Losing Dixie

And then she just screamed at me. They're dead. They're both dead. Quinn Lewis had been on a work call when she found out her nineteen year old sister Dixie, had been killed in a car crash. Dixie's boyfriend, Ross had also died. Quinn was devastated, and the months that followed she was left to gree the loss of her sister and the future relationship she had envisioned for them. We would always bring up how different we were from each other, were such different people, and I wonder how

true that was. I wonder how how much that was like us just trying to exist in the same space and feel different and feel noticeable. And I felt in the last few years that that was changing, and it felt like that there the future felt intertwined, is how I would put it. It felt like we were going somewhere together. On today's episode Losing Dixie, I'm Maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who come in the face

of a big change. I've known the Lewis family for many years now and consider them dear friends. The parents, Michael and Tabitha, and their children, Quinn, who's twenty two, her younger sister, Dixie, and Walker, their fifteen year old little brother. At the time of the accident, Dixie was a freshman at Pomona College and a star athlete who had been recruited to play softball and had big dreams for her future. When Quinn and I sat down to talk,

it had been seven months since Dixie died. We started our conversation by talking about what she and Dixie were like as kids. Her nickname when she was little was Lovebug. She would follow my mom and me from room to room in the house when she learned how to walk, because she loved being around us so much and looked up to us so much. She loved being hugged and loved everything I did. We would play games that were basically just her mimicking me. She just she wanted. She

wanted to do everything I wanted to do. You know, getting my hand me downs were more exciting than new clothes. We lived in the same room for you know, the first twelve years of my life. We had bunk beds. I mean, you know, we fell asleep together every night, talking and listening to audiobooks. And I remember once we were at in Bermuda and for whatever reason, I was

getting bullied. I barely remember the story because I was no little There are these boys in the pool, and Dixie stood up for me by peeing in both of the pools that the boys had been going into and then informing them as such. Yeah, she was a tough little kid. She was a really tough little kid. I love that little sister standing at her big sister. That's really sweet. How did your sisterly dynamic evolve over time? I think Dixie came out loving and doting and so vulnerable.

She was so excited by the fact that she could just you know, breathe in the same room as you when she was really little, and that really changed over time. And I think part of that is because, you know, we were sisters, so I was three years older, and I didn't want her to play with the friends that I had decided were mine, or you know, she couldn't have the things I had, even though there's nothing she

wanted more. And I think, I, you know, my mom would tell me that you need to be nicer to her and stop excluding her so much, and you know, she just wants to be your friend. And sometimes I'd let her and then I could take it all away. And I think as she got older, she hardened a little bit. I mean, as we all do, so I think there was definitely not a rift, but you know,

we didn't talk to each other about things. She was not the person that if something happened, at least, you know, towards the end of middle school and early high school, that I felt like I could talk to. And she developed a mean streak. She was very competitive and very much wanted to be great. I had very little patience for people who would get in the way of that.

You know. The problem, the problem that she had that I never had was coaches would come up to my parents and say, your daughter has to stop making her teammates cry and the dugout when they screw up because she cared so much. Right, I think it's the same impulse that made her follow me from room to room, that made her so invested in the rest of life too. Tell me more about that. She was extremely driven and extremely focused, especially in ways that defined her self separate

from me. We very much defined ourselves in opposition to one another, especially like in our household. You know, my family. My family is full of big personalities. It is there's no house big enough to contain us solve, which I think is part of what made it really hard to grow up together. You know, she this is the kid who saw me going to a fancy private high school and it was like, screw that, I'm going to the you know, local public school with thirty five kids and

loved it. All the things that she spent the most time on were things that I didn't do, and I was the same way, Right. I didn't try to claim softball after she lame softwall and things like that, and we, you know, we would always bring up how different we were from each other. And I felt in the last few years that was something that was changing, and there was more room, and it felt like the future felt intertwined, is how I would put it. It felt like we

were going somewhere together. Yeah, can you bring me back to the morning you found out Dixie had passed away. I just turned twenty two, So my mom came down

for my birthday. And there's a tire little taco shop across the street that's so good, and we went there on Tuesday night because it's taco Tuesdays and my mom loves mescal and she had a bunch of mescal and we ran across the highway and went to bed, and I woke up the next morning it felt really really early, and my mom started banging on the door, and she was banging on the door so like the wall was shaking, and so I muted myself and I was like, Mom,

what's going on. She's like, get off your call right now. And I was like, great, I want to yell at for something. And I went outside and my mom was on the phone, which I thought was really weird. It's like it's so early, why is she awake? And like why is she like screaming? And then she just screamed at me either dead. They're both dead, And I was like, what are you what are you talking about? Like, I was so confused, And she told me that she was

