emotion left for another day. Not now, and certainly not during my "bright college years, with pleasure rife—the shortest, gladdest years of life." The age of enablement went into full tilt. Amanda's perception and experience of parenthood showed a preference for phone calls and/or heartfelt cards, not just for one but for both Mother's Day and Father's Day. I could tell she took delight and caution exploring this foreign land without having to go through Customs. She was a balance of ego and id, a blend of darkness and light like a hologram flickering in the distance—brilliant to behold but oh so hard to catch. Unless you're a Texas State Trooper, which in that case, you'd send Amanda down river to the state pen and put her—a 50-year-old woman by then—on hoe squad in the soul-beating heat of the Texas sun. It was a long two years.
The surviving eventually got easier but also harder, because it became our M.O. to assume that a fight to keep or take what was ours always lurked on the horizon. We believed we had to measure and manage our way through things when really one foot in front of the other would've sufficed perfectly well enough. Things grew difficult for both of us, as I struggled with my own wayward tendencies, moving from city to city hoping to find a tribe or at least a better-dressed version of myself. And she battled her own demons, with many still lingering from less idyllic moments like rape in Haight-Ashbury—where even there it can't be all peace and love, all of the time. Several DUIs underscored the stark reality that she should've landed in the morgue on more than one occasion. Despite these setbacks, she never once said she couldn't jump to my or anyone's aid or that she simply didn't have it in her to at least try. Whether energy, time or money, somehow she always manifested exactly what was needed. I know there was magic—both the purest and most crystalline kind and a dash of the darker variety as well. She lived for the multifaceted, prismatic expressions of life—complex, out-of-place and out-of-time. She discovered the depths of her psyche and placed herself within a greater spiritual context—all of man, woman, galaxy, universe and existence combined.
Many Life's Lessons have transpired since we notched that first year of college—lost but lost together‚ where I was minus a mother but plus a Pan Aphrodite Mom-Slash-Dad Auntie BFF. And while her days of wild abandon came to a sudden halt when I was placed in her charge, she found riches in sitting still. She became a woman of the community; a uniter of people around the good that comes from seeing past superficial differences; a subversive educator of right and wrong; a multilingual speaker of Hospital Code, Bumpkin and French; a creator of art, love and beauty; a flawed yet flawless woman who gave all of herself without fail, without condition and never contingent upon unspoken rules—just universal truths we all know are right on the money.
The last 20 years of her life were spent as caretaker and joybringer to the dying. My Oma, my Aunt Roo Roo, my Godmother Suzanne, and all the other old crones and cantankerous curmudgeons you'd expect to find in a withering bedroom community on Lake Palestine, Texas. These were her people. She hated them. She loved them. And in them, she found home.
In her, I found the blueprint for the life I want to lead. And in my heart, she sits forever the sherpa, telling me what to do and where to go whether I like it or not.
Since posting this campaign, I have been blown away by the overwhelming support to get us nearly halfway to our goal. As all of you know, the world changed basically overnight, and I was one of those who lost their jobs along with it. In addition to tending to the reconciliation and memorial of my aunt's life, I have now had my livelihood taken from me as well. I'll leave the body of the original campaign ask intact below, but please know that the outlook is grim, which you'll also be able to see from the Update Posted 3/31/20. Please help.
—
HERE'S A DISCLAIMER
The full title for this gofundme is:
I'm an Associate Creative Director & I have funerals to pay for.
Not that funerals can't be fun, but there are usually two too many Puffs and Kleenex boxes going around to indicate tears of joy are the ones flowing down.
The reason I mention that I'm an Associate Creative Director is to say creativity doesn't have to exist just to sell stuff. Recent events in my own life have shown me how kissing ass and hanging on metrics' dead-eyed promises only robs creativity of its power to make meaning and tell stories that show us what we're really made of. Memorializing my aunt, Amanda Witt, my goal is to share the vision quest that was her life with all of you.
NOW, WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT?
Times are tough. And I'm not alone in feeling this, as people everywhere are reeling from the penny-pinched, push-and-shove of our outdated economic system and late capitalism's get-out-of-the-way-my-hair's-on-fire charm. Then, you have the business of death—particularly unsavory is this one flavor that I've tasted more than my fair share of.
IT'S CALLED 'SUDDENLY GONE'
In mid-January, Amanda had a severe brain aneurism, which left her in ICU post-surgery for one week, then hospice for one week, then gone forever. In less than a month, mostly vital but in need of a hip replacement, she was no longer in living human form—now an energetic being set free from Earth's physical laws, boomeranging back to the source from whence we all came.
WHOA ON FINANCIAL WOES
Bills are mounting, and my family is underwater as we pack up a lot of once-sentimental things, divvy up the priceless and useful and wave goodbye to the rest. I won't go into how the healthcare system works or doesn't work or how important last wills and testaments really are (go do yours—right now), but the reality is this. All of it hits you at once when death strikes without warning. Hopefully, you'll see how important a figure Amanda was in the lives of so many people, and how her worldview was derived from an almost supernatural sense of all things.
PUT TO GOOD USE
Your generous donations will be used to memorialize Amanda in a way that's unique to who she was and how she impacted the world around her. To be transparent, some of the funds will go toward covering unpaid leave from my work in order to have the headspace and focus needed to create this memorial. All of the decisions on approach are in service of self-care (because neither she nor I were ever very good at that).
