16/07/2025
🌿Moi mai rā Andrea Gibson- great explorer of life, death and identity.
We are grateful for your mana, courage and light. Thank you for all the beautiful and healing words you have created and for sharing these and yourself with the world🌿
Love letter from the Afterlife
My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined. So close you look past me when wondering where I am. It’s Ok. I know that to be human is to be farsighted. But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer, “How tall are you?” In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you’d said. At night I sit ecstatic at the loom weaving forgiveness into our worldly regrets. All day I listen to the radio of your memories. Yes, I know every secret you thought too dark to tell me, and love you more for everything you feared might make me love you less. When you cry I guide your tears toward the garden of kisses I once planted on your cheek, so you know they are all perennials. Forgive me, for not being able to weep with you. One day you will understand. One day you will know why I read the poetry of your grief to those waiting to be born, and they are all the more excited. There is nothing I want for now that we are so close I open the curtain of your eyelids with my own smile every morning. I wish you could see the beauty your spirit is right now making of your pain, your deep seated fears playing musical chairs, laughing about how real they are not. My love, I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones, Dying is the opposite of leaving. I want to echo it through the corridor of your temples, I am more with you than I ever was before. Do you understand? It was me who beckoned the stranger who caught you in her arms when you forgot not to order for two at the coffee shop. It was me who was up all night gathering sunflowers into your chest the last day you feared you would never again wake up feeling lighthearted. I know it’s hard to believe, but I promise it’s the truth. I promise one day you will say it too– I can’t believe I ever thought I could lose you"
Andrea Gibson 1975-2025
https://andreagibson.substack.com/p/love-letter-from-the-afterlife?fbclid=IwY2xjawLk9kRleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETEzVVlneHlVS0hqek1jTmFqAR4F3SQMRAn-Ax4zq5_gi1IvvlOz1V8lPmTRgdZS4vzEqL6PqtLvMo2QHmjPcw_aem_HCtFdxaaiTw_8UyBbC7QjA
“Whenever I leave this world, whether it’s sixty years from now, I wouldn’t want anyone to say I lost some battle. I’ll be a winner that day.” – Andrea Gibson
Andrea Gibson was a winner today. On July 14th, at 4:16AM, Andrea Gibson died in their home surrounded by their wife, Meg, four ex-girlfriends, their mother and father, dozens of friends, and their three beloved dogs.
Poet Laureate of Colorado, world-touring spoken word artist, author of seven books, Calais Maine High School State Basketball Champion, and subject of the award-winning documentary, “Come See Me in the Good Light”, and so much more — Andrea Gibson accomplished much on their 49 years on this planet. Though Andrea desperately wished to have lived a longer life, they could not have possibly lived a fuller one.
Since learning they had cancer in 2021, Andrea has been a champion of finding beauty in unlikely places and gratitude in the hardest hours. Over the last four years, they danced with their diagnosis, and continually aimed their internal compass toward joy. One of the last things Andrea said on this plane was, “I fu***ng loved my life.”
Not long ago, Andrea wrote a poem titled “Love Letter From the Afterlife.” In it, they offered this line: “I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined.” Today, and all days forward, we hope you feel Andrea’s enormous spirit and immense presence beside you.
Meg and Heather, the authors of this post, have absolutely no idea how to encapsulate the magnitude and magnificence of a life like Andrea Gibson’s, so they intend to keep writing, to keep telling Andrea’s story, to keep Andrea alive in every way they can.
Andrea would want you to know that they got their wish. In the end, their heart was covered in stretch marks.
Andrea Gibson 8/13/75 - 7/14/25
