All That Mattered with Megan Falley

Poet and writer Megan Falley joined Prentis to share about the life of her late partner Andrea Gibson, and generously offered her learnings on how we can live our lives as richly and fully in the time given. 

• Watch “Come See Me in the Good Light” on Apple
• Follow Megan on Substack: Things That Don't Suck
• Check our her book Drive Here and Devastate Me

Transcript

Megan Falley
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Prentis Hemphill
00:05 - 00:13
Hi everybody, welcome back to Becoming The People. I'm Prentis Hemphill. I'm very excited to be with you today. What an episode I have.

Prentis Hemphill
00:13 - 00:49
It was just so timely that I was scheduled to talk to Megan Falley this week because as you all know I've been moving through a lot of grief and who better to talk to about the beauty and the pain of loving and grieving the Megan Falley who is an incredible poet and writer who was married to the incredible poet writer Andrea Gibson. who passed away last year. If you have not read Andrea Gibson's work, you must.

Prentis Hemphill
00:49 - 01:11
And if you have not seen the film that really chronicles so much of their relationship and the tail end of Andrea's life, it's called Come See Me in the Good Light. It's nominated for an Oscar, which is well-deserved. You should definitely check out that film today. watch it on Apple TV.

Prentis Hemphill
01:12 - 01:42
So if you have Apple TV or can borrow somebody's login, you must watch that film. It is breathtaking meditation on love and presence and how we can live these lives as richly, as fully as possible in any of the time that we're given. We are grateful, grateful, grateful to be in conversation with Megan. She is a generous and thoughtful and wise, wonderful person that I'm so grateful I've gotten to meet.

Prentis Hemphill
01:42 - 02:02
I feel like I found a new friend and this conversation was exactly right on time for me. Touched into some very tender places. And I know that this is, this walk of grief is not one that anyone really gets to avoid. So I hope that you feel some companionship from both of us in this episode.

Prentis Hemphill
02:03 - 02:11
I really hope you enjoy it. Take good care. Megan Falley, I'm so glad that you're here. Thanks for saying yes to Becoming the People.

Megan Falley
02:12 - 02:16
A very easy, obvious yes. So thanks for having me.

Prentis Hemphill
02:16 - 02:32
Jeez. Thanks. I've heard you say a number of times now, and I keep hearing it repeated, that this question, how you're doing, is not the question for you right now. And it's not even usually the question I try to ask when I get in with people.

Prentis Hemphill
02:33 - 02:38
So what I'm curious about mostly is how are you spending time these days?

Megan Falley
02:40 - 03:34
Right now, my mother is in town for, she's staying with me for three weeks and she's staying with me in anticipation for a show we're doing, I'm doing at Red Rocks, which is the film premiere of Andrea's, my late partner's final performance. And she's here supporting me, getting everything ready until then. And I think maybe that's a good sort of microcosm example of how I'm doing in a larger way and how I'm spending my time, which is trying to make art that honors Andrea, and also filling my life with love and support.

Prentis Hemphill
03:34 - 04:09
I wanted to talk to you for so long, and I also wanted to talk to Andrea when they were alive, and we followed each other on Instagram, and I kept having these moments of like, just reach out, just reach out, just reach out. And one of the stories I can tell myself all the time is like, oh, people are busy, and lives are complicated. There's been a couple times that this podcast where I thought you should have just fucking reached out and connected with this person, but I'm grateful to them and to you because I feel so touched by their life and their work. And I was a fan of Andrea's work.

Prentis Hemphill
04:10 - 04:34
I wonder for you the huge outpouring of love. For me, when Andrea passed, I thought, oh my gosh, we are celebrating the life of a poet. And it was just something so... beautiful and magical about that for me that I saw people just pouring out love, the life of a poet who spoke to the texture of life so beautifully.

Prentis Hemphill
04:35 - 04:43
I wonder just like how it's been for you to witness this kind of, I don't know, this surge of love for Andrea, for your partner.

Megan Falley
04:45 - 05:30
It was really incredible to watch the internet become basically wallpapered with Andrea after their death. I felt like anytime I opened my phone or even There was things in the newspaper, there were things on television that somebody was talking about Andrea. And I think I felt really lucky, which is such a strange word, but one that I always come back to during this time. It almost felt like my phone was a reflection of what was happening internally as well.

Megan Falley
05:31 - 06:08
Whereas often I think we lose somebody and we watch everyone just going about their lives and posting what they had for breakfast. And I felt like the world stopped in tandem with my world stopping. And I could only truly find gratitude for that and realize I'm in a unique situation to have loved somebody that was also beloved by the world, and maybe to a capacity that I didn't even know how much. And then I think more people found out about Andrea.