on the phone with Dixie's boyfriend's mother. His name is Ross, and her name was Gina. She was on the phone with Gina, and Gina said that at two in the morning the night before, a sheriff or police officer had showed up at their door to inform them that their son had been in a car accident, that there had been a pastor in the car, and then they had both died, So we knew that was true. We also knew that Dixie and Ross had been in Tahoe together on a couple's trip, so it was very unlikely that

anyone else would have been in the car. And Gina had been trying to get ahold of my mom all night. So we sat down on the couch and we're like, Okay, well, what if there was a car accident and Dixie's just hurt, or what if you know, they're mistaken and we actually need to get in contact with whatever police department is in the area of Tahoe she's in. So we spent the next few hours doing that I called like every hospital I could possibly think of. My mom's losing her

mind on the couch, like what is happening? We can't get a old of my dad, which was horrible. I called him like I think twenty seven times when I took the phone records, and I finally got ahold of the Berkeley Police Department around seven in the morning, and I was like, hey, so someone is calling us and telling us that Dixie Lee Lewis has been killed in a car accident. And she says one of your officers was dispatched to our house. Is this true? Like do

you have any records of this? And he's like, I have no information, but like I will go figure out everything I can go figure out, And then we just

kept trying to get ahold of my dad. He was still sleeping, so by the time that the Berkeley Police Department called me back, it was probably like nine in the morning, and he said, I have a number for you to call, and he transferred me to the Platter County Coroner's office, and I gave the phone to my mom and the coroner's name was Hannah and she confirmed that she and my sister's body on a metal slab in front of her, and that's when the world fall apart.

And the next two hours were awful because I had to get mom home and my dad was finally picking up and he was shattered, and he kept telling me that it was his worst fear. He kept saying that this is my worst fear. And I realized, like usually when something goes wrong, he's the person I called to help fix it. When I realized that I had to get Mom home by myself, so I called the travel

agent and I got us tickets home. When it finally came time to leave, we got on the plane and went home, and the entire plane ride, my mom was crying, because of course she was. I felt like it was weird. I was like all these self conscious about the whole thing, like you would expect when something like this happens, to feel totally absorbed and to think, you know, nothing else matters everything, you know, who cares about the world, Who

cares about what people think? I was so self conscious the whole time, and the flight attendant kept looking over very concerned. I was so embarrassing up to the bathroom because I didn't want anyone else. I don't want to make eye contact with all the people behind us. When we finally got off the plane and we got home and walked into the house and my dad and Walker were into his room crying, and we decided all to sit in my parents' bed for the rest of the

day and we just cried and talked about Dixie. The decision feel real. It feels like all of a sudden, your brain has all these compartments and it almost it feels that you had a lobotomy. It's like part of my brain is not communicating to the other part of my brain that like the things that are happening around

you are reality. That like the I am in my feet, like feeling the forces of gravity tether me to the earth, and like the sky is blue and this is up and that is down, and I know these things that I feel that I know these things right. I think that there's a lot of like emotion in knowing something is true, Like there's like there's an actual, like physical

feeling that had gone. Like I knew that the sky was blue, I knew that gravity was happening, but I didn't like feel that truth existed anymore in my body. I didn't feel that the things that were happening. In the sadness, I was feeling like could be how the world was going to be now? And I thought it was weird that I didn't lose my appetite. Also, I felt so strange. I felt like I was doing it wrong.

I was starving when we got home and my dad's friend brought a sandwiches and I was the only person who could eat. Yeah. I don't know why, but it really bothered me. I was like, why do I want this tuna sandwich so badly? You would? You were carrying some kind of expectations even in that acute phase around how you ought to be grieving. Is that right, tons? Yeah?

I mean I've never lost anyone, right. The only people I know who have died in my family were my great grandparents on my mom's side, All for our grandparents are still alive. Like death as never has not something I've had to encounter before. Other bad things have happened.

I've not had a perfect life by any stretch of the imagination, but to have this be my first encounter with death and I haven't be Dixie like she was so strong the thing I kept thinking of the whole like, and I still think think about this all the time. It is like what it felt like physically when she hugged you. She was so dense her like she she's a college athlete. She you know, could bench press more than her boyfriend. Um, she's a beast. And when she

hugged you, her body becasus pure muscle. Was like a really, really dense feeling. It feels, it feels like nothing else. And I just couldn't understand how someone who's so strong and so forceful and so ready to make the world hers could be killed by an eighteen wheeler. That made no sense. And I think to make sense of that. You know, I still find myself picturing what the crash must have looked like. I walked myself through it all the time. You know, she was in the passenger seat,

very both going fifty five miles an hour. It was Tahoe, so I assume the road was winding, although I've never been. It was a two lane highway essentially, and the eighteen wheeler was coming the other way, and for whatever reason, Ross crossed the double yellow line, and I think about what, you know, I hope she was looking down on her phone.