Remaining funds, hopefully in excess of the minimum $5,000 mark, will go toward paying any additional outstanding bills because I know she'd die (I know, I know) if anything were left unsettled and without the most perfect bow tied ever so tightly around it. That's the somewhat-overbearing, Southern-hospitable Witt Way.
—
At Witt's End
Seizing Lifetimes from 75 Short Years
Throwing money at the problem—whether there was money to throw or not—was often a problem. I remember showing up at the end of spring semester to the municipal airport in my college's town with eight bags, bewildered to find there were actual additional charges for checking more than my allotment. A phone call to my aunt and $400 later, she and I had lived through Life's Lesson #272. Many more experiences like this one followed in rapid succession, for she and I were both moving through an existence without grace's greatest teacher: my mother. In a single-car accident against a backwater backdrop of Texas countryside, my mother's death would represent a cruel turn in life's long and winding road; the silver lining has proven to be a kinship between a sister whose sense of duty to her baby sister kicked into overdrive and an only child who'd lost his best friend. Aunt Amanda and Cole were left to survive the best and only way we knew how: just ride the wave, and hold on tight.
Amanda was a pioneer, not giving fucks before anyone knew there could be none to give. An out lesbian in 1962, she was a world traveler by the time she was 21—and not that 18 European cities in four days bullshit but long, luxuriant stays in five-star hotels—all made possible by charming the capri pants off of continental women who knew what better looked like, and Amanda was it.
She'd be gone for months or years at a time, but her open-ended tickets eventually found their way home. She'd come bearing stories of a Basque bomb detonating while she dined al fresco at her favorite Spanish café—shards from her wine glass and a few pieces of shrapnel making a most exotic mosaic across her face. There were gifts of European candies, licorices especially, and tales of tantalizing sexual conquest—an earful for a pubescent gay-in-the-making like me but exactly what I needed to begin shaping the portal that would eventually take me to far-off places, too. Later in my teens, suspecting that I might be a bit light in the loafers, my mother sat me down and told me how Aunt Amanda would be glad to chat about her lifestyle, if ever I were curious to learn more. I just assumed she meant her party lifestyle, not the lady-on-lady action lifestyle. Infinitely more curious about mind-altering substances than body parts I'd only seen once, I haven't looked back since—never feeling shame or scorn for being exactly who I am supposed to be.
After my mother's death, Aunt Amanda wholeheartedly (well, perhaps with some reservations) accepted the challenge of raising me—to become the mother she never had and the one she never knew she had hiding inside all along. My Oma was a firecracker, a hoot and a holler of a grandmother—but as one might expect from a greasy spoon waitress—not the most present or loving creature. Of course, mothering didn't come naturally to Aunt Amanda. At first, we tried beating back the grief with iron fists. It was to be an emotion left for another day. Not now, and certainly not during my "bright college years, with pleasure rife—the shortest, gladdest years of life." The age of enablement went into full tilt. Amanda's perception and experience of parenthood showed a preference for phone calls and/or heartfelt cards, not just for one but for both Mother's Day and Father's Day. I could tell she took delight and caution exploring this foreign land without having to go through Customs. She was a balance of ego and id, a blend of darkness and light like a hologram flickering in the distance—brilliant to behold but oh so hard to catch. Unless you're a Texas State Trooper, which in that case, you'd send Amanda down river to the state pen and put her—a 50-year-old woman by then—on hoe squad in the soul-beating heat of the Texas sun. It was a long two years.
The surviving eventually got easier but also harder, because it became our M.O. to assume that a fight to keep or take what was ours always lurked on the horizon. We believed we had to measure and manage our way through things when really one foot in front of the other would've sufficed perfectly well enough. Things grew difficult for both of us, as I struggled with my own wayward tendencies, moving from city to city hoping to find a tribe or at least a better-dressed version of myself. And she battled her own demons, with many still lingering from less idyllic moments like rape in Haight-Ashbury—where even there it can't be all peace and love, all of the time. Several DUIs underscored the stark reality that she should've landed in the morgue on more than one occasion. Despite these setbacks, she never once said she couldn't jump to my or anyone's aid or that she simply didn't have it in her to at least try. Whether energy, time or money, somehow she always manifested exactly what was needed. I know there was magic—both the purest and most crystalline kind and a dash of the darker variety as well. She lived for the multifaceted, prismatic expressions of life—complex, out-of-place and out-of-time. She discovered the depths of her psyche and placed herself within a greater spiritual context—all of man, woman, galaxy, universe and existence combined.
Many Life's Lessons have transpired since we notched that first year of college—lost but lost together‚ where I was minus a mother but plus a Pan Aphrodite Mom-Slash-Dad Auntie BFF. And while her days of wild abandon came to a sudden halt when I was placed in her charge, she found riches in sitting still. She became a woman of the community; a uniter of people around the good that comes from seeing past superficial differences; a subversive educator of right and wrong; a multilingual speaker of Hospital Code, Bumpkin and French; a creator of art, love and beauty; a flawed yet flawless woman who gave all of herself without fail, without condition and never contingent upon unspoken rules—just universal truths we all know are right on the money.
The last 20 years of her life were spent as caretaker and joybringer to the dying. My Oma, my Aunt Roo Roo, my Godmother Suzanne, and all the other old crones and cantankerous curmudgeons you'd expect to find in a withering bedroom community on Lake Palestine, Texas. These were her people. She hated them. She loved them. And in them, she found home.
In her, I found the blueprint for the life I want to lead. And in my heart, she sits forever the sherpa, telling me what to do and where to go whether I like it or not.
Organizer
Cole Stevens
Organizer
Chicago, IL