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is it more complicated than "why not just have a party?"
on the world feeling hard, and life continuing despite
Laura Winberry
March 24, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
gm and welcome to issue 62. Last week I mostly wrote about painful periods (and no one unsubscribed—nice work). This week I’m feeling one part burned out, another part checked out, plus a little despondent. The world feels hard right now. Whether it’s objectively harder than usual, I can’t say. It just feels that way.
And yet, life goes the fuck on. The garbage truck stop-goes down the street, picking up the things we don’t want. The chickadees chickadee about the morning, flitting and bathing in dust. The neighborhood wakes up and starts doing things it thinks are important—slow at first, then all at once.
So this week I’m getting into something I mentioned last week but never actually wrote about: parties for people who aren’t dead yet. Life continuing on despite.
Here we go.
yeah
parties for people who aren’t dead yet
After last week’s Babe went out, a dear friend hit reply and was like wait wtf, you said you were going to write about parties for people who aren’t dead yet.
Why yes, yes I did. But by the time I got into the body of the newsletter, I got distracted and started writing about something else entirely—blood and pain and hormones. Equally riveting stuff, I’d say, but not as promised.
A few months ago, my husband and I and our entire friend group received invitations to a big party for a friend named David. Someone many of us hadn’t seen in quite some time, but with whom we’d shared pieces of a decade in Bend—living arrangements, long-ass bike rides, race days; difficult exchanges and hard truths; belly laughs, joints, good times and not good times; dance floors, drinks, disagreements; tear-filled eyes, how are yous, hugs.
You know, human stuff.
seeing this person at David’s party felt like home
The purpose of the party, as the invite explained, was twofold: a 50th birthday and a celebration of life. At some point after the gathering—which people flew in from all over the world to attend—David would be committing medically assisted suicide.
I know there are more pc terms for this. But pc terms tend to soften the reality of a thing, and I don’t think that’s necessary here. For reasons that are not mine to comment on, David is choosing to kill himself. And that’s that.
I don’t know what anyone super close to him feels about this—his parents, his teenage son. All I know is what it feels like when a suicide isn’t medically assisted. There is no party.
scratch-made donuts at a local popup—a party for sure
David’s party was 19 days ago. It took place in the courtyard outside the coffee and bike shop he created in 2010—transforming a once unused space into one that now holds a near-constant flow of people gathering for one reason or another.
Hundreds showed up. There was live music and beer and tacos. At some point we stood in line to say something to David. Or to say nothing at all and instead lean down and hug him from his wheelchair.
I don’t know if he has died yet. I don’t know how he felt before, during, or after that night. I’m not here to speak to those things.
I am here to speak to the only thing I can—my own experience of it. Even if, especially leading up to the party, that experience changed by the hour. I’m here to ask questions with multiple right answers, or no answers at all.
The party was after dark and it was cold. We were all outside—celebrating, mourning, smiling, witnessing something. Separately, in our own specific ways. Together, collectively, as humans bumbling around in the dark beneath fluorescent lights and stars and something endless.
It was about David, but it was also about everyone else. How could it not be? We got to say goodbye, see you soon, thank you, and hello to him. And to one another.
I saw people I used to see every weekend for years—fall through winter, covered in mud and sweat-salt—and every January for a different kind of party. Fellow bike racers. People I’ve had the privilege of seeing turned inside out, week after week. And who have seen me inside out too.
Only now we were all ten years older.
It felt nostalgic and disorienting at the same time. Like—wait, are we all dead right now? Is this what the after feels like?
We recognized one another, but not entirely. We had shared something real in this lifetime, and we had all changed but also somehow hadn’t. There was familiarity paired with distance. A sense of time collapsing. Of knowing and not knowing at the same time.
The next day I debriefed with a good friend who once lived with David. We talked about the emotional flux of the night and the days leading up to it—how we both almost didn’t go but were glad we did. About understanding the choice while also not understanding it. About how being human means wanting so much to comprehend, even if that isn’t the point.
At some point, this friend told me about a partygoer who had flown in from Alaska—maybe a line cook from a heli-ski outfitter David used to guide for—thinking David was already dead.
But then he saw him. Alive. Sitting there, receiving people one by one, not unlike Christ.
He had to step away for a minute. To feel the flood of it. As if he’d seen a ghost.
Who am I to say he hadn’t?
Hearing this, I had to laugh. We both did. And then we couldn’t stop.
That’s it for issue 62. Thanks for being here. See you next week. I love you.
xoxo,
lw
PS: Subscribe now if you're into this messy build-in-public energy. Miss the last issue? It’s right here. Also literally none of this is ever advice. I’m sharing what I learn through Babe, and perhaps you’ll learn from my mistakes. Hopefully, maybe, who knows, ily.