I hope she didn't look up through the windshield. The scariest is when I picture her looking up and seeing the eighteen while they're coming at them and like gasping half the time. That's how I picture it, and that really scars me. And like I mean, she was wearing a seatbelt. Neither of them was intoxicated. It was three pm, it was sunny. There is no reason that should have happened. Out of all the people's whose bodies could be destroyed by force, it just felt like hers would be immune

to that. She was too strong for it. I think about it all the time. You know what you're what you're sharing with me right now is bringing me back to the night of Dixie's memorial service, which fittingly was on a softball diamond, right which is where Dixie would have felt most at home. And the reason it's bringing me back is that you you shared you shared a very similar sentiment, and you were talking about how challenging, how jarring it was for your brain to accept Dixie's death.

You know, when we experienced trauma, it can take time for our subconscious to catch up. You know, you were talking about it feeling like you had a lobotomy. It's as if our minds are fragmented. Part of you knows Dixie's gone. Another part, the one that's bound up in your memories, your emotions, your expectations, your dreams of her future, that part truly thinks Dixie's still here. I got home from college after maybe the hardest master of my life, and for weeks I was so excited to come home.

I was so tired, and then I started packing and I realized I was gonna get home. I was going to pull into the driveway, opened the front door, and she wouldn't be there. And I stayed in bed after that for four hours. It still feels unreal a lot of the time. Yeah, it feels like she's such a big part of who I am. That like something about how we grew up put us in opposition, and because of that, like that is a force I to find

myself against and missing that is so all consuming. You mentioned that Dixie is such a big part of who you are, and her loss feels all consuming. And I recently talked to one of the UK's leading experts on grief. Her name is Julia Samuel, and one thing she points out is that when we lose someone in our lives, it can alter our relationship with ourselves because our self identities are so entwined with that person, and so their loss ends up leaving a hole in our self structure.

I'm curious about what this has been like for you. I mean, that's going to be an essential part of who I am forever. Most people who know me know that I love my family more than just about anything. And there are a few things I take pride in as much as I take pride in being an old her sister and looking out for these people who I love so much. And you know, I would have done

anything to save her. And I can't believe that she won't be up my college graduation and that she's not going to yell at me when I pick out an ugly wedding dress, and you know that she's not going to be ordering people around when she's my maid of honor. But all these things that were going to happen that my kids aren't going to know her is unimaginable and it's all very selfish, right. It's all the things that

I wanted to do and have her there for. But like those milestones are just there's so much about having a sister that makes a lot of moments in life more special. One thing I'm unbelievably gul for is I have the world's best younger brother, But I do not know what I do without him. If she had left me here alone, I don't know what I would have done.

You know, another thing Julia says, which which I just had never thought about before, is that the hole that that kind of loss can create within you can actually affect your confidence, because it can affect your capacity and ability to be yourself. Does that resonate with you? I think I'm the kind of person who's very externally confident and always has been. How deep that goes down has always been a problem, and that it doesn't. But I think the thing that I notice is if I allow

myself to take him a moment and check in. I mean, I'm, you know, in therapy constantly, but I'll have these realizations that I'm scared all the time, like I'm always just a little on edge. That I walk down the street and I pass a semi truck and I think of my sister's body being pushed up against the windshield, and that's just how I live now. That would you know a Carward Hawks, My hair stands on end, or when an ambulance passes. The first thing I think is how

quickly it took an ambulance to get to Dixie. I don't know. I think most twenty two year olds are very unsure about the world. I am very unsure about the world. I don't know who I am yet or what I want to do with my life. That degree of uncertainty is tolerable and exciting. Living with just a little bit of constant terror is exhausting, and you don't It's like when you don't realize your shoulders have been tensed all day and then you finally let them down

and you're like, huh, that was happening. It's like that all the time. Every day takes one hundred I think I do a really good job of passing it off, but it is very, very hard. We'll be back in a moment that the slight change of plans. Quinn Lewis tragically lost her little sister Dixie in a car accident. In our conversation, Quinn shared how Dixie's death has changed the way she interacts with people. The interesting thing that I realized when I first got to schools, I needed

