A Celebration of Amy Coseo’s Life

May 11, 2024 / Missoula, Montana / 4-8 PM+

3500 Duncan Drive, Map Below

We will gather to remember Amy and celebrate in her spirit. All who knew and loved Amy are welcome. Come for any or all of the afternoon and evening, leave when you are moved to.

Dogs are NOT allowed, sorry fur friends!

Bring these things:

• A chair or blanket for people who want to sit
• Beverages you would enjoy (alcohol OK)
• A towel etc. if you are moved to dip in Rattlesnake Creek (!)
• Optional: A potluck item to share + plates/utensils. We will provide light food
• Optional: a 9x9 inch piece of art in honor of Amy. Need not be “good!”Art can be anonymous! There will be supplies to create art at the event.

Here’s the plan:

4pm - Gather at Dave Harmon’s ranch next to Rattlesnake Creek and the PEAS Farm.

Meet friends old and new, create some art to share, choose some of Amy’s treasured objects to keep, disperse, curate and/or inspire.

5pm - Ceremony of celebration for Amy, including stories, music, and a group spiral-dance / cinnamon-roll hug!

6pm - Food, including potluck items and beverages. More music, including a playlist of Amy’s favorites.

Optional - Communing with the Creek - cool your heels, spirit, and mind with a plunge into healing waters that Amy loved.

7pm - Bonfire, stories, music.

PLEASE SHARE THIS INVITE WITH OTHERS WHO KNEW AND LOVED AMY!

On the last Sunday of October I had a party to make raven costumes for the upcoming Festival of the Dead in Missoula. The Festival is based on the Dia de los Muertos tradition in Mexico. While carefully watching out for cultural toes, Missoula adapts the beguiling wisdom of that Latino tradition to a very white-bread Montana.

After attending for years, Amy and I innovated a little by bringing raven spirits to the procession. With help from a friend we made all-black costumes out of river restoration materials; plastic mesh tree-protectors and landscaping cloth, plus cardboard and zip-ties. We fashioned flexible wings and tails and strapped ridiculous beaks onto our faces with pieces of bike inner tubes. Topped with black clothes, balaclavas, and ski goggles we were totally anonymous and ready to fly.

The procession is full of drummers, giant skeletal puppets, and all manner of people dressed in flowers and-black outfits with skulls and bones. There are huge prints on masts, dogs in costume, and people carrying intricate shrines to passed loved ones - photos, flowers, favorite objects, and treasured symbols. It’s a festival and a collective mourning for lost loves; a genuine celebration and a communal cry of grief.

We ravens dance and fly about with wild abandon; gyrating our wings to the drummers and salsa bands, weaving through the marchers with flighty speed, circling out into the sidewalks to surprise and draw in the bystanders. We embody a joyous rebellion and a dash of chaos that to me feels necessary to the procession.

Life and death are circled by the unexpected, the unpredictable, the frights and unchosen delights that we somehow need. We ravens become the wise fools, perplexing tricksters, encircling and overseeing, trying to keep the world whole.

In past years there were just two or three of us ravens in the procession. This year Amy's galactic network made close to forty costumes! The construction party lasted most of the day, with Amy’s friends, co-workers, and neighbors gathered in my backyard, teaching each other how to make the wings and beaks, collaborating on new designs and ideas. Amy would have loved the crafty fun and laughter that lasted well into the night.

The next week, on the Day of the Dead, we gathered our "Kindness" of ravens  downtown at the far end of the main street. Three, five, ten, twelve ravens… and then just too many to count. Everyone had taken their costumes home and made them their own, with feathery extensions, articulated beaks and masks, bowler hats and flowered jewelry; all manner of birdy-bling. It was nearly impossible to say who was who, but some had an uncanny ability to see through the dark disguises and welcome friends by name.

