Caleb Rowe
How I Met Your Caleb: This is the story of the time I existed on Earth as Marie while existing and being friends with another human named Caleb.
June 9, 2019 | We Meet
In 2019, I was getting really active in the ex-religious community. I had begun to co-host a podcast about departures from faith along with Cass Midgley. I felt a new sense of purpose when I’d been really struggling in life for a long time. I was working to build up the audience for the show and reach out to people who might value our show. Not having a clue how to go about that, I just began to search relevant hashtags on social media. One such hashtag was #exchristian. I found accounts that looked like they might relate to the work we’re doing. I would follow them and get engaged so that I might build more of a network. One account I found was Caleb’s. I had no idea who Caleb was when I followed him on social media. But it is worthwhile to say that I met Caleb because of my drive. And I am proud of that. None of the next three years would have happened without it.
One day, I was scrolling Instagram and saw a post from Caleb that showed he was in the Twin Cities. I figured he was just coincidentally visiting and thought it’d be cool to meet up and network on how we’re both trying to help those suffering from inhumane religious experiences. When I messaged him, he confirmed he was in the Twin Cities and actually LIVED here. I was thrilled!! Another person,… right HERE!… who is driven to help these same people. I didn’t have the kind of recovering community I have now, so I was blown away that he existed.
He invited me to his apartment to record a podcast with him. He had a couple of podcasts he was running and thought I’d make a great guest. I looked through his photos on Instagram and wasn’t fully convinced he wasn’t a murderer but I was way too intrigued and hungry for community that I agreed. I told my husband where I was going and to call the cops if I didn’t text him in an hour of being at Caleb’s.
Finding Caleb’s apartment complex was difficult. I didn’t know there was another building tucked away in the back. I had to message him and say I was lost. He said keep driving to the back. I did so. I still have the visual memory of driving towards his building for the first time ever and seeing him standing outside, waiting for me. He brought me inside and I scoped out his place. All his gear was in need of repair or upgrade but it was clear that he was handy and was going to make his gear last. Tape holding things together. It worked. He always made it work. He could make due with anything. He was incredibly resourceful and his social skills were his currency.
For the next four hours, we recorded a 2 part episode (originally intended to be 1). He was such a good listener. I was so nervous and chatty. I thought he was such an awesome person. I felt such a comraderie and a sense of HOME, connecting with someone who had similar experiences and was doing something about it. Creating the change we wanted to see in the world. That said, he was going about it in a way I hadn’t considered nor wanted to: changing Christianity from the inside out. He talked about it being a sinking ship, about wanting to save it, not because of or for Christianity but for the good of us all. He got a lot out of the Bible and the character of Jesus. It was something I couldn’t relate to at the time but tried to stay open minded to understand, considering WHO he was.
June 18, 2019 | We Hangout
The week following meeting Caleb, I experienced a break-up that was incredibly hard for me. I had a post-breakup debrief with my ex one night after the week I met Caleb. After that conversation, I felt awful. Not because it went poorly but because I was grieving the end of the relationship. In moments like this, especially in the past, I feel this urge to just lower all my inhibitions and “act out” usually in the form of connecting with a new human. Caleb was sitting there in my DMs and so I messaged him and told him what was going on with me. Asked him if he wanted to get a drink. He did. So I drove over to Golden Valley again, picked him up, and we went to Schuller’s Tavern (where we would eventually visit multiple times). I don’t remember the specifics of the evening. Just that I was emotional, a bit manic, and desperate for kind and patient attention. He was that and more, of course. He made me laugh. He has always made me laugh. As I get to know myself better, I realize how much I value humor in my Humans. If you know Caleb, you know how funny he was. You know that little dance/shuffle he’d make. You know how he’d start bits without telling anyone, luring you in as you tried to visually locate this friend “Marcus” he kept calling out to.
The next day, I grabbed lunch with Caleb’s pastor, Jay Bakker of Tammy Faye / Jim Bakker. Getting to meet Jay was helpful for me in a lot of ways. For one, it humanized the archetypes I’d been railing against my whole life. Two, it helped me understand a different approach to Christianity and faith, seeing what Caleb and Jay were doing. That night, Caleb and I hung out again, two nights in a row now. Our friendship began.
