#feels odd not to have written more about our fannish life but i knew her offline first

[glitterarygetsit]

Goodbye, Fawn

My brilliant friend Fawn (@esterbrook) died on Friday.

Fawn and I met when I was about 24 and she was about 43, and at the time, foolishly, I thought I was the cool one. I very quickly realised that I was wrong, and that Fawn was who I wanted to be when I grew up. 

She was independent, funny, smart, and passionate. If there was anything she didn’t like, she would do something about it—she campaigned for abortion rights and did phone banking for US elections. She was sharp and kind and pragmatic and gave amazing advice.

Fawn loved stories and history—we met on an archaeological training dig in York, and later bonded over fic in the Sherlock fandom—and was forever turning up old letters and pens and other things that she breathed new life into. She found a pen at a flea market and tracked down its original owner; she chronicled a WWII romance from a box of photographs (https://www.tumblr.com/a-certain-party-i-love).

For the past twenty years, Fawn kept a diary that will now be donated to a women’s history library. I hope one day someone devotes as much care to her memory as she did to other people’s.

I find it hard to think of many people who are leaving as big a legacy as Fawn. Her activism, writing (also wrote the first book on surviving at work when you have depression), and (towards the end of her life) participation in a clinical trial have helped so many people directly, and will continue to reverberate. 

And she’s still not done: even before she was diagnosed with ALS, she arranged to donate her body to forensic science (and wrote about it here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/well/live/my-afterlife-on-the-body-farm.html).

I’m so lucky to have been able to make wonderful memories with Fawn. We went on a road trip in Northumberland and laughed at all the dicks in Chesters Roman fort with her friend Martin, who I would eventually move to Berlin with; she visited us there and baked a derby pie full of bourbon for Friendsgiving. We went to Brittany and got emotional about the Neolithic standing stones at Carnac. We walked all over London and she showed me spots I didn’t even know about despite living there for three years.

In May, I got to visit her in her beloved San Francisco, where she introduced me to tamales, giant redwoods, and her cat Cosmo, successor of Rupert, the fluffiest and most handsome gentleman who accompanied her for most of her last ten years. 

We went over and under the Golden Gate bridge, drank many cups of coffee, roamed around the Castro and Haight-Ashbury, waved across the Pacific, browsed bookshops and made sourdough and did laundry and talked until late into the night.

She was diagnosed with ALS less than a year and a half ago, which was the cruellest fucking thing not only because she deserved so much more time on this earth, but because it made talking, eating and living independently—all things she adored—so much more difficult and eventually impossible. She chose to take advantage of California’s aid in dying law and leave on her own terms, because nobody was ever the boss of Fawn, not even death.

Fawn, I miss you already. I always imagined we would one day be old ladies cackling at dirty jokes together, and it’s a crying shame that the world has been robbed of the wicked glint in your eye at least thirty years too early. You changed my life for the better in so many ways, and I still want to be you when I grow up. I love you. Sleep well.