We warmed up dancing with the drummers in the fading twilight, and then the whole procession started moving. Ravens flew all around, darting through the marchers, dancing with abandon, tango-ing with each other, swooping through the crowds on the sidewalks. People started mimicking our winged moves with big smiles. I bet there will be some unknown spontaneous ravens next year, and that would have pleased Amy enormously.

The procession wound through town and down to a park by the river. Under a huge pavilion the drummers took center stage while everyone danced in circles around them. We were hot from so much ravenous dancing, but at a crescendo of the drumming I led our Kindness into the central circle for a big winged dance.

My heart was pounding and sweat was pouring down my face behind the mask. I felt, and I think everyone felt, a kind of unfettered joy mixed with sorrow. It all melded wholly into this life and reached toward whatever is beyond. Reaching, remembering, celebrating together. It was quite a thing to do.

—------------

For me the procession at the Festival of the Dead this year was a milestone. It was just a few days before the anniversary of Amy’s death on November 7th. It was the last memorial event I will do for her.

I’ve felt an obligation to Amy, to her family and friends, and to myself to roundly celebrate her life and to mourn her death. These have been beautiful and engaging events that I think would have pleased Amy. I’m endlessly thankful for everyone who has helped make these days as touching and joyful as they were.

But the year has passed and it’s time to let those times go as well. I believe Amy would have wanted me, and us, to spend our energy on building community in this fraught time for our nation, caring for people and the planet, making beautiful things, and appreciating the amazing world we live in. I’ll always do those things in her spirit. I’ll keep her sharp eyes, collaborative mind, and joyful smile alive while I move forward in my life. I hope to keep all your company on the way.

Video of the paragliding flight

https://photos.app.goo.gl/X1s…

On a sunny late June morning I got up early, knowing that this was the day to fly. Ben, a friend who teaches paragliding, had agreed to take me on a tandem flight. Further, he agreed that I could release some of Amy's ashes in the air.

I went to Amy's room looking for something right to carry the ashes in, and immediately found a small black cloth bag that was embroidered with the words quote “Fly Free." I had never noticed it before.

My friend Colin and his 7 year-old daughter Aila were staying with me, but I was planning to meet Ben alone. Aila noticed me filling the bag and softly crying. She told Colin, and he quickly asked if he could come with me. I was deeply grateful to both of them for seeing my unvoiced need for companionship on this strange adventure.

Ben, Colin, and I, along with my two dogs, started up from the base of Mount Sentinel, carrying the wing, water, and the small Fly Free bag. All my companions were hiking faster than me, and sweat poured off me in the hot morning sun. I suddenly felt strangely unsure and out of sorts about the flight.

Soon we arrived at the top of the mountain. We sampled the wind in a few places, then found a good place to launch and got harnessed up. As we laid out the wing I felt swirls of excitement, pangs of fear, a cloudbank of sadness. But I was resolved to fly for Amy.

I often told her I wanted to try paragliding, and one Christmas she gave me a cute paraglider drawing inscribed with, “May your dreams take flight!” But I never took her up on the offer to buy me a flight. I didn’t want to burden her always-tight budget, and I admit I was also a bit fearful. Standing on the side of Mount Sentinel above our home town, I wished she was there to see me go for it at last.

And then Ben and I were strapped together, run-waddling down the hillside! The wing sprang up behind us and then my feet only pushed against air. the grassy slope receded below and I looked up to see the valley, the city, the whole world we knew sliding around me to the sound of rushing wind. I wondered what Amy's bright eyes and creative mind would have seen in these moments.

There were no thermals we could ride upward yet, so this flight was going to be short. I fumbled in my pocket for the Fly-Free bag and held it out to release a silver stream of Amy’s ashes. They instantly merged with the roaring air that held us up.

Then, just as quickly as the flight had begun, the ground grew large and it was over. The adventure was short and perfect, and the exactly right thing to do. I was and am hugely grateful for the chance to do it. But even this tribute left me feeling hollow. The loss is touched and honored, but not erased. Amy really is gone, and even the traces of her life are receding from me.