Megan Falley
06:11 - 06:15
Post, do you say posthumously, posthumously? What's the word?

Prentis Hemphill
06:15 - 06:24
That's one of those words when I read it, I go, I know what that means and we're going to move on. I think it's, I don't know. I don't know, Megan. Neither of us know.

Megan Falley
06:24 - 06:27
Okay. Yeah. Well, we know it from reading, which means. We know what it means.

Megan Falley
06:28 - 06:45
That's a good, a good way to know something. Anyway, I felt more and more people started to learn about Andrew and fall in love with him, which also was really, really a gift of that time, rather than less and less people speaking their name, it was more and more people.

Prentis Hemphill
06:48 - 07:12
Yeah. And to me, it felt like a testament to how their work worked, because it feels like it almost nested inside of me in a place inside of me. And when they were gone, it was like there was just something that wanted to really burst forward and out the way that they called on us to do. They like planted a seed in each of us.

Prentis Hemphill
07:12 - 07:40
And yeah, I feel grateful to have known them and excited for the people that are still discovering their work. Andrea is obviously queer. Obviously. I mean, you know, it feels like that's such a part of the story that we, I don't know if you talk about that that much, but I think there's something about the queer poet, the queer writer, and what the queer poet can see and know that feels maybe

Prentis Hemphill
07:40 - 07:53
unspoken here, but so true. I don't know if that resonates at all for you, but there feels like a queer saying somehow. in Andrea's work that I hope also is getting celebrated and seen.

Megan Falley
07:55 - 08:18
Yeah, I know I've heard Andrea talk on stage about I think it was Nina Simone one day had decided that she was only going to sing political songs at this concert or this night. And Andrea was so radicalized by that. And they were like, fuck yeah, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to only read political poems at the show.

Megan Falley
08:19 - 09:24
And then realized shortly after that just by the nature of who and how they loved, their queerness, that all of their poems really were political in a way, like even their love poems. And I think that it saddened them in some ways that their love could be a politicized thing. But I do think even, yeah, just by the very nature of being who they were and looking how they looked in the world, handsome as hell, was political in itself and even the documentary, it's not necessarily overtly political or pushing of any agenda or message necessarily besides one of living in the present moment, but by nature it is a queer couple inviting the world into our home.

Prentis Hemphill
09:26 - 09:37
And into a practice of love. What was it like meeting Andrea? Because I know you didn't get together right away, but what do you remember about that first meeting?

Megan Falley
09:38 - 10:05
Oh God, we met at the Bowery Poetry Club. They were the headlining performer that night. I remember a friend of mine, the poet Jared Singer, looking around the room and the Bowery Poetry Club, it was more packed than it had ever been. And he said, I've never been in a show where so many of the people in the audience look like the performer.

Megan Falley
10:06 - 10:15
And Jared is like this like big, burly, bearded guy in work boots. He's like, can you imagine that happening to me? Like if I was just performing for like 300 lumberjacks?

Prentis Hemphill
10:17 - 10:18
Amazing.

Megan Falley
10:19 - 10:51
Yeah. And what I loved about Andrea and what was really disarming, and I think everyone had this experience, is they were kind of maybe allergic to small talk. So when I met them, I mean, maybe I shouldn't tell this story, but I was like, I was trying to invite, and this was way before, but I was trying to invite them back to where I'd, to my college alma mater to do a show. And I was like, yeah, it's in New Paltz.

Megan Falley
10:51 - 11:06
It's right by Woodstock. And Andrew goes, Woodstock, I had sex there. Things that they said and that they, they couldn't not do that. Like they couldn't not just sort of just jump into whatever, like the deep end of the conversation was.

Megan Falley
11:08 - 11:16
It made them really unpredictable to be around and really easy to know quickly and feel connected to quickly. And yeah, so that was that.

Prentis Hemphill
11:18 - 11:22
I love I had sex there and I like I spent a week in there. Sex was bad here.

Megan Falley
11:22 - 11:24
Yeah, specifically.

Prentis Hemphill
11:26 - 11:36
That is a kind of map. Yeah. What's it like for you and two artists? Like what's it like when two artists fall in love?

Prentis Hemphill
11:36 - 12:08
Because I've dated poets before and that can go multiple ways as it can go multiple ways with lots of people. But I remember in Come See Me in the Good Light, which is the film that is about your love and a certain stage of Andrea's life, there's a moment where they're talking about your writing and just the complexity and beauty and vocabulary of your writing. And I wonder what it was like day to day to be two writers, two poets in love.

