Dear Megan

Yeah, That’s Megan

All of Us

Tell a story about Megan to anyone who knew her at six, sixteen, thirty - or met her last Tuesday. Maybe it starts with several drinks and an ambitious plan. Maybe it involves a minor disaster, or a sentence no one else alive would have said out loud. It all ends the same. The other person saying: “Yeah. That’s Megan.” Forty years is long enough to become several different people. Megan has, too. Somehow, every version has remained unmistakably her. Tell her childhood stories to someone who met her at thirty, or this year’s stories to someone who knew her in grade school, and you get the same answer every time. She has fit more life into some summers than most people manage in a decade. There’s always somewhere to go, something to plan, and something to celebrate - and Megan already knows exactly what everyone should be doing. She’s funny as hell, completely unpredictable, and stubborn enough to make sure it happens. She always gets her way. The most annoying part is that she is almost always right—which is exactly how you end up in the car, going where she wanted and doing what she planned. The stories here come from different decades, different places, and people who knew very different versions of her. Some are sweet. Some are ridiculous. A few are best left partially unexplained. But here’s what can get lost in the funny ones. She notices everything. She finds small ways to make people feel welcomed, appreciated, and remembered. She makes moments special even when life doesn’t feel special to her. Even on the days she can’t find the light for herself, she still finds a way to turn it on for everyone else. She’s tough, and that makes it easy to forget she needs that care back. She feels things deeply. She is not indestructible. She’s human. She’s so fully herself that everyone around her feels safe being human too. So, Megan, this is from all of us who got to ride along. Every version of you. Every decade. Every extra stop. We’d get in the car again. Yeah. That’s you.