After the flight I left town to teach a climate and energy course on a bike tour across Montana.  I love learning with college students, weaving through their climate fears and hopes, finding the actual impacts of CO2 concentrations for places and people, tracing the ways techno-legalese energy policies lead to actual power sources for communities. It's all deeply engaging. On the course my personal dramas often recede against the national and planetary dramas that we all face.

But when it was over and we all headed home, the mysteries and sadness of Amy's death suddenly grew large again, and I began to think about the next step of remembering and celebrating Amy's life.

I wanted to bring more of Amy's lovely things to her family at a gathering of the Eastern arm of her galaxy of connections in upstate New York. This meant another round of sorting and sifting through her possessions. In doing this I saw again how much books mattered to Amy. She had so many! And so good. There is a cornucopia of works on spirituality, business, healing, poetry, and art on her shelves, more than I could ever read.

I could have found places to sell or donate these beloved volumes, but that didn't feel right to me. So I took one of her small bookshelves and fashioned it into a free library in front of our house. The cobbled structure bears all the marks of my hack-carpenter skillset; but I think it's pretty cute. Especially with a placemat Amy's niece and nephew made for her tacked onto the front. Before I even finished the library someone deposited a cool graphic novel.

Amy simply could not pass up these neighborhood book depots, and she got lots of her reading material from them. I wish I had built this one while she was around to enjoy it, but I love that her passion for art and wisdom is now spreading across our town, like silver dust in the wind.  

As you know, we held a memorial celebration for Amy on May 11. It was near our house in the Rattlesnake Valley, just upstream on a friend’s ranch that we passed nearly every day walking with friends and dogs. I’m so grateful for the many people who helped and attended, and for the well-wishes of the many who could not come.

I brought some of Amy’s myriad treasures to share; beads, yarn, heart-rocks, candles, books on gardening and cooking, crystals and beautiful cloths. I asked people to take these things with them, and to do with them what felt right in Amy’s spirit. These things were meant to be shared.

We had Amy’s art up on the walls, and we had a fine collaborative art project that many people joined. (When all the beautiful pastel pieces are assembled I’ll share photos of it) We made a scholarship for youth art in Amy’s name that people could contribute to. John Floridis played perfect music for the occasion - thanks so much for that!

People spoke about Amy, too. Juanita Vero, a good friend (and our County Commissioner) MC’ed. Amy’s high school friend Aaron Ritzenberg told of outrageous youthful adventures with Amy and the long friendship they shared. The Silver Linings cancer survivor group shared appreciations and poetry. My brother TR read a letter from Amy’s family. I spoke last, reading from this text:

—---------------

I returned from teaching a course in Utah a couple weeks ago. After a long, monochromatic Montana winter it’s lovely to immerse in the earthy reds and yellows of the Colorado Plateau. I rejoice in the warmth and depth of the canyons I visit each year, and I love seeing that place through the fresh eyes of my students.

Deep time is palpable there among the layered remains of ancient seas and dunes, with dinosaur tracks under our feet and native art high on the walls. The canyons make me feel impossibly small, but also make it clear that I participate in a beautiful vastness.

Coming home from those desert sojourns has been equally amazing. I return to the Northern Rockies in the midst of their spring molt. The mountains are shaking off their white coats of snow and the streams are jumping with the melt. Flying migrants fill the forests with song, and green tufty leaves poke out of the wet soils and dry branches. Every day new flowers promise to spring out of the hillsides and I can’t wait to find them.

For most of the last 15 years I have also come home to Amy. She’d be busy with work and filthy with gardening. Unwashed garlic bulbs would cover tables and seed packets fanned out over the washer and dryer. As soon as I walked in the front door Amy would haul me out the back to see tulips and irises and a sweet bird’s nest in the hawthorn tree.