Megan Falley
12:09 - 12:44
I think I've almost exclusively fallen in love with artists. And as friends too, I'm just very drawn to people who are thinking about the world in a way that prioritizes beauty. And I'm sure that could be a lot of different kinds of people and not just artists, but artists, it's really always there on the surface. I think that there's playfulness to artists, like a little kid quality that hasn't quite been, you know, snuffed out that I just find attractive in all people.

Megan Falley
12:45 - 13:35
But specifically with Andrea, we both, we really made each other better as artists. And in a way that was really gratifying, like I can look at both of our bodies of work from before we were together and after and see that their work really improved in terms of language and imagery and uniqueness and the things that I'm gifted at and mine really improved in terms of the meaning and the message and understanding the value of the platform that I had and really using it with intention. So we kind of had these different angles and then or these different strengths and and they really complemented each other.

Megan Falley
13:35 - 14:06
And we also kind of made art of everything that we did like we both are almost chronic redecorators. We would paint the rooms in our house and I like to joke that we painted this living room that I'm in right now, which is, it ended up being white, but it's been so many colors and I liked to joke that we'd painted it so many times that in our time of living here, we were probably made ourselves a quarter inch closer just with the layers of paint.

Prentis Hemphill
14:07 - 14:18
That's so sweet. Yeah. Love that. I'm also a chronic redecorator and I think I saw on your blog, is it that Andrea's favorite store is World Market?

Megan Falley
14:20 - 14:22
Yes. Oh my gosh. Me too. Yeah.

Megan Falley
14:23 - 14:35
It's really fun to wander in there and sometimes I go in now and, you know, I miss, I miss seeing them like sit down and swivel on a chair or something. But yeah. Loved it.

Prentis Hemphill
14:37 - 14:51
I can see that. I can see that. So I want to talk about grieving in public a bit, because you've been talking about grieving in public. And for folks that have been listening here, know that my father passed away a month ago.

Prentis Hemphill
14:51 - 15:26
And it has been such a, there's been so many conversations lined up with people that are about grief, but right before and just after his passing. So it's been, I don't know, there was some past me that had some foresight to scaffold and support myself this way. But I want to talk to you about what it means to grieve in public as someone that is doing a little bit of that, not to the same magnitude, but a little bit of that right now. Why does it feel important to you to be in that process in a way that people can actually witness you?

Megan Falley
15:29 - 16:22
I do watch myself having a different experience of grief than I've had with my own past griefs. None of them have been this large. But I have seen myself from the outside, and I've felt like this sense that this was, I don't want to sound righteous when I say this, and I don't mean it's the right way to do it and people should follow me. But what I mean is I feel like I'm having a very full, non-depressed, non-repressed experience that I would like to give other people if they, I would wish it upon other people because we'll all have to grieve something and...

Megan Falley
16:24 - 16:47
I, you know, I know what it's like to grieve and lock myself in the basement with TV and ice cream and Candy Crush and like totally, you know, shut the world out. And this experience has been the opposite. It's been a real experience of letting the world in. And I think so in that way, I very rarely feel alone.

Megan Falley
16:48 - 17:32
And I think in the process of speaking about grief, so publicly, so often in a culture that often... wants to skim over the fact of it and ask instead about the weather or, I don't know, a sports team or whatever. They're afraid of that topic in a way that makes the griever often so isolated. So yeah, maybe it's not necessarily grieving in public for everyone, but grieving out loud making something in the process of grieving like art or sharing or just keeping the person alive by talking about them.

Megan Falley
17:33 - 17:45
I just, it all feels like, again, I know it probably feels odd to say, but it all feels like it's been a blessing to me how it's all unfolded.

Prentis Hemphill
17:47 - 18:18
I guess one of the things I'm noticing in my own grief right now is how unpredictable I can be to myself. Like one moment this, one moment that, one moment I'm here, one moment I'm there. And I feel pretty surrendering, I guess, to that kind of changeability. But I can also feel my edges and I've heard from so many people that I've worked with over the years of just the The way shame will say, I can't be this messy in front of other people.

Prentis Hemphill
18:19 - 18:31
It's not all beautiful. It's not all predictable. It's a very unruly experience. Do you find yourself having to contend with any aspects of what might feel constricting or trying to contain you?

Megan Falley
18:32 - 19:12
Well, I'll say this. I've been on stage in Q&As and stuff promoting the documentary, and that's sort of how the timing of it all worked out. Like a couple of months after Andrea's passing, I was on a world tour, it felt like, with the film and watching the film every night and getting to see Andrea be, I don't know how high a screen is, I always guess, 30 feet high and watch, you know, other people experience their story and then I would get on stage and some nights I would be crying literally under a spotlight and be behind a microphone.