everyone to know I didn't need to tell them. I didn't need to ruin their day by like interrupting the conversation letting them know. But I had my friends tell everybody I came into contact with, whether it was like when I was in the bathroom or like whatever. They didn't have to bring it up. I just could not exist in a world that they didn't know that. Three quarters of my brain was it at you know the

table we were getting tacos and marguerite is at. It was sitting in my sister's room next to a tiny little plastic box of ashes that we said we were going to scatter three months ago. And didn't you know you mentioned telling all of your friends to tell everyone else. It strikes me as an incredible gift you gave them, because as a society we're so ill equipped at addressing

death directly. We feel anxiety that what we say will fail to strike the right tone or will insufficiently honor the loss, and death becomes the elephant in the room, and it creates this additional, unanticipated, massive burden for the berieve to navigate. Which are these distorted dynamics with friends and co workers and strangers you're meeting in the cafeteria, Like it's just painful to think about being a college student having to navigate those dynamics. I think you just

you can't take anything too seriously. I think it's what I've learned about what people are going to say. I think it's nice that people try, and I think you get funny stories to share with your friends, with the people who really, uh, screw the pooch. I think I've had people tell me oh my gosh. I had someone take me aside a couple of weeks after she died, hold my hand, very sincerely, looked deeply into my eyes.

This was an old woman who I had just met, and said, people are going to tell you it's going to get better. It never gets better. It's like, all right, thank you noted. You know, people react weirdly. I'm I mean, I'm lucky. I think, you know, if I were to tell people how to react to this, I love that. You know, I stole a bunch of Dixie's clothes, which I still feel like she's going to come home and like get mad at me for having But I have so many of Dixie's clothes with me at school that

I'll wear sometimes. And I have a couple of friends who remember which ones are hers, and they'd be like, it's your Dixie dressed today, because that's that's exactly what I'm thinking the whole time. I love that. I want to talk a bit about your family, Quinn. I remember that a couple of weeks after Dixie died, you and I were chatting on the phone and you shared this

observation with me that's really stuck with me. You said that at that particular moment in time, perhaps because you were all in the acute phases of grief, you and your family appeared to be grieving in a similar way. It had a similar quality to it. And I remember you saying it felt so unifying, like you were unified in your grief, but you were concerned that in the longer term, different members of your family would invariably start

grieving differently and along different emotional arcs. And I mean one I was. I was moved by your foresight. You know. I think it's takes an incredibly wise person in the throes of that kind of acute grief to even have such thoughts. But I'm wondering, I'm wondering what this has been like for all of you and have you been

grieving differently. I would actually say the hardest part was, like things really they diverged after like five weeks of Dixie's death, and all of a sudden, people started wanting and needing very different things. Some people wanted to talk about it a lot, and some people would rather not and want of things to be okay for as many hours of the day that they could be okay. I

think both are totally valid. I think it's just hard to reconcile when everyone's living in the same house, right, So those are really big approaches that are not super easy to reconcile. If one person really likes photos of Dixie everywhere and wants to talk about her all the time, and one person would rather not have photos, I'd rather get through the day and spend as much normal time

as possible. I think that's hard to navigate. Something I've been actually really relieved by is how hard everyone is trying to accommodate for each other's kinds of grief. I love that. It's really reassuring because the last thing I can handle is anything else falling apart. Yeah, so yeah, I think it's really easy to be judgmental when you're

in pain, right. I think even when you are in pain, trying to see someone else's process in the best way you possibly can, to be as gracious as possible and understanding as possible as a distance yourself and what you want from what someone else might want, which is extremely

hard to deal when the emotions are so big. But I think that's the most important thing if you actually, you know, want your team to stick together, because under these kinds of circumstances, inevitably everyone is going to react differently, and so your choices are either you know, kindness, an accommodation, or going it alone. Does this represent growth for you? I think there are people who go through things like this and they come out the other side and they say,

you know, I look at life so differently. You know, every days a gift, anything can happen, or you know, it's so important to treat people with kindness because you never know what's going on. But it doesn't feel like a learning moment. I don't feel like my worldview has changed. My worldview has changed because they don't have a sister who's alive. Um, I don't know if I call that growth. I think I'm gonna have to grow to like get through it, you know, and glue the pieces back together.

But I don't. I don't feel like I've become a better person. I don't feel like i've I'm gonna be more thoughtful, not to say that like I was already at you know, maximum capacity for thoughtfulness, just like whatever whatever, like traumatic resilience, whatever, you know, thing that some people claim to have. I'm not like born again. Grief is obviously instively complicated process, and it's nonlinear, of course, but I'm wondering if there are are certain changes that feel

more permanent looking back. Yeah, I think my active efforts to keep her around in every way I can are never going to stop. Like Taylor Swift released this album that's not even a new album, it's just her rerecording old songs. We love Taylor Swift. We've been listening to Taylor Swift since, like Taylor Swift was fourteen years old. Like I want to know what her favorite song would have been. I think I know what it would have been.

