A life's landscape

By Elizabeth Walters
The first thing I ever knew about Casey, months before I made her acquaintance, was that she was sick. Once I met her, it was the last thing I could ever remember about her.

I started work in Anderson in September 2001. Casey was out getting treatment that fall, and the first I heard about her was one night when Stacy and Geoffrey were making her a get-well card. I met her for the first time at their Grammys party the following February. All I knew about her, really, was that she was a sports reporter and had been out of work getting cancer treatment.

Turns out that she knew a lot more about me. “I heard you went to Smith! That’s so cool! I went to UMass! I’m so glad there’s someone else from the Pioneer Valley here!” I was bowled over. Here was this person who had been seriously ill, who had every right to be preoccupied with her own problems, who could have just talked to all of her old friends at the party, and she was interested in talking to me—someone she’d never met before.

But, as I’d soon learn, that was Casey. She understood, in a way I didn’t and possibly still don’t, that everyone needs attention. It’s a rule of journalism, but she knew it should also be a rule of life.
My year in Anderson was the most difficult I’ve ever had. The Sept. 11 terror attacks fell during my first week of work. I was used to a college dorm and found living alone isolating and, at times, frighten-ing. The friends I’d seen every day for four years were scattered around the country, the closest a 12-hour drive away. Although I made new friends in Anderson, I longed for the familiar, for school and for Northampton.

When Casey came back to work, in May, I was still homesick. But talking to her made things better. If there was someone else who knew about Herrell’s and Packard’s and Atkins Farms (funny how so many of our conversations revolved around food and drinking), then it meant that those places existed, that I could go back to them someday if I needed to. She told me about her Pioneer Valley, too—about Collegian parties, about the Colleens in Holyoke, about the importance of late-night slices at Antonio’s. When we talked, I’d see in my mind the trees in fall, the view of the Quad through my window, the profile of Mount Tom rising up as I’d walk past the pond down to orchestra rehearsal.

We talked about many other things that spring and summer — our plans for the future, our families, boys, books we’d read, books I thought she should read, books she thought I should read (some of which she later lent to me), Catholicism, journalism, sledding hills, music, Ireland, the Red Sox.

Casey was so many things, and as I learned more about her, her cancer faded so far into the background as to become an afterthought. She was beautiful. She was glamorous. She was smart. She was funny. She was one of the best storytellers I’ve ever heard, or read. Everybody wanted to sit next to her.

Casey was the cool older sister I’d never had and always wanted. I wanted to be just like her; I still do. Being in her company was always a treat, and an honor.

But those first nostalgic dialogues she shared with me were an outright gift. When she barely knew me, Casey gave me a way to move on from my past while keeping it alive, and moving on is what I needed if I was to ever be happy again.

As it turned out, we both went back to New England in fall 2002, her for a stem cell transplant and me for a job in New Hampshire. I got to visit her, and we took several excursions. We went to Fitzwilly’s for dinner and beers. We went to the Hangar with Matt. We went to hear Mount Holyoke’s Christmas vespers with Chris and Maryka. (Casey said her vocal range wasn’t wide enough for her to sing along, so, in her typical make-lemonade style, she whistled “O Come All Ye Faithful” and “Joy to the World.”).

In the time we spent together, I never asked her why she was so nice to me that night. Maybe she sensed that I needed someone to talk to – that I was lonely, that I was, to be honest, unhappy most of the time. More likely, she just saw me sitting there and decided to introduce herself. After all, that was Casey. She never wanted anyone to feel left out.

On the day before her funeral, when I was driving south on 91, I realized that my geography of the area had shifted. Here was not just Northampton on my right, here was Casey’s Amherst on my left. Towering to my right was Mount Tom, where Casey and her brothers learned to ski, back when Mount Tom still had skiing. Still miles ahead was the house with the basketball hoop, just down the block from the elementary school, on a street named for her family. In helping me reclaim my old stomping grounds, I now realized, Casey had given me something far more precious: the landscape of most of her life.

The valley had never looked more beautiful.
Liz worked with Casey at the Anderson Independent Mail.