This year she’s not here. I know that sad fact better than my own name, but somehow I keep forgetting it. Parts of me insist that she can’t really be gone. This vibrant season makes her absence easier to bear in some ways, but the season itself has lost something essential for me.

Spring is missing that supercharged joy and the bustling engaged hope that Amy gave it. I’m looking for that spirit in myself and family and our friends. While the season charges on I’m searching the waters and skies and forests for that vitality and a future after Amy.

Spring’s green momentum carried Amy along through her years. She had loves for every season, but Spring was her happiest place. It mirrored the way she was in the world; forward-looking, bursting with ideas, exuberantly exploring. Sewing new life into and out of treasured patterns. Planting seeds of gorgeous change on a dance through the world.

Amy’s dance ended too quickly and far too soon. That ending holds sorrows and lessons for us all. The loss of her will be an unwelcome companion for the rest of my life.

But I believe there is a point to being with Amy's loss and remembering her life. It triggers fountains of memories and inspirations. I choose to dwell in and remember the lovely and surprising moves Amy made, her flights of innovation and imagination, the care with which she wove people and animals and plants and ideas into her life. I choose to celebrate the burning, laughing, dancing loves that Amy carried for all of us and the world.

For moments we will all forget and remember Amy. We will all have to feel sharp thorns of sadness and loneliness. We will all sometimes return to an empty room when we are desperate for a warm hearth and welcoming eyes. At those times we can remember the care and inspiration Amy showed us. If we listen, for the rest of our lives we can hear echoes of Amy’s irrepressible instinct to celebrate and connect.

We can all access that spark of Amy's spirit when we need it. We can reach out to anyone here for a reminder and a hug. And we can look toward the coming of Spring.

—-----------

After the ceremony we did another spiral dance. I tried for a more advanced version that would have had us circulating in and out, but that failed rather spectacularly. What succeeded finally was bringing everyone together tightly at the end, rolling into the warmest, enormous-est, hug I can remember.

Then we headed toward the creek and many of us got ready to wade into that molten cold. Clothing scattered among the old leaves and new shoots. We yelled and laughed and splashed in the waters Amy loved. We joined the wild current of Spring and emerged refreshed, alive, together, exultant.

Thanks again, everyone.

Reminder of the Memorial Celebration for Amy

Saturday, May 11, 4-8pm, Harmon Ranch, 3500 Duncan Drive, Missoula.

If you are reading this you have no doubt seen the full invitation to this event.

Here are some reminders and updates:

It’s going to be warm and sunny! Bring a sun hat, etc. There will be drinking water available at the ranch to fill bottles.

Since it’s going to be warm, dipping in the creek will be appealing. Consider bringing water clothes, shoes and a towel.

Potluck items are much appreciated! We will have some plates, mugs, and silverware available, but having your own will help.

If driving, follow signs to the parking area from Duncan Drive.

Biking to the ranch is great - you can take the dirt road along Rattlesnake Creek behind the PEAS Farm. Look for a gate and a sign.

Here’s the basic plan:

4-5 Gather and meet, music, light food, art project

5-6 Memorial Celebration with speakers and music

6-7 Food, Creek Plunge, Art Project, Share Memories

7 Campfire

Hope to see you soon!

Hello Amy’s family and friends,

I have a little news. We will have a memorial celebration in Missoula on Saturday May 11. Details will follow in a few weeks when we work them out. I can say there will be art, shared food, music, remembrances, tears, and many lovely people who loved Amy.

Here is some more writing for Amy that I did a couple weeks ago on a mountain sojourn:

March 10, Driggs Idaho

Yesterday Erik and I skied in the Tetons. We went to a point called 25 Short - called that because its elevation is 9,975 feet. It’s spectacular; just south of the Grand Teton and below Buck Mountain and the whole Teton Range. It’s a high aerie where we humans can perch only briefly.