Megan Falley
19:14 - 19:50
From my perspective to be able to do that is a gift for others and a permission for others to feel in public, to not button up, to not like straightjacket their emotions. And I think Yeah, I've not had to contend with a lot of it. The thing that's hard for me to contend with mostly is when people or even myself are getting wrapped up in stuff that doesn't matter. That's the hard thing for me.

Megan Falley
19:51 - 20:24
If I'm in an argument or a fight or email something with somebody and I'm like, what we're talking about is so small. What drives me, yeah, what is hard to contend with is the loss of context. Of course, I can have the loss of context too in my own life and when I catch it, That's when I, you know, pause and want to return. Like, it's like if I mean, I've had a life lifelong, you know, negative body image struggles.

Megan Falley
20:25 - 20:41
Who hasn't? But it's been pretty intense. But like, if ever I've slipped into that sort of thing, I'm like, that's the part of myself where I'm like, no, no, no, wrangle back to what's real. But anything that feels real, I just want to like, hallelujah, anything that feels real.

Prentis Hemphill
20:44 - 21:09
And I know it's kind of cliche at this point to say, but does it feel like this experience of the loss of Andrea and the subsequent grief, or I'm sure there's overlap in those experiences, does it feel like it's kind of cast things into kind of clear light of this is what actually matters in this moment and this is what does not matter? Do you feel like that has been a clarifying experience for you?

Megan Falley
21:11 - 21:52
For sure. And I think it happened earlier than Andrea's passing with their sickness, which was started almost exactly five years ago. And I watched mostly Andrea was my example. Like I watched them go from a real lifelong hypochondriac, a very anxious person with a panic disorder and sometimes propensity to be blaming or critical, to shut their heart quickly, even if their art wasn't that, that was something that they were overcoming personally.

Megan Falley
21:52 - 22:34
And I watched with cancer and with their diagnosis, which was the thing that they had feared so much their whole life, that fear arrived. I think they realized they were okay and it just blew their heart open. And so how Andrew would put it in a poem was, you know, when all that mattered became all that mattered. And so I sort of feel I've been in the practice of it for five years now, which doesn't mean I don't slip into the unimportant or I don't lose the vision, but I kind of have a roadmap of what to come back to.

Megan Falley
22:34 - 22:43
And Andrea, just by example, really showed me that. What about you? What about you?

Prentis Hemphill
22:45 - 22:49
I love that follow-up to such a dense answer.

Megan Falley
22:50 - 23:19
Well, do you feel contact? I'm curious, because I'm just hearing about your father's death. I have a strange relationship with the word sorry, when somebody says, I'm sorry for your loss. I don't never really know how to take it, so I don't quite say it, but I'm just curious, yeah, if it's been contextualizing for you or...

Megan Falley
23:19 - 23:20
That's a good question.

Prentis Hemphill
23:21 - 23:33
Yeah, in some moments it has been for sure. And, you know, in a different way, you know, my dad wasn't, he wasn't ill very long. He died within a month. He had a stroke.

Prentis Hemphill
23:35 - 24:01
And our relationship is one I've written about. It's been a very complex relationship. And so there were parts that I had already been grieving for years. And I didn't think that would amount to anything, like when he passed, but I actually do feel like there's places where I'm like, oh, certain things have been touched.

Prentis Hemphill
24:02 - 24:29
And I think there's ways that the acuteness of life, like wanting to be present with life. I'd already started, and it just feels like I'd started this process early with him, and I'm still very much in it, and I'm learning new things. But it had kind of put, cast a light on everything. I had a long runway, I'll put it like that, with him for lots of different reasons, but I've been learning those lessons just with him.

Prentis Hemphill
24:31 - 24:52
There's so much there, and I was talking to somebody yesterday of like, I don't know how to talk about it yet. I think I'm still, yeah, so I'm very curious about you kind of going on, you said a world tour, but in this last year, It's been, I mean, I think Andrea passed in July. We're recording this in June. It'll likely come out in July.

Prentis Hemphill
24:53 - 25:00
Your film came out. It was nominated for an Oscar. All these things happen. It's been a hell of a year.

Prentis Hemphill
25:00 - 25:24
I don't feel, I think it's going to take me a few months before I know even how to language what I've been experiencing around my father. So I feel really I don't know. Enough awe is the right word, but I'm watching you be able to describe something that feels to me like, sometimes like I'm being jostled around in a jar or something.

