Meet Katie.
Sharp-witted, musical, stubborn, generous, and gloriously unsentimental about love.
Katie was Christopher’s partner. In the memoir, he called her Ava. Here, she is remembered by her real name.
KatieMusic, sarcasm, glitter, and a refusal to let love become solemn all the time.Joy withteeth.
Katie sang, loved karaoke, wore sarcasm like sunscreen, and could make affection sound like a beautifully specific threat.
She worked with quiet competence, rooted fiercely for other people, left handwritten notes in unexpected places, and made Christopher feel seen without asking him to perform being okay. She could laugh at one of his dad jokes and then look personally betrayed by the existence of the next twelve.
They met in the summer of 2024 by the pool at Christopher’s apartment complex. A conversation that was supposed to be brief lasted for hours. Their relationship grew through music, beach drives, burned toast, Shadow, karaoke, recovery, mess, and the ordinary work of choosing one another.
She did not leave notes. She left proof.
Katie tucked messages into pockets, under pillows, near toothpaste, and inside the ordinary machinery of a shared life.
They mattered then because they interrupted shame with humor and reassurance. They matter now because they preserve her voice exactly as it was: affectionate, irreverent, impatient with despair, and never remotely interested in sounding like a greeting-card committee.
Enter the card archiveShe left the world mid-sentence.
Katie passed away on April 13, 2025.
She remains in the cards, songs, punchlines, glitter, remembered arguments, Shadow checking the door, and the private language that survived her.
This page is not an attempt to make grief tidy. It is a place to meet the person before encountering the archive she left behind.
“You will never understand just how ridiculously happy your existence makes me.”
