Ashley Sinden exhaled her last breath on her hospital bed as I inhaled a hit from a joint intended to be smoked in her honor in my apartment in San Diego. I wouldn’t get the news until the next morning. She must have visited me that night and told me to light it up so we could have one last smoke session before she departed.
The idea of her dying hit me in waves. I was at a tennis tournament in Indian Wells when I read G’s (her husband) text message that her battle with cancer was quickly coming to an end. I couldn’t process the words. The world seemed to move around me in slow motion as I stood there reading everyone’s reaction to the news in the group chat titled, “Ashley’s Angels.” We all thought we’d have more time.
I stepped out of my reality to I leave her one last voice note, “It was a pleasure doing this life with you. I’m sorry you have to go,” I said into the phone.
Two days later I was on my way to the hospital in LA to say my goodbyes in person. I wasn’t prepared to see her in a hospital bed….dying. I thought if I didn’t see her, I could continue pretending like she was still out in the world doing her thing. But I knew I’d regret not going.
Ashley lived a hundred different lives in her short 35 years.
I had met her at the Electronic Daisy Carnival, a rave in Los Angeles in 2011. She was Dottie then, a raver girl with a purple wig and a bedazzled outfit. Truth be told, I never thought I’d see her after that night. She had just been some girl that a guy I knew had a crush on. Except a few months later, she’d show up in San Diego with that guy I knew, looking like a completely different person. She was a brunette with a sophisticated short bob and a spicy attitude bred in East LA.
We had been at a birthday party when the guy she was with kissed another girl in front of her. She didn’t bother to hide how she felt. She approached me like we had been besties forever and said, “tell me straight, is this how he is? Having experienced the same scenario when I briefly dated him, I felt it was my duty to inform her what she was in for. She gave him sass and stormed off.
Again, I thought I’d never see her again. Fourteen years later, she and I lived two separate lives intertwined by love.
We were two very different people, learning the same lessons in heartbreak and self-love. I didn’t see her often. Sometimes we’d go years without talking, but when we’d reconnect it was like no time had passed at all. She was always there when I was the most heartbroken. She was there when the boy I loved broke my heart and again when he took his own life.
One thing about Ash, is she was always running late but she always showed up. James(the boy I loved) had been her friend too. So when he passed, we had come together to say goodbye as he moved from this life to whatever was waiting for him on the other side of the rainbow. The ceremony had started and it was about 30 minutes in when I saw her running down the hillside, flowers in hand. Always late but always there when you needed her.
We got to see each other grow from two hopeless romantics chasing love in all the wrong places to two strong women that learned to heal their generational wounds and love ourselves instead.
Over the years, I saw her go from Dottie the rave girl to Ashley, a woman determined to live life her way. While she suffered from anxiety and depression, she never let her fears hold her down. Every few months she was “re-branding” as she would call it. A new look, meant she was about to embark on a new adventure. She’d pack up her bags and move from her parent’s home in Los Angeles to start some unknown chapter in San Francisco with no job, no place to stay and very little money. Some how she’d always land on her feet.
Whenever I was stressed about money, Ashley would always say, “girl, money is the easiest thing in life to come by. You just have to hustle.” And that’s what my girl did. In the time I knew her she was a waitress, a dog walker, an actress, a voice actor, an esthetician, a receptionist, a DJ, a barber and an influencer.
I always envied how free she was. She wasn’t afraid of moving somewhere new and starting over. Funny enough, she said she wanted my life. She once told me, “ya, I never really have a plan and even though I know things will work out, I suffer a lot in the process. I always wanted a stable life like yours.”
I like to play this game where I imagine how people’s stories end up. I’ll pick a friend and begin thinking about what their lives will be like in 20 years or so. Like so-and-so will probably get married and have two kids. Or this person will end up divorced and live on a commune. For some reason, it was hard to predict where Ashley’s life would take her. No one had seen it coming when she met G at 23 years old and got married 6 months later. I don’t think anyone thought she’d move to New York after the pandemic and become a barber’s apprentice. And I would have never bet that one day, while lying by a pool, she’d adjust her bikini top and find a lump that would bring her story to a sudden halt only two years later.
Ashley’s sense of humor was unmatched. She never let the cancer get her down. She’d record her entire journey for the world to see. She’d say things like, “thanks to all the haters for giving me the fuel to live.” Not matter how shitty she felt in the inside, she always made sure to look her best when in the public eye. Whether she was rocking a wig or ensuring her nails were done, my girl never let the haters see her sweat.
And we made sure she went out the way she would’ve wanted – her head wrapped in a beautiful head scarf, her nails manicured, and her feet moisturized.
It was hard to cry that day. Ashley was always good at picking up vibes, so we wanted her to know she was in good company even if she couldn’t see us or talk to us.
She had celebrated her last birthday at a restaurant in New York with friends before she came back home for treatment. Before blowing out her birthday candle she said, “I wish for a long life and to come back to New York to be with all of you.”
It breaks my heart to know her wish didn’t come true.
For James (the boy I loved), life had been a choice. For Ashley, it was a gift she fought for until her body gave out on her.
So many of us take life for granted. We’re so scared of living authentically. We’re afraid to love because we fear we won’t be loved back. We’re afraid to move because it’s safer to stay in the life we hate and know, than to take a chance on something new. We let fear and anxiety chain us to our beds. We keep working and saving for a future that isn’t guaranteed. We’re afraid to try because what if we do and fail. We’re afraid to show the world who we are because what if we’re not enough.
Ashely had all those fears. But she never stopped living life the way she wanted. She lived her way until the very end. I only hope I have half the courage she did to live as fully as possible until I see her again.
I love you, Ash. No matter how many years go by, I know I’ll see you again. We’ll light a joint and talk as though no time has passed at all. I hope you and James are dancing it up.