Megan Falley
25:26 - 26:30
I think that's why the how are you question is so ridiculous because it's asking you to put language to like a sort of a long span and a span of something where time doesn't really exist. And so I much prefer to just kind of ask somebody to tell me a story about their grief or just like something that happened that made them think of the person, that made them feel connected, that made them feel disconnected. Like, I feel, I mean, I'm definitely a storyteller, but I'm also a story consumer. And I feel like so much is conveyed in, I mean, even you just saying, you know, we, I had a long runway and I was grieving parts while he was still alive, I feel I've understood so much in just a really short sentence rather than maybe just slapping

Megan Falley
26:30 - 27:02
an adjective to it of like, oh, it's messy, it's complicated, it's nuanced. It's like, oh, okay. So I think answering from like right then in the moment or that day is really powerful and eventually you'll have a collection of those days that might touch or graze some facet of the whole experience of grief and life and death and love and loss if we're lucky.

Prentis Hemphill
27:04 - 27:15
That's really helpful to me. That's really helpful. Thank you. I was thinking about when I went to go see Come See Me in the Good Light, it came to Durham, which is where I live, and we went out on a date night.

Prentis Hemphill
27:15 - 27:36
We got childcare, we went on a date night, and we went to go see it. And I mean, it just, it rocked me, the film. It really, really rocked me. But I remember when the film closed, my wife and I looked at each other and it was like, all the petty stuff that gets between you, all the little confusions, all that was gone.

Prentis Hemphill
27:37 - 27:45
And it was just like, I love you. I want you to know that I love you. But it wasn't just that. It was the whole audience.

Prentis Hemphill
27:46 - 28:20
I met probably the eight people around me in the audience, and we were chopping it up and talking. And, you know, there's not a lot of films that can do that, that can like work so well that they change the way that people are in the space with each other and the stories that they share with each other. The women I was sitting next to, the basketball coach, and they were talking about, you know, the griefs in their life, but they were talking about their love. And so I'm wondering, as you talk about like people sharing their stories with you, How are you holding that?

Prentis Hemphill
28:21 - 28:34
Does it feel like an extra burden? Does it feel helpful? Does it feel like it's meeting you where you are as you're receiving all the stories and the outpouring and what this film is inspiring in people? How are you holding that?

Megan Falley
28:36 - 29:01
Well, first, I want to thank you for sharing that story, because it gave me goosebumps. And I always feel like goosebumps are also a sign from Andrea, because they have a poem acceptance speech upon setting the world record in goosebumps. Yeah. And I think, God, I can't imagine a better outcome for a piece of art than it making people love the person sitting next to them more.

Megan Falley
29:02 - 29:26
Like, God, if all art did that, I mean, I think that'd be great. I think that'd do some good. But, you know, I know that there are people who identify as empaths who sort of can't take on other people's stories because they bring it into their bodies too much. I'm not one of those.

Megan Falley
29:27 - 29:55
I feel fortunate to not be one of those, which doesn't mean I can't feel it, but I don't think that I, I definitely feel it and can be moved, but I don't, I don't feel like carry it in my body. Um, I can let it pass. I feel permeable, um, to it so that it can pass through me. And I, I feel really grateful, uh, that I think one of the.

Megan Falley
29:57 - 30:22
the feelings that people might have around grief is that they're alone and I feel grateful that people like and again it's very Andrea cuts through the small talk immediately there's no like hey nice to meet you where are you from oh I grew up like close to there my Grandma lived 20 minutes from that mall. I don't know. There's like, I don't have a ton of that in my life now.

Megan Falley
30:23 - 31:16
It's just like I meet people and almost immediately they just tell me who has died. I've joked that I call myself sad Santa because I'm like, it felt like after the film, sometimes people were lining up to sit on my lap and tell me who they've lost. Yeah, I think it's been really a breeding ground for a lot of connection and to know that I've then opened up some little doorway that other people who may not have spoken somebody's name in a really long time feel permission to because of me doing it first. Yeah, I like that.

Prentis Hemphill
31:19 - 31:38
That's awesome. I found it to be such a connector, this experience of grief. I'm like, oh, I actually feel like I'm in a club that is, I think someone I talked to said it's a really shitty club, but there's a lot of cool people in it. And that's how I'm feeling right now about it.

Megan Falley
31:38 - 31:43
That's a great way to put it. Yeah. Yeah.

Prentis Hemphill
31:44 - 32:17
I want to roll back a little bit, because I am actually sitting with this question. I had a friend who died from cancer probably eight years ago now, would be my guess. And one of the things she said at a celebration we had for her and her partner, pretty close to the end of her life, was she said, I wish this much fear for everyone. And I had this moment of like, oh, it took my breath away that she would say that.