June 23, 2019 | We Pray
Well, I am not sure either of us prayed, but that Sunday I went to church. Revolution Church. Where Caleb and Jay speak. It was weird for me. But I did it. The next Tuesday Caleb and I hang out again. It was at this time that I was also going through a crisis of sorts. The break-up led me into such despair and awareness that the joy of that relationship was the only thing keeping me going. After that breakup, I felt a need to reckon with what my life had become. I began to really suffer mentally and ended up applying for a medical leave from work for the next three months so I could sort through my stuff. In that time, I spent a bunch of time with Caleb. This was a time in my life when I had found myself in a place where I wasn’t up for dating anyone. It was a time when some of my platonic relationships really blossomed and showed me how profound they can be, even without romance or sex. In the middle of September, I decided not to return from my medical leave but to quit my full-time, $70K job in pursuit of something more. What? I didn’t know. Life coaching, virtual assistance, Zumba instruction. I talked with Caleb about it a lot.
And now I’ll just make a list of the dates we hung out on :
7/6/2019: Went to a friend’s party together
7/21/2019: Recorded an episode together as the guests of Your Atheist Pastor
8/4/2019: Hung out all day
8/17/2019: Apparently I brought him to the doctor; I don’t remember what this was for.
8/30/2019: Hung out in the evening
9/25/2019: Worked together on some workshops I was preparing
10/11/2019: Drive to Kansas together for the weekend, me to see my friends, him to see his family.
10/22/2019: Hung out in the evening after I returned from some travels
10/26/2019 | We Podcast
Late October 2019, my co-host decided to end the podcast. I still felt the desire to use my voice on that platform, so I decided to start my own podcast: Everyone’s Autonomous. I hired Caleb as my editor because I HATE editing. Plus, he was looking for more work and income and I was delighted to support him. I’ve always loved supporting him. I felt like life never gave him enough of a chance to show how fucking brilliant he was. During that season of my life, I was working hard on building up my businesses and getting very little traction. It was a very stressful period for me. Caleb was such a fun friend and someone who I looked forward to seeing every time we hung out. He was a bright light for me.
And now some more dates that we hung out on:
10/27/2019: We hang out and talk about podcast production
11/1/2019: We hang out in the evening
11/5/2019: We hang out in the evening; I help him run some errands
11/9/2019: We go to Second Saturday together, a social gathering for MN ex-christians
11/13/2019: We hang out in the evening
11/26/2019: Happy Hour at New Bohemia (our fave) with a few other friends
12/3/2019: We hang out in the evening
12/10/2019: We shop at AxMan, buy colored clay, go to New Bohemia and make a clay man and clay tree
12/17/2019: We hang out in the evening
12/28/2019: We hang out all day
1/1/2020: We hang out all day and celebrate NYE together in North Loop with another friend
1/10/2020: We hang out all evening
1/11/2020: We hang out all evening
1/21/2020: We hang out all evening
1/31/2020: We hang out all evening
February 23, 2020 | We Heal
On February 23, 2020, I woke up and didn’t check my phone right away because I was working on my relationship with it. By 10:30am, I checked my phone and saw a message waiting for me from Caleb. He said that he fell yesterday and was worried he may have broke his ankle. He asked if I could take him to the hospital. As I mentioned, I was unemployed and trying to build up my businesses, so I had a very flexible schedule. I was happy to help. I drove to his apartment that morning and I don’t remember how I got him into my car. Maybe his roommate Nic helped. Caleb was in a LOT of pain but always underplaying it with his humor. He’d ride out those intense pain waves and once they were done, he’d crack a joke and apologize for what he did/said when he was in pain. My memory is a bit fuzzy about the following week, but I wrote about all of it on Caleb’s GoFundMe page. I was with Caleb all day at the hospital. This was right before the pandemic started. The staff really tried to get him comfortable, stabilize his foot, get him some pain meds, but it barely made a dent. For some of that day, he asked me to wait outside the room if he knew he was going to have to do something that would be painful.
That period of time with Caleb was interesting for me… I shifted into a caring mode that I wasn’t sure if I loved or hated. I wondered if I was helping so much because he needed it or because I needed him to need me. I still wonder about that as I have continued on and have been teasing apart my codependency, but I suppose that’s neither here nor there and I’ll leave that for other writings. But the fact of the matter was that a) I had the will, b) I had the means, and c) he needed help. So Caleb and I were pretty inseparable for the following two months as I recovered from surgeries in the dining room of my house during the pandemic. Even as I sit here writing this, I wonder how much of the resiliency I experienced during the pandemic had to do with having Caleb living with me for the first couple of months of it. Many times I didn’t really feel stuck in my house. Felt more like living in a dorm with friends. I enjoyed taking care of him, helping him do what he couldn’t, especially the things I’m particularly good at. I know he appreciated it. He took a picture of me hanging curtains in the dining room (to give him privacy) and shared it on social media. Sometimes Caleb was really good at expressing his affection for others and other times I think he felt embarrassed at how much others loved him. Who knows? Most of this writing is purely my own projections of Caleb anyways. That’s all I have.
