What We Are Looking At: Heidi Schloegel Hynes Food Drive
Heidi Schloegel Hynes (January 1968-November 2019)
She was the best.
I couple years ago I wrote a guest post for Craig Calcaterra’s substack. It has become a little tradition for me. In writing these, I get to remember Heidi and I ask people to do good works for poor people and to donate money if they can.
Our family collects food for Harvester’s - which is the big food donation organization in Kansas City and does a great job of getting food out to all the people who need it. We also ask people to give money to support Heidi’s Healthy Canasta, which is a community-based response to poor food access and rampant diet-based illness in the Bronx. Please donate if you can.
Today’s Guest Post
(You can find it originally posted on Craig’s Cup Of Coffee substack.)
We put up the bird feeders in November. This morning there was a chickadee and a Blue Jay flying around. It is the beginning of the cold season, when the natural world hunkers down.
I’ve been feeling like a lot of my life is performative. The joy, the sadness, the milestones, the memories. My son has taken to announcing that we are making “Core Memories.” It is a term that somehow I am totally familiar with and absolutely certain was just made up in the last few years. I don’t have the heart to tell him that unfortunately the “core memories” are almost exclusively the horrible shit. The pumpkin patches, and family game nights, and going to see a movie with your cousins – all those core memories sort of slip away. And you’re left with that time you didn’t want to be in the family photo for some reason and ruined it all for everyone.
I am ruminating on this because November, 2019 is when my sister died. And to honor her memory we do a food drive and raise money for the food program she worked on in the Bronx. These are great and noble causes, and I hope that lots of people bring food to my parent’s house in Kansas City and I hope lots of donations are made to the Mary Mitchell Center in the Bronx. But I can’t help the feeling that it is all slipping away. The radiant reality that was Heidi Hynes is breaking down into the memory of the past.
I search for “Core Memories” of my sister - desperate to focus on the laughter and the love. But all I find are hospital beds and family fights. My sister trying to make everyone happy, and failing and failing and failing. It is so much easier to hang onto pain than happiness.
I remember calling my sister long distance when I was about 10. It must have been 1988 when she was at Fordham. My mom would catch me and exclaim, “Not in the middle of the day!!” The world used to be impossibly big. You couldn’t just call someone halfway around the world – it cost a fortune! Remember when someone would describe the crazy things they would do to see a world cup game?
That how I feel about my sister. Like I just can’t reach her. I don’t have the right long-distance plan or cable package. Like why can’t I just call her, FaceTime message, Facebook Messenger, Periscope? There is something I’m not doing right, but there has to be a way. One last call. And that devastating loss is all the milestones we won’t share. All the performative bullshit we won’t suffer through together. We used to laugh at all the performative bullshit. It was so fun. All of it. And it was all so silly compared to the murder and devastation that happens everyday to people. People that she helped. Everyday.
So if you have a minute this holiday season, try to do something good for people who need help. And if you have some money to donate, there is a great program in The Bronx that could use the donations. And if you are in Kansas City and want to drop off food at my parent’s house next Tuesday, message me on Substack or BlueSky or Twitter or Google Frank Schloegel and you can find me. Or email me at frankschloegel@gmail.com and I’ll send you the address.