Prentis Hemphill
32:18 - 32:53
But I got it. I mean, I think it's that thing around the context piece that to be so afraid and to choose love and to choose living anyway, she's like, I wish you this choice point, because the kind of love and presence you find there is astounding. And... We've kind of talked about that, but I'm wondering if like, do you think we can experience that level of presence without these really giant losses in our lives?

Prentis Hemphill
32:53 - 32:55
And it might be no, but I'm just, I'm curious.

Megan Falley
32:58 - 33:38
Andrea was a big, big fan of Eckhart Tolle, who said something about how it's easier to awaken from a nightmare than a pleasant dream. Like we're more likely to And by, obviously, this is a metaphor here, but when he says awakening, he means like have sort of an enlightenment, and sometimes, you know, the night, living through a nightmare or something is what wakes you up, rather than, you know, if you're just coasting by, there's no real reason to perhaps. I don't know if that's true.

Megan Falley
33:38 - 34:28
I think, I think that it can help but I also think it depends on the person because I've watched multiple ways of responding. And I've watched people be unable to deal with grief or deal with sickness or an impending death and shut down and shut the world out. And I've watched people in the exact same situation have the opposite experience of opening. And I think the practice is really just letting everything open our hearts, even if we're not going through something tremendously hard.

Megan Falley
34:28 - 35:04
And so to become a person who lets, you know, an annoying experience with somebody in a store or an argument with a friend or Thanksgiving dinner open their hearts. And so that when a bigger thing arrives, we can be ready to do that as well. I really think it's a practice. Um, and maybe, you know, there are lots of people who have, it's almost a grace given to them, uh, where, you know, something like Andrea, something happens in their whole way of being shifts.

Megan Falley
35:04 - 35:20
But. I do, I do think anyone can sort of start now with it as, as a, a life practice, um, to be ready to open their heart to.

Prentis Hemphill
35:25 - 35:35
Maybe you can help me find where this is, but there's something Andrea said once that was just like, it was about them saying thank you to everything that came. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Megan Falley
35:36 - 36:13
They have a lot of quotes around gratitude and saying thank you. They've said, and I'm not sure if they're the original person who said this actually, but they would often say that thank you is the only prayer. And they also talked about, oh God, it was like praying for what they already have, something like that. I started to realize all my prayers had been answered when I started praying for what I already had, which I love.

Megan Falley
36:14 - 36:26
Which is just, I guess that's another way of saying gratitude, really. Oh, another one. They were prolific little... My curse?

Megan Falley
36:27 - 36:39
Of course, yeah. Okay. Prolific little fucker. But, oh, they said there's such a big difference between saying, like, I forgive you, life, and saying I thank you, life.

Prentis Hemphill
36:46 - 37:05
You know, that piece has stuck with me so much through these last few seasons of my life, where it really stood in the face of something that I had a whole story. I would prefer this weren't happening. I hate this thing happening. And I thought of Andrea.

Prentis Hemphill
37:06 - 37:25
And them saying that, and I go, it changes the shape of something for me to be like, thank you for this teaching. Thank you for this learning. Thank you for this opportunity to see this thing that I did not understand, I did not want. Thank you for how it will change me, has really, really impacted me.

Prentis Hemphill
37:25 - 37:31
And I've been so grateful to them for that teaching or that reminder of maybe an ancient teaching.

Megan Falley
37:32 - 38:11
Prentis, I wanted to say another way that Andrew would sort of look at what you're saying is they would ask themselves whenever something arrived that maybe they had resistance to, they would say, how is this perfect? How is this arriving for my benefit, on my behalf? How is this the perfect thing to be happening right now? And I don't think it's so much as saying this is perfect and deciding that, but it's like opening the curiosity of looking to expand how you see something by just the simple question of asking how.

Prentis Hemphill
38:12 - 38:35
Absolutely. Which I think is a really, we talk a lot here about how we might mature and how we might mature, I think in this moment, this global moment that I think we're all in. I think those are some of the questions that we're really trying to grapple with is like, how are we going to grow up to meet this moment? How do we become the people?

Prentis Hemphill
38:36 - 39:05
One quote too that I've held on to from Andrea, I think it's part of a larger poem, but it helps me in this. And they said, on earth, everyone loved butterflies, but I trusted the caterpillars more. I trusted the ones who knew they were not done growing. How is all of this for you, like changing who you think you are, who you thought you were, what you thought you were, like, how is this changing you?

Megan Falley
39:07 - 39:48
I like that quote too. Andrea was really good at growing and also sort of insisting that the people in their lives stay growing. It was sort of the price of entry, the cost of admission into Andrea's little carnival of life. I think that I've surprised myself in this time, like I did not know how I would handle any of this.

