« Letting Go of Evan »
“You are proof that the mentally ill often make great contributions to society.”
— Evan Adelson
“I feel seen.”
— The Voice in My Head, Reading email (1962-)
Evan and I met in 1987, when we were teaching for the Muir Writing Program at UC San Diego. We bonded over the hwimsicality of turning pain at odd angles, irreverently perspectivizing events into defused accessibility (which deeply informed our similar approaches to teaching). We laughed at each other other’s jokes, our shared absurdification of the world.
After I left SD in late 1992, we kept in touch by email (which was a developing medium back in those olden days). We hung out on occasion when I moved back to La Jolla for a time (fall of 1996… just over a year), and then much farther (or further) down the road we got to visit again when I took rare trips to SD.
It is intensely difficult to internalize the belief that we will never have those conversations again, and that my final email will sit forever unanswered. Dammit, it would have made him laugh.
Evan would have something snort-triggeringly funny and healing to say about that.
Crucially, he was fascinated by people, and listened to them intently. He genuinely cared about them, and made the world such a better place for so many.
Finally, I’d like for folks to remember that Evan had an absolutely marvelous laugh. He is one of the outright funniest people whom the world has ever had the pleasure of knowing.
I am really going to miss him.
Obituaries
2025-03