(Scott’s remembrance of his friend Kate Fleming of Cedar House Audio was printed in AudioFile. The complete text appears here.)

 

In my former career writing magazine articles, I penned over 300 pieces, wrote close to half a million words, yet never in my life have I had to write a sentence as difficult as this:

 

Kate Fleming died on December 14^th, 2006, at her home in Seattle, drowning in her basement during a violent rainstorm.

 

I look at the words, and they don’t seem real. Kate was far too alive to ever be gone.

 

I met Kate – who narrated under the pseudonym Anna Fields to honor her great-grandmother, a Vaudeville performer of the same name – four years ago at the Audie Awards in Los Angeles. After being introduced, we wound up laughing a great deal more than we talked, an experience I discovered was common when people first met Kate. There was a vibrancy to her that manifested in the most charming ways, usually in smiles so wide they made your face hurt.

 

Kate was a uniquely talented performer. A veteran theatre actress, she ultimately gave up appearing on the stage and all the competitiveness that went along with it to pursue narrating audiobooks full-time. She’d found her niche, she used to say. Living behind the microphone was where she felt she was born to be.

 

There was a quality to Kate’s reading that always defied definition for me, a clarity of both words and intent, a crispness to her voice that went above and beyond just diction. She had a precision to her presentation, an attention to detail that was inspiring. “When Kate was in the booth, she would give herself over to the page,” says Lyssa Browne, Kate’s business partner in Cedar House Audio, the company she ran from her home in Seattle. “She honored the author, and the words they wrote. She could instantly convey the truthfulness of each character, she captured the essence of the story so quickly. It really took the guesswork out of the process for listeners.”

 

In the days following her passing, notices about Kate’s death ran across the internet. News outlets carried the report across every type of media that she was no more, yet for all the coverage, those of us who knew her couldn’t quite get over our shock. “I just returned from recording an audio book under her direction last week,” said narrator and close friend Simon Vance in an email. “She was an absolute joy to work with. I am devastated.” Condolences and testimonials from audio industry professionals flew onto message boards and listservs, and one by one, people began setting aside their workloads and making arrangements to fly north to pay their respects.

 

I arrived in Seattle late on Wednesday, December 20^th. An hour’s delay on the runway due to bad weather brought me to the church after the funeral liturgy had already begun. I tromped up the steps of St. Therese Parish and shook the water from my overcoat, thinking that the rain was both a cruel reminder of how Kate had been taken from us, as well as somehow appropriate for the occasion. Somber, melancholy, subdued.

 

I was greeted by the sight of an absolutely packed house. Not a seat remained, there were hundreds of people spread across every pew, with dozens more standing in aisles, hallways and vestibules. I had never seen so many people at a funeral before. Dazed, I made my way into the social hall behind the church where a video screen had been set up, and where an overspill crowd watched the proceedings on folding chairs. Overwhelmed, I sat down, and realized I should never be surprised at the sight of so many people showing up to express their love for Kate Fleming. What could have been more natural?

 

Much of the service was a blur to me, observed through a haze of tears. I saw many a set of shoulders vibrating with sobs, and heard several cries choked off in handkerchiefs. Then, looking up, I saw the last thing I expected under the circumstances: Charlene Strong, Kate’s partner of nine years, standing up to deliver the eulogy.

 

She was amazing. At times funny, poignant and dramatic, she spoke from her heart and somehow managed to comfort all of us, sharing the Kate she knew so well. She spoke for us all when she began her eulogy by saying, “Today shouldn’t be happening.” Charlene painted an extraordinary picture of Kate, speaking as eloquently as ever Kate did herself. Her courage was remarkable. Daunting, actually. I was overwhelmed by just how powerfully Kate had been loved in life, and in the midst of my sadness over her passing, while listening to Charlene I actually somehow managed to find solace, even inspiration, in one thing:

 

Kate was dearly loved, and knew it.

 

So many times we hear stories about people who weren’t appreciated until after they’re gone. Books and films alike are filled with tragic tales of love where the hero or heroine only discover they were loved at the last possible moment, or sometimes, sadly, not at all. Well, I looked around the church and thanked God that wasn’t the case with Kate. She was appreciated in so many different ways, ways that were too obvious to ignore. All she would have had to do was pick up a copy of AudioFile and read the reviews of titles she’d narrated to learn how much people admired her work. And all she’d have to do was look into the eyes of Charlene to see how much she was truly loved.

 

As tragic as this day was, the real tragedy would have been if Kate had died unaware of our love for her. But she didn’t.

 

The service over, friends clutched one another and wept. Some shook their heads in denial, others in anger. I thought of the five stages of grief and realized I was witnessing those stages just beginning for all of us that day. When tragedy strikes, we start out in Denial, transition quickly into Anger, then move through a Bargaining phase to Depression. These steps are all useful, supposedly, to get us to the final stage, Acceptance, the place where we can come to terms with our loss and be healed. That is the whole point of grief, isn’t it? To come to a point where we can accept that there’s a hole in our lives, a hole only that loved one can fill; but we accept the hole, in time it becomes okay that the hole is there.

 

I tried to imagine this happening with Kate, and couldn’t. In her case, I found it hard then, and still find it hard now, to believe that it’ll be okay that she’s not here. That it’s okay we’ll never get to talk baseball or religion or gossip anymore. That it’s okay she’ll never record another audiobook ever again. There were so many words left to be spoken.

 

I saw Charlene before leaving that day, and as she did during the eulogy, she spoke my feelings out loud once again when she hugged me and cried on my shoulder; she gave words to the feelings of everyone who knew and loved Kate as she said, “I can’t believe I’ll never hear her voice again.”

 

(You can listen to Kate read and view her audiography by visiting her page on AudioFile’s website.)