I hadn't concerned myself much with “making an impact” until people around me started dying.

There's a blissful naïveté to youth. Life feels ahead of you, the possibilities endless. If you're privileged to not have too many responsibilities (aging parents, children), you can be floating like a feather for a good long while before anyone starts to raise an eyebrow. "Direction" isn't something that needs to be sought out — it would find you (probably? right?).

Prior to the summer of 2024, I was solidly in my floating period, until a two-month stretch changed me fundamentally. The initial catalyst, a brutal conversation with a billionaire (a story for another day), had left my head spinning, shining a light on the questions I had gotten very good at not asking myself: why I had so little direction, why I avoided taking real risk, how much of my sense of self was propped up on the historically egoic, career-oriented validation I'd spent my twenties collecting. As I began to grapple with these existential quandaries in my mind, I realized the floating was starting to feel less like freedom and more like avoidance. And then, in September 2024, my world got rocked.

My grandmother ("Granny", affectionately) passed away a week after I had last seen her on a work trip to New York. She was 91, a true salt-of-the-earth, New Jersey born-and-bred Irish-American woman. She "tsk-ed" my choice to get a nose ring, but cared deeply for me nonetheless. She cheered for her grandkids' victories, sang and danced without a hint of embarrassment, and would always slip us $10 when we left the Christmas festivities (no one had filled Granny in that the purchasing power of $10 has sharply declined, but hey… a dollar is a dollar). My family is very tight-knit, and though we had known she was dying, you can never preempt the grief you may feel.

While back in Rutherford for the funeral, one of those union towns that feels stuck in time despite being 11 miles outside of Manhattan, I got news that my childhood best friend’s father had died. His esophageal cancer, which had been in remission for some time, had come back with a vengeance, and his family had just a few weeks to spend with him before he passed.

Here I was, already back on the East Coast, black dress packed. I had been living a 6-hour flight away for so long that I knew this was one of those important moments where I needed to be there for my friend. So, instead of hopping on my originally scheduled EWR-SFO flight, I jumped on I-95 back down to the District to attend the wake at the Capitol Hill staple "Tune Inn".

Those two weeks of wakes, funerals, and eulogies forced me to come face-to-face with my own mortality for the first time in a while (ever?).

Both my grandmother and my friend’s dad (Neil) were absolute giants in their own right.

My grandmother spent nearly her entire life within a 15-mile radius of where she was born. A Marine's wife and mother of 4, she had a gift for caregiving and emotional warmth that my aspirationally WASP-y maternal grandparents could never muster. Granny was the school nurse of the local middle school for 33 years, and even after retiring continued to volunteer at the Senior Center and play an active role on the Board of Education. Given the long and fulfilling life she had lived (though the last few years had been exceptionally hard as her health had deteriorated in a slower, more painful manner than I wish for anyone, requiring a massive amount of family lean in to help make her comfortable), her funeral felt like a true celebration of life.

The most beautiful aspect of Granny's funeral was realizing just how many lives she had gotten to positively shape over her decades of service to others. To me, she was Granny — the sweet, sometimes stern old lady. But to hundreds of Rutherford locals, she was the woman who helped care for them when they felt sick, put Band-Aids on their cuts they received at recess, and knew when to wink and turn a blind eye and let them lie down for a nap (knowing full well they were conveniently missing a math test they hadn't studied for). I have never had more people come up to me with such kind words, heartwarming stories they were eager to share, and love for the caring woman who not only raised my father and his siblings but also, seemingly, everyone in the area for almost half a century. The funeral procession was police-escorted past the middle school and Granny's old home on Mortimer Avenue — a bit absurd given the church, school, and house sat mere blocks apart. But the respect the whole town paid her floored me.

My friend's father's funeral was a different tenor entirely. I knew Neil as a goofy yet razor-sharp guy — the type of dad who took genuine interest in the hobbies of his daughters and us friends. When he asked you a question, he actually listened to the answer. Some parents don't get involved in their kids' lives. Neil was the opposite: eager to hear what new band we'd discovered, how the theater production we were putting on was going, what half-baked urban adventure we'd just embarked on. He actually wanted to know.

The turnout to his wake and funeral dwarfed whatever small claim I had on him. DC big-wigs and politicos filled the service, a testament to the sheer magnitude of his decades of work as a prolific journalist and author. Beyond his sincere yet affable nature that warmed everyone he came into contact with, it became very apparent to me that his canon was revered by many — years of cutting news coverage, retelling American stories, Pulitzer Prize-winning pieces. Secret Service flanked the entrances (probably Biden, maybe Obama, but growing up in that milieu you learn not to crane your neck too hard to see who's around). It was a beautiful homage to a wonderful man, and also, somehow, a networking event. As my other high school best friend wiped away the tears she'd been bawling all through mass, the suited man in the row behind us shouted across the aisle the moment it began to adjourn: "Bill! Your recent piece on Medicaid was illuminating!"

Neil was only 65, gone too early, but he had left his mark on his community, along with a body of work that would outlast him.

As I rushed from Capitol Hill to make my night flight from Dulles, I could not help but reflect on the whirlwind of an experience I had just had. Both my grandmother and my friend's father had made deep impacts on many, many people, in distinctly different ways. One, the small-town caregiver. Devoting her life to intimate service of those in her immediate community. In a day and age where flightiness and optionality are often the perpetuated social norms, Granny was of another time — a union girl, a woman who knew herself and how her spirit could heal others, who watched generations of children grow up in her school halls. Then Neil, an insatiably curious wanderer, a world traveler — a man who turned his zest for life into thousands of column inches, his wordsmanship into the stories the country read over its morning coffee.

For better or for worse, those two turbulent weeks awakened something in me: a desire to leave the kind of mark they did. September 2024 was also the first month I started my YouTube channel — my first real foray into building something that might outlast the career gold stars I'd spent my twenties chasing. I don't know yet whether the mark I leave looks more like Granny's or like Neil's. I just know I'd count myself lucky to have a room like either of theirs at the end.

Curiously,

Kate

I was recently listening to a podcast interview with Emily Sundberg, the writer behind Feed Me, and a quote that stuck with me was, “A slow news day isn’t the worst thing for my newsletter… a hangover is.”

And today, I felt that 😅

For a girl who has spent 80% of her time back in the DC area itching to leave it, this last week I was shockingly popular. It affirmed how much community building I’ve been doing in the last nine months, despite the unexpected caregiving responsibilities.

All that is to say, apologies for the extra late send! How was your weekend? ❤

The best part of sending this newsletter is what lands in my inbox after.