Megan Falley
39:48 - 40:21
I kind of, it was really, really hard to imagine a life without Andrea, really hard to imagine We were so, I mean, we were so quarantined from the pandemic. And then that kind of quarantine really continued because of their immune system with cancer and chemo. And we were, to be quite honest, really codependent. Like we were really like lived inseparably.

Megan Falley
40:21 - 41:17
And I was there, um caregiver and I we we really rarely spent a moment apart and I thought I would feel without Andrea like uh like I was missing half my body or like organs were taken out. And I think the biggest surprising change for me is how kind of spiritual I feel I've gotten. Andrea always would always say that they were kind of the woo-woo one and I was kind of like, you know, of this earth and this plane and maybe a materialist in that way. The biggest, most surprising thing is the certainty I now live with of life continuing on after death.

Megan Falley
41:17 - 41:59
And I grew up with no religion, nothing, except I grew up kind of a Jewish father, a Catholic mom, you know, they did the, you know, holidays that bunnies and gifts were involved for, but nothing, nothing, there was really, there was no, no God in my house, but a lot of ornaments. lawn decor. And I'm amazed at just how often I use the word God, how often I find that there's some kind of communion with something beyond me.

Megan Falley
42:02 - 42:24
how less afraid of death I am now because I don't want to say I have a certainty, but I have a pretty good hunch of continuing on and honestly of an interesting reunion on the other side of it all.

Prentis Hemphill
42:28 - 42:49
Thank you for that. As someone who's also, I think of myself as a materialist plus, but when I think about how little we can even perceive of the color spectrum, I'm like, what does it even mean to be a materialist when I can't even perceive even a fraction of the colors that exist in the world? I don't even know what's happening.

Megan Falley
42:51 - 43:24
I'm in a process of reposting all of the reels that Andrea had made in the last four years and just posted one today. And so it's been really nice to remember things that didn't necessarily make it into poems, but little bits. And they were talking about how when Pythagoras claimed that the world was round, how everyone around was like, that's ridiculous. Obviously the world is flat.

Megan Falley
43:25 - 43:43
And they said it was such certainty. And it's not that the people who thought that the world was flat were stupid. It was just our understanding then. And they put it into the context of how much certainty do we all have about something now?

Megan Falley
43:44 - 44:04
that will quickly be proven quickly, at least in the span of Earth time, to be completely, completely wrong. And how exciting is that? And how opening of your mind is that? So when people I am so kind of repelled when people speak of anything with certainty.

Megan Falley
44:04 - 44:12
There's no, God, nothing happens after we die. Anybody knowing something, I'm like, what? What do you mean? You know?

Megan Falley
44:13 - 44:18
What do you mean? How? That's crazy. You know?

Megan Falley
44:18 - 44:22
No way. No way. I don't know anything.

Prentis Hemphill
44:25 - 44:30
I don't know anything, and the strangeness of this all, why not live with awe? You know what I mean?

Megan Falley
44:31 - 44:32
Yeah.

Prentis Hemphill
44:33 - 44:34
Are you writing these days?

Megan Falley
44:36 - 45:03
I am writing. I have been continuing, so Andrea wrote a sub stack called Things That Don't Suck, which they started writing, they committed to writing before they got cancer. And then they got cancer and they're like, oh my God, I got to write about things that don't suck. And then within seconds they were like, went from thinking it was the worst possible timing to the best possible timing.

Megan Falley
45:04 - 45:28
and they wrote about their cancer experience really through that lens. And I've taken on writing about my grief experience through that lens. And that's been really powerful, especially because in the last many years I've been working on a memoir, which is like, I feel like when you're working on a long form book, your head is down. You're kind of just in your own worlds.

Megan Falley
45:28 - 46:13
There's not the, sort of gratification that you might have or that I have had in the past as a poet where you write something then you take it to an open mic or you post it and you get an interaction and get to see the pulse and how people feel and I feel grateful to have like a newsletter format right now where where it feels so connective to others and getting kind of the immediate response, whether than like, you know, your heads down with your own book, which I am still working on as well. But that was such a it's such a gamble of an experience to to really do that. You have to really be OK with.

Megan Falley
46:15 - 46:39
the fact that it may never become anything that anybody ever sees and try to still enjoy it, but I've been liking the process of making art that, you know, is not just hoping that someday people connect to it in the future, but feeling that kind of instant camaraderie that art can provide.

Prentis Hemphill
46:40 - 47:03
I want to just ask a couple more things before we close. I have this question of you talk about continuing the substack. Are there any, how do I say this? Are there any aspects of Andrea that you feel yourself becoming or really internalizing, taking in?