It’s a long way up to 25 Short, about 3,500 feet of gain from the parking lot. It certainly felt long this time on some older legs that have barely skied this season. Our feet were bathing in sweat in our ski boots, which led to some pretty shocking blisters. But the bluebird clear skies tempted us upward to the realm of rock faces, spiky aretes, and steep couloirs - graced with the spiraling tracks of skiers far more adventurous than us.

The last time I was here was with Amy a few years ago. We had got a late start and it was a push to get up there in time. But the evening light was clear as the sun edged down toward the Teton skyline. Near the top, we spied the Grand through the trees and snuck out to the edge for a look. Amy was entranced with the beauty of the place and high from the endorphins made climbing up there. I was so glad to be with her in that lofty spot.

This time, Erik and I sat on the sun-warmed rocks on top and nursed our feet. A friendly mountain guide offered (good) advice for the descent, and a young snowboarder couple geared up to make fast-flowing turns down the bowl to the south. When they were gone, I pulled out a black cloth bag with Amy’s beadwork jewelry and some of her ashes. I stood on an airy point and released the ashes to the wind. Then I read some of my words to her, and embraced Erik, and we cried a bit for missing Amy.

Then we clicked into our skis and dropped off the ridge into the bowl, making our own fairly elegant arcs down the mountain. At least we didn’t crash on the sun-cooked zipper-crust or slushy spots between the “hot pow.” The fine light held for us through the aspens and firs, and out across the flats to the car. We wriggled and winced out of our ski boots and enjoyed a drink gazing out at the mountains, faces glowing with sunburn. It was a fun, sad, glorious day.

I like to think of Amy’s spirit dwelling high on 25 Short. Flying along with the wily nutcrackers and glossy ravens. Hearing the happy chatter of mountain travelers. Exulting in the storms and snows and sunshine. Merging with that immense, inspiring vista.

It's been some time since I've posted anything here, but I have been writing all along in fits and starts. And I'm thinking about you all.  Love - Dave

March 7th. It’s now four months since Amy died. It seems like a lifetime ago, and like yesterday. Time is strange.

I’ve headed to the Tetons after a storm, looking for a bit of solitude and some much-missed skiing time. On the way here ground blizzards beached me in Rexburg Idaho and I slept in my car, rocking with the winds. But the next day I skied more vertical than I have all year with my ski-patrolling friend Kelsey, using the luxurious lifts at Grand Targhee. My legs are sore but I’m happy with my trip so far.

Today I skate-skied solo and thought a lot about Amy, and about life and death. On the way down here I listened to a conversation about Ernest Becker, an anthropologist who wrote a book called The Denial of Death. His main point is that knowing that we will die structures much of our lives and cultures. We seek distraction from that truth in all manner of busyness; we seek to bypass death by achieving fame or riches or enduring works; we transfer our fear of death onto others and become dedicated warriors against them. None of this is necessary. We could be freer and happier if this denial was less prominent in our culture.

I read that book as a college student and reveled in its piercing insights. At that time I had almost no life experience with loss, and so the ideas floated around my head and didn’t weigh on my heart. Now I see the costs of denying the truth more clearly. Even knowing this I, and we, spend too much time on trivia and illusions; and too little on the real connections, joys, and sorrows that make a life vibrant and unique.

Also on the drive, I listened to a conversation with Jack Kornfield, a meditation teacher who was instrumental in bringing and adapting Buddhism to the West. My family has long appreciated Jack’s kindness and insight. Amy and I read his books and listened to his talks.

Jack talked about the insubstantial nature of the selves we inhabit. At bottom, the self is a story we keep repeating to ourselves and that is reinforced by our families, friends, and cultures. This kind of self has helped us get along in the world and evolve. But it’s really just a story - sometimes happy, sometimes sad, sometimes incoherent and mystifying. We all work on our stories; we try to make them happier, to find heroic and immortal roles for ourselves in them, to excise chapters we’d rather forget. We need to have these self-stories to unify ourselves, but Jack’s message is that we don’t have to take them so seriously. One definition of enlightenment is liberation from these stories.

