Whatever We Were to Each Other

Occasionally in this isolating world, the internet allows for a genuine connection with a kindred spirit. RIP Gabe Hudson.

Via Instagram

If you’re any kind of citizen of the literary world, you’ve probably heard about author Gabe Hudson’s death last week at 52. I’ve been distraught ever since I found out over the weekend. I consider myself fortunate to have gotten to know Gabe a bit. For some time we communicated mostly via X/Twitter and its direct messages, but in the past year we also emailed regularly and talked over Zoom.

In addition to being the talented author of the acclaimed story collection Dear Mr. President, and the YA novel Gork, the Teenage Dragon, and the host of two podcasts— first Twitterverse, then

Kurt Vonnegut Radio

—Gabe was an exceptionally kind and generous member of our community. Once he befriended you, he would reach out warmly on a regular basis—to let you know he liked what you’d just published; to check in on you and see how you were doing; to see if he could help you out in any way.

A Twitter DM I received, out of the blue, from Gabe.

I know this not only because I benefitted personally from his kindness, but because I’ve now seen so many others in our community speak out about how thoughtful and attentive he was toward them, too. Some were close with him, but many noted that, like me, they never met Gabe IRL—or maybe they crossed paths with him that one time at the AWP Conference—yet they thought of him as a true friend. I felt similarly.

Via Marie Myung-Ok Lee on Twitter.

And I felt lucky. Over many years online I’ve made a few real friends, people I’ve gone on to spend time with in person, or communicate with regularly by phone or Zoom or Facetime. But I’ve also had my share of disheartening experiences—being left hanging after I’d misread someone’s gregariousness as an invitation to more engaged friendship; catching wind of a cut-throat colleague’s shit-talking; outright bullying; cliquishness and gate-keeping. I know how rare it is to genuinely connect with someone over the internet. Like any real friendship, it’s worth nurturing and preserving. And it hurts when the person you genuinely connected with is suddenly gone. I will really miss Gabe.

***

Learning about his multitude of online connections reinforces an inkling I had when interacting with Gabe—that he needed the friendly exchanges as much as those he reached out to did. There were times it occurred to me he might be too kind and gentle for this world. That was tempered, though, by his biting sense of humor, which came out on X/Twitter, and his even stronger sense of justice on multiple issues. As an ex-marine, for example, he could be counted on to speak out regularly about senseless gun violence, especially after an all-too-frequent mass shooting.

Gabe’s having been so “extremely online” has added to my anxiety about my own. (He hosted a panel at last year’s AWP conference called “The Internet and Creativity: Fatal Distraction or Turbo Charger?” featuring Julia Fierro, Rebecca Makkai, and Marie Myung-Ok Lee.)

I often worry about how much of my life and career occur via my laptop and iOS devices. The majority of what I write and edit is disseminated only digitally. I publish things on one part of the internet, then share them on others, where I interact, at the shallowest level, with people I only recognize from their tiny avatars. I do this all without ever stepping away from my desk. If aliens from outer space were to observe my behavior most workdays, they’d probably be perplexed as to what it is I achieve all by myself in my small home office, almost entirely via electronic devices.

More concerning to me is that the lion’s share of my relationships are virtual, taking place over email, social media, Slack, Zoom, Facetime, Substack, and, here and there, phone calls. Lying awake at night, one of the things I fret most about is how limited a support system Brian and I have—no kids to care for us later on; far-flung family with obligations of their own, not to mention opposing views on various things; disjointed connections with friends after the pandemic years. I find myself wondering in the wee hours: When the chips are down, what will these many superficial, tenuous acquaintanceships amount to?

By the same token, online interaction with friends and colleagues has provided a lifeline for me over many years since I left the publishing and media capital of the world in 2005, especially through the most isolating periods of the pandemic. Connecting digitally with more similarly-minded people than I have at my disposal locally has been a miracle, a salve against a kind of loneliness I now realize has been persistent throughout my life, since long before a greedy landlord kicked me off the island of Manhattan. It’s the loneliness that comes from being a weirdo and social outcast growing up; from being a “divorce kid,” whose fractured, shrunken family no longer gets invited to the extended family’s big, fun holiday celebrations.

In August, when Gabe interviewed me for his podcast, Kurt Vonnegut Radio, we bonded over having both experienced those particular strains of loneliness. I was touched by how thoughtfully he’d engaged with my book, and taken by how vulnerable he was willing to be during our conversation, acknowledging his own childhood pain and mine with great tenderness and empathy.

Sari Botton

Gabe’s frequent outreach to other writers required that same willingness to be vulnerable. Extending yourself to someone you don’t know well, asking how they’re doing, as Gabe often did, is going out on an emotional limb. In doing so you risk being perceived as presumptuous, intrusive, forward, even impolite—and getting rejected for that. You risk being hurt by someone who is hurting.

I’d like to believe those are risks worth taking. Maybe it’s not the end of the world if your outreach isn’t well received. If it comes from a kind place, that’s all that matters.

It’s a hard world, and a little kindness can go a long way. I know Gabe’s did. I see a lot of people saying they wish they’d reached back out to him more. Add me to the list.

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This morning I attended Gabe’s memorial service in the same fashion I do most things: virtually. It was moving to hear his family, friends, and colleagues recall him.

Via Gary Shteyngart on X/Twitter.

At the end, his cousin read the poem “Death is Nothing At All” by Henry Scott Holland, and the line “Whatever we were to each other” immediately stood out to me. What were Gabe and I to each other? Mutual literary citizens? Sure. Friends? I’d like to think we were.

Death Is Nothing At All

by Henry Scott Holland

Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away to the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
That, we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way
which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word
that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effect.
Without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolute unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?

I am but waiting for you.
For an interval.
Somewhere. Very near.
Just around the corner.

All is well.

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Here are some other remembrances of Gabe Hudson, written by people who knew him better than I did:

• Remembering Gabe Hudson by

  Lincoln Michel
  at
  Counter Craft
  .

• Gabe Hudson and the Lost Soldiers of Generation X by Christian Bauman at Identity Theory.

• Author Gabe Hudson Dies at 52 by Michael Schaub at Kirkus Reviews

• Remembering Gabe Hudson by

  Stephanie Land
  at
  Stephanie Land's Newsletter
  .

• “JUST SAY THE WORD, AND I’LL BRING MY WHOLE HEART TO ANYTHING”: REMEMBERING GABE HUDSON — McSweeney’s, where Gabe had been an editor, is collecting remembrances and compiling them here. If you’d like to contribute one, email remembrances@mcsweeneys.net

• Gabe’s family at Dignity Memorial.