Megan Falley
47:05 - 47:39
So many, and almost Andrea has a line in their poem love letter from the afterlife, which is why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated and those we love while they are still alive. And. A lot of the things that I'm saying now are things that I learned from watching Andrea. I think while Andrea was living, there maybe felt like less of a responsibility for me to be the one who was sharing those.

Megan Falley
47:40 - 48:27
ideas, because Andrea was doing it so articulately and beautifully and had this real, like, lived experience of having a body that had cancer that was incurable that they could talk about it through. But now I really feel like what they were speaking, I am now interpreting through the lens of, you know, becoming a widow at 36 years old, of losing my partner of 11 years, of Yeah, I guess sort of having half my body taken away. And I do really feel that. I always feel most like Andrea when I am doing my best.

Megan Falley
48:29 - 48:37
When I'm like stepping into a higher standard for myself, I feel their presence really profoundly.

Prentis Hemphill
48:38 - 48:54
It made me tear up a little bit, actually. What a beautiful way to remain connected to someone. As we close here, I would love to know if either you or Andrea has anything that you want to tell us about love.

Megan Falley
48:56 - 48:57
About love?

Prentis Hemphill
48:57 - 48:58
Mm-hmm.

Megan Falley
48:59 - 49:13
Oh. Andrea would say... Probably, well, it's so wild. I haven't seen a mourning dove in so long.

Megan Falley
49:13 - 49:36
And there's one literally looking at me right from the tree right above my window. And for those who haven't seen the documentary, mourning dove, well, I hope you will see it, but mourning doves are really, kind of a symbol of us and our love. And yeah, there's one just looking right in my window. So that feels pretty incredible.

Megan Falley
49:38 - 49:56
About love, I think Andrew would say one of the greatest gifts to love somebody is to try and unknow them. So sometimes, especially when we've been with somebody for a really long time, We think we know how they're going to react. We feel like, oh, I knew you would say that. Oh, of course you did it this way.

Megan Falley
49:56 - 50:18
We understand their patterns and everything. And sometimes we might even do somebody the great disservice of believing we know them better than they know themselves. And that to really love somebody, you know, when you first start dating somebody, they're really a mystery to you. And that's so part of the excitement.

Megan Falley
50:18 - 50:54
You want to ask questions and figure this person out. And if you can carry that outlook over into a more long-term relationship, it's really, I think the person becomes, can even become less patterned because they're less pigeonholed. And yeah, and I think for me, I would say, Andrea and I were about to break up before their diagnosis. Our relationship was really, really on the rocks.

Megan Falley
50:54 - 51:36
And I always thought that the like sort of oxytocin chemical feeling of new love only existed in maybe, maybe the first nine months, maybe a year. And then it was like gone and you had just like maybe only a domestic thing to contend with. We felt so much more in love after their diagnosis, maybe partly because we were seeing each other in this way. in like a way that I felt butterflies around Andrea and likewise, and I just, I did not know that you could get that thing back.

Megan Falley
51:36 - 52:23
I thought that was only the love drug, the initial chemicals, but I find it so exciting to know that that is possible, that you don't have to necessarily switch and find a new person to get that feeling back, that it actually, it can exist within, a love that you already have. And I would argue that in a lot of ways it's deeper because it's not necessarily coming with, you know, the thing of like, I've got to put on my best behavior and run my best foot forward and to impress this person so that they won't leave. But the knowing that somebody's already seen all of you and you can still find that is What a gift.

Prentis Hemphill
52:24 - 52:39
What a gift. What a gift to experience in this life. Megan, thank you. Thank you for being generous enough to have this conversation and also just sharing yourself and your journey and Andrea's story and the way that you are.

Prentis Hemphill
52:39 - 52:44
It's really touching so many of us and making such a profound impact. So thank you.

Megan Falley
52:45 - 53:02
I loved spending this time with you. Thank you for sharing about your father. And thank you for offering me the space to continue. I love talking about Andrea.

Megan Falley
53:02 - 53:04
I love it.

Prentis Hemphill
53:06 - 53:30
Thank you. Becoming the People is produced by devon de Leña, sound engineered and edited by Michael Maine, Our theme song was created by Mayyadda. And if you're enjoying these conversations, please subscribe, rate, and especially, especially leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever it is that you listen to podcasts. And if you haven't already, please join us over at the Patreon, Prentis Hemphill.

Prentis Hemphill
53:30 - 54:16
We are having a great time over there building community, learning together. Come join us. And as always, thank you for listening to Becoming the People. Doom doom doom