I am listening to Jack again because meditation is one way I’ve been coping with losing Amy. Sitting in silence and in deeper conversations I’ve been noticing many parts of myself - parts that are sad and depressive, parts that seem bright and innovative, parts that wonder and appreciate, parts that tend to spiral downward and others that irrepressibly rise ever-higher. There’s not just one voice in there, but multitudes that call and chorus, agree and argue.

I need metaphors to approach and express my thoughts these days. I imagine these parts of me forming like those fast schools of fish, or those clouds of birds that expand and contract in fantastically shifting forms. Murmurations! I think all of our selves are a bit like this - made of a multitude of thoughts, desires, emotions, and particles of experience that we weave into something that feels like us. It feels real, it feels like us - yet it can dissolve and reform, take and abandon shape, condense into a tight ball and then fly apart into space.

So, in this metaphor, when these clouds come close to each other they share parts of themselves, they create new strands of stories, ideas, emotions and experiences that get woven together and can fly along together, their edges blurred and melded. We might call this a friendship, a religion, or a tribe. When people really get close these clouds of selves can merge almost completely and it gets hard to tell who is who. Where do I end and you start? “I” can disappear into “we.”

So when a close person disappears from our lives we do lose parts of ourselves. Our blurred overlaps that created fantastic (or terrible) new forms that were impossible alone can fall away. We mourn the collaborative and dynamic life we had together. It can never be the same, but it was never going to remain the same anyway. It’s like trying to freeze a cloud in the perfect alligator shape we happened to notice - ain’t going to happen. A cloud’s nature is to change, and that changeable nature is part of why we love them.

Thanks for following me into some esoteric thoughts. These musings might seem far from Amy’s life and death, but losing her has moved my cloud of being profoundly, and this is one of the places it’s gone. I can’t deny the tragic and beautiful nature of our lives. I feel the sadness and incomprehension of her death every day. It’s just that we can’t really keep anything to ourselves. All we have is each cloudy or brilliant evanescent moment; falling together and apart. That and the open space in which all of it happens.

—------------------------

Twelve (or so) years ago–

I remember taking Amy on some of her first big backcountry days out in the Tetons. On a stormy day off the Pass Ridge, we were climbing toward a favorite run of mine called Edelweiss. I had been teaching Amy how to ski powder, which requires a delicate blend of effort, angles, unweighting, and timing. Our mantra to encourage a bouncy rhythm was, “Inner Bunny, Inner Bunny…”

As we climbed toward the top of Edelweiss the storm kicked up a notch toward real blizzard. There wasn’t much I could do to help Amy’s slogging up the ridge into the teeth of the wind-driven snow, so I continued to the top and the shelter of a lonely whitebark pine. I looked back at Amy and watched her methodically skinning along, showing no sign of effort or pain. When she got to the tree I asked how it was getting up the ridge. She said it was hard, but she just embodied another winter-adapted animal, telling herself, “I am a yak. This is what we do, We walk through storms. I am a yak. Blizzards are no problem. I am a yak…”

I miss that spirit!

I believe I first met Amy through women's ice hockey. We also had many overlapping circles of friends and colleagues in the nonprofit and entrepreneurial space over the years. During my time at Mamalode, Amy rented office space from us down at Caras Park. We built one of Missoula's early co-working spaces. Amy was the person who told me about Leadership Montana and encouraged me to apply and gave me a reference. I sought her support and advice when I ran for Missoula City Council a couple of years ago. Whenever I think of Amy, I see her smiling face and a person who was always full of positive energy. She battled cancer with a remarkable attitude and I know she built a lasting community, created new friendships, and found new purpose through that experience. I found this great video she did for Community Medical Center. Hope you enjoy it. 

https://vimeo.com/205669231

I think about Amy often and still can't quite believe she's no longer with us.