A Holiday We Didn’t Recognize
Easter 2019 didn’t look like Easter.
No coloring eggs at the table.
No baskets waiting in the morning.
No ham, no routine, no familiar rhythm.
Instead, we woke up and decided—almost impulsively—to leave.
Not in a dramatic, “run away from everything” kind of way.
Just…a quiet pivot. A what if we did something different this year?
So we did.
All Aboard to Indy
We packed up with Luke and Lori and drove down to Crowne Plaza Indianapolis Downtown Union Station because I had found something that felt just weird enough to be perfect:
Train car hotel rooms.
Like…actual train cars.
We ended up in car 010, themed after Winston Churchill, which is such a bizarre sentence to say out loud but felt completely normal in the moment.
We could have stayed in our own room.
We didn’t.
Because the second we got settled, we migrated into Luke and Lori’s train car like it was the only logical choice and spent the night doing what we always did together—playing board games.
I’m pretty sure it was Deception, which, if you’ve ever played, turns into a mix of strategy and low-key accusing your friends of murder.
Very wholesome.
Room Service and Soft Mornings
The next morning slowed down in that rare, almost cinematic way.
Room service.
Waffles. Bacon.
That quiet, slightly sleepy energy where nobody’s rushing yet.
Because One State Wasn’t Enough
And then, because apparently we were in our spontaneous era, we said:
“What if we just…kept going?”
So we drove to Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden.
Like you do.
Tulips and Expectations
The tulips had just bloomed, and it was one of those scenes that almost doesn’t feel real.
Color everywhere. Fresh air that finally felt like spring instead of a suggestion of it.
And me? I had one mission.
Find Fiona.
Fiona the Hippo had a chokehold on me at the time. I was fully invested. Emotionally attached. Ready for our moment.
She did not care.
She wasn’t coming up. Wasn’t performing. Wasn’t acknowledging my existence in any meaningful way.
And honestly? Respect.
But also…I was a little heartbroken.
The Grief I Carried Anyway
Because underneath all of it…this was my first Easter without my Grams.
And if you know, you know.
Easter wasn’t just a holiday—it was hers.
Coloring eggs.
Hiding them.
Finding baskets.
That specific kind of family chaos that only exists in certain houses.
And suddenly, none of that was happening.
Instead, I was in a zoo, in another state, wearing her ashes around my neck in a necklace I had made.
Carrying her with me in the most literal way I could.
Trying to create something new while quietly mourning what I had lost.
The Part That Lingers
We said we’d do more trips like that. More spontaneous weekends. More “why not” moments.
And we probably would have.
But less than a year later, the world shut down. And trips like that became…not impossible, but heavier. Rarer. Different.
What I Keep From It
That Easter didn’t look like the ones before it.
But it mattered just as much.
Because it was the first time I realized you don’t replace traditions—you carry them.
Sometimes in your actions.
Sometimes in your memories.
And sometimes…in a small necklace resting against your chest while you walk through a zoo full of tulips, missing someone who should still be there.
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