On July 1st, 2024 a writer friend of mine died. Josh gingerly broke the news while we stood at the kitchen counter pulling dinner together. He had heard it on Minnesota Public Radio while driving home from somewhere, and knew I should hear it from him first. Laurie Lindeen, singer/songwriter of Zuzu’s Petals and author of Petal Pusher: A Rock and Roll Cinderella Story, had died a few days before unexpectedly of a brain aneurism. As part of the Minneapolis scene, it was on the news.
It took a minute to sink in. Her death was out of context. She was someone who was too young to die. Someone I once knew well but hadn’t spoken to for a long time. Our most recent interactions had all been via emails. The first thing that descended was disbelief. A sense of the surreal, like stringer’s cat, if I hadn’t heard she had died, she would still be alive. And then there was the trail of ungraspable memories, the snippets of time smudging together and smoothed of their details. The clearest snapshots in my memory were of her smile when she joked. Her writing voice. A way she carried herself in the world. And then there was that feeling of regret that I would never get to reach out to reconnect with her again.
We were in a grad school writers’ group in our MFA program at the University of Minnesota. There were five of us and we were all preparing manuscripts for our graduation requirements while we taught undergrad intro and intermediate creative writing courses. We were all women, writing wildly different work in the creative nonfiction genre, and holding each other accountable with deadlines and giving each other feedback and encouragement as we managed our course loads, family lives, the TAship, and our unruly drafting and revision processes. Three of us were mothers already, the other two were to become mothers in the next few years, and two of us were pregnant with our second children. With these women that I had finally found my ground in a the tumultuous experience grad school.
As writers, we were all compelled to write about our own experiences, so we got privileged glimpses into each other’s lives, and the honor of helping each other crystalize our words into something that we could show the world. She and I were very different as writers but what we reacted to and what we wanted from the world aligned.
In many ways Laurie was my fantasy version of myself. Like me, she grew up in a smallish town, moved with her friends to the biggish city, and here our paths diverged for a bit. I stood on sticky floors of the clubs in the audience of the bands I admired. She was on the stage, singing with her girlfriends, despite claiming she didn’t know what she was doing. She willed her punk rock band into full existence and success, while mine remained imaginary. Her band came together in Minneapolis the same year I moved here following my graduation from Austin High School. We were both compelled to Minneapolis by its music scene. We both arrived to its vibrancy but we experienced it from different sides of the stage. We were both punks, stifled by boundaries and angry at the hypocrisy and looking to thrash our way free. I admired her bravery, pushing any restrictions of what she couldn’t or shouldn’t do, she put herself where I had only imagined going.
When I met her in the early 2000s as a fellow student and teacher, she was working on the first draft of Petal Pusher, her memoir about coming together and touring with her band during the 80s and early 90s. It would eventually be published by Simon and Schuster in 2007.
Her prose was fast. It powered forward in the same way she had powered into the music scene. Despite the drive, her words reflected a deep humility. She always depicted her foray into the punk rock world as no big deal, when by other’s accounts it was a miracle of her own making. To hold the stage as a female rocker of the era required an inordinate amount of energy, thick skin, and stick-with-it-ness. She was tenacious and ambitious and she never believed she was the best. It all worked together to make her incredibly charming. She pushed her way into the limelight, with self-knowledge and no apology. She defined where she belonged and put herself there, and embodied sincerity and authenticity while doing so. I may admire her most for never hiding her weaknesses. She wrote about them, spoke about them, sang them, and it made her beautiful and incredibly strong.
Cinderella, wake up! You’re dreaming! Your conscience is screaming.
We continued writing together post grad school, supporting each other as we navigated the ups and downs of raising toddlers, parenting young adults, teaching, and wondering what might come next. Laurie kept working on her manuscript, sharing the challenges she faced—her struggles in her marriage, the balancing act of parenting while staying creative, and living with a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. She had been diagnosed even before she moved to Minneapolis, and while it was in remission, the possibility of a relapse and the threat of her condition worsening always lingered.
Her stories took pride in her real existence, her real struggles, writing through the imperfections of her experiences. And she was so appreciative of the help she got from us. She read and gave us feedback on our work. In her kindness and with the repetition I needed to hear things, she told me how my writing exercises and approach to practice was helpful to her in her teaching. She was a great teacher herself.
Sometimes we met at homes, but more often in a restaurant. She’d arrive a bit late, the three of us already there. She slid into the booth across from me, in motorcycle boots and vintage patterned dress of deep blues and greens and laugh, self-deprecatingly rolling her eyes while looking askance. She told the story of driving her husband and kid across town and back before she could get here, laughing in her frustration. And she was curious and compassionate about our lives, asking questions as we caught each other up. To me she always sparkled, wearing something that nodded to the irreverent days gone by, even as our lives had taken on the mundane. She had matured her punk princess attitude and dress, and remained ever distinctive and true to the musical icon she was.
She had a party in 2022 when she turned 60 and for some reason I missed it. Soon after she moved to Martha’s Vineyard, one of her favorite places, a place I had learned to appreciate from reading her drafts. I had heard that she spent a week back here every year for her son and hoped there’d someday be a way to gather our writing group together once again.
To write this I went out seeking her words on the page and it has been such a pleasure to find her voice. It has been a balm to that rush of loneliness of missing out on any chance of future contact to read the articles that she has left behind. Or to hear her actual voice in the Vimeo pictured above. It is not the same as being with her, but it has helped me to feel close to her memory again. As I return to her words, I find comfort in her voice on the page—a reminder that her spirit remains in every story she left behind. And I am so grateful that she was so generous with her voice.
Call to action — for Laurie
Laurie was passionate about using her voice, and in her honor, I encourage you to use yours—by voting this November 5th. Laurie’s obituary asks that memorials be given to Kamala Harris reelection campaign in Laurie’s name. And because voting is made much easier when you have a plan for where and when you will vote, I give you some links below to aid you in that endeavor.
Election Day is Tuesday, November 5th, twelve days away at the time of this post.
It’s time to make a voting plan if you don’t have one already. Where and when will you vote? Most likely you have choices. Do your research now so you can take advantage of options and get to the polls on a schedule that works best for you. You can start at the League of Women voters site where you can check on your voting information by address, find out what will be on your ballot, and get questions answered about your candidates. When I looked up my address, I found that they didn’t have complete info. Minnesota Secretary of State has a site that will answer voting questions that are particular to Minnesota like where and how to vote early. If you live somewhere other than Minnesota and want to find out how voting in your state works, here is a link to the National Association of Secretaries of State where you can find your polling place and your Secretary of State’s website.
Thank you for being an informed and engaged citizen, Laurie would be proud.