And I listened all the way through and I know which one, and I listened to it all the time, and when I walk and I'm listening to that song, I'm like spending time with her. She is such a big part of my world, and I don't get to have her with me, but I will do everything I can to myself with little parts of her. I hope it doesn't stay this hard. I hope I find a little bit more peace. Has your understanding of your relationship

with Dixie changed? And then I know that you were saying earlier she thought you guys were so different and you weren't sure that was true, And yeah, I just

want to hear more about that. It just feels so unfinished, you know, because this wasn't supposed to happen, and I can very easily see a slightly different reality where I feel so much guilt for not spending not being more inclusive, and not being you know, the sister that she called about everything, but that just wasn't us, and I, you know, there's no there's no reason why I shouldn't have to redo any of that because she wasn't She was supposed to be here, and none of that was actually that

big of a deal. That's just being sisters. We should have been allowed to be sisters. She shouldn't have died. But the feeling I do feel is God. I wish I hadn't excluded her, because I would have been an extra minute, and I would do anything for just one

more minute. I guess I'm I'm just wondering where you go from here, you know, And there's there are so many people who will be listening to this who are navigating loss in their own lives, and and so I think something helpful for people to hear from you is how you've navigated the tension between remembering Dixie and honoring her and staying close to her and allowing yourself moments to just breathe to get a respite from the pain.

I'm not sure if I figured that out yet. I think if there is anyone listening to this who has lost anyone, which is probably most people, I'm all like, I'm very new to this, but like that breaks my heart. It breaks my heart that anyone else has to feel this. I like, I can't. It baffles me that this hasn't existed more than once, and that anyone else has to

go through it. That's so heartbreaking. But I feel a little bit more able to choose whether or not my brain goes there, because it's not like when you're sad or anxious or like anything else, and you can cry and you feel better. It just keeps going down because it's not getting better because I don't get to have my sister back. And I think it's okay to not want to feel the grief all the time. I don't

think it's you know, don't push it down forever. But there's nothing wrong with making choices about when this is going to enter your life. It's a part of surviving and it's a part of continuing to live. I one thing I do try to do is that I'm very bad at, but I'm working on. It's to be more gentle with myself. But when I get home, I like think about the three things I did that day that

we're really good. And sometimes it's that I ate lunch, and sometimes it's that I went on a walk, and sometimes it's I went to class and I took my notes and I walked back to my dorm. Sometimes I

actually do something impressive. Sometimes I actually, you know, did original research that's gonna do whatever about climate change or but I think the metric now is very different than it was, and allowing that bar to be in a place where baby steps are worth celebrating, because when something is so huge and insurmountable, there's never going to be

a counterweight of good that makes it feel better. But there can be these tiny, little moments that remind you that you are moving forward and you are going to be okay, and that you're doing okay, and that you're every day you are trying your hardest, whether it was conscious or not, and trying your hardest is all anyone could ask of you. Hey, thanks for listening. Join me next week when I talk with one of the UK's

leading grief therapists, Julia Samuel. You know, people say time is a great healer and the pain of grief does change over time, but if we aren't active in the process of grieving, it doesn't change so much. The things you do to block your pain are, in the end the things that harm you over time. A Slight Change of Plans is created written an executive produce by me

Maya Schunker. The Slight Change Family includes Tyler Green, our senior producer, Jan Guerra, our senior editor, Ben Tolliday, our sound engineer, Emily Rosteck, our producer and fact checker, and Neil LaBelle, our executive producer. My heartfelt thanks to Quinn in the entire Lewis family who have trusted me with their story and honoring Dixie Lee Lewis. Louis Skara wrote our theme song and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals.

A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, so big thanks to everyone there, including Nicolemrano, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, Heather Faine, and Carly mcgliori, and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker CNX. What this looks like for me is I have an unlimited coffee budget. I usually don't drink coffee because it makes me really hyper and it's really fun,

and I used to try and moderate it. Who cares? Who cares? It's coffee. It makes me feel better. My therapist when I get on the phone can tell if I've had coffee because I'm happier. I have as much coffee as I want. I don't care twenty cups a day, whatever, Mocha, I want all the chocolate sprinkles. Put them on like they say whipped cream. Yes, whip cream. Yes, will Will I be downloading the mobile app because my order has

gotten so embarrassing that I cannot say it out loud. Yes, I will be downloading the mobile app.