At our house, friends came to visit Caleb and brought food to share. I was able to raise quite a bit of money for Caleb via GoFundMe so that he could afford his rent while not working. He was already making just barely enough to cover his living expenses at the time. Caleb moved in with us on February 27, 2020. On March 7th, 2020, I dropped my electric mower on my ankle and commiserated with Caleb as we both now had healing ankles. On March 10, 2020, Caleb returned to the hospital for a second surgery and then returned back to our house again. Caleb always teased me because it was really important to me that he feel autonomy and privacy while staying in our dining room.
March 16, 2020 | We Socially Distance
It was around this time when COVID-19 finally had major impacts on the day-to-day life of Minnesotans, as schools and restaurants closed. I spent all my time at home now with my husband, roommate, and Caleb, the temporary roommate. The dates of us hanging out blur at this point, obviously.
April 26, 2020 | We Separate
By this time, Caleb’s ankle had improved enough where he felt ready to move back into his apartment. This was also my 38th birthday. I drove him back to his home and helped him get accommodated. Once he moved back to his apartment, we didn’t hang out as much because it was still early on in the pandemic and he was working in the food industry and couldn’t be as caution as we were able to (but we did hang out on 6/10/2020, 6/20/2020, 6/21/2020, 6/30/2020, 7/20/2020, 7/23/2020).
November 1, 2020 | We Say Goodbye
On my calendar on August 13, 2020, I have a note where Caleb and I went out to celebrate/grieve his upcoming departure to Seattle. The pastor he worked with was moving to Seattle and Caleb was going to follow him. Revolution Church was his heart. When he told me about this plan months ago, I was heartbroken that our friendship would change but I also knew how much this mattered to him. Every time I hung out with him before he left to Seattle was incredibly sacred to me. In my own experience of his death, I’m almost grateful for having the chance to grieve his “leaving” that fall of 2020 because it opened up a lot of doors for me to tell him how much I love him and how much he means to me which I absolutely did many times. Little did I know that those would be one of the last times I could say something like that to him.
We hung out on 8/16/2020, 8/26/2020, 8/28/2020 (Brien’s birthday), 8/29/2020 (Rachel’s Party), 8/30/2020, 9/6/2020 (Revolution Church), 9/7/2020, 9/18/2020, 9/26/2020 (interviewed him on my podcast as a farewell conversation), 10/28/2020 (Rachel’s Party), 10/29/2020, and 10/31/2020 (helped him pack/purge). On November 1, 2020, Caleb got into a car with Jay and started their travels to Seattle. I was so sad and felt so lonely. He was a bright light in my life. He meant so much to me. I was greatly intentional in telling him how much I loved him before he left so that I could be at peace.
March 30, 2021: COVID19 Vaccination #1
April 27, 2021: COVID19 Vaccination #2
May 13, 2021 | Reunited
Once I had been fully vaccinated, I was ready to treat myself to a tour of friendship. So I booked flights to drop me in Seattle, Reno, and San Diego to visit friends I missed. I arrived to Seattle on May 13, 2021, and met up with Caleb at his ground level apartment. I had sent him money in advance to stock the kitchen with foods I could eat. I was trying to eat healthier and be vegetarian. Caleb had everything I needed on hand for me. Pretty quickly upon arriving, I could tell something was up with Caleb. He wasn’t his usual self. He was really struggling. I came to understand that moving away from friends/family in the middle of the pandemic (pre-vaccinations), while healing from a broken ankle, to a city that was more locked down than others during the pandemic, and unable to find work…. really impacted him, understandably. I was really concerned for him and tried to bring it up, encouraging him to take some kind of action… maybe return to MN. But Caleb was committed to the life he wanted and wanted to keep pursuing it. I trusted his process and his vision for his life and let it be. That said, though, after I left Seattle, I gave him a bit more (digital) space since I didn’t know how to respond to his chosen struggle. We didn’t talk much for nearly 1.5 years up until about 2 weeks ago. Part of that was intentional on my end and, now I realize, part of it was intentional on his end as well as he was going through a private struggle.
Two Weeks Ago | Last Words
I have been dealing with a lot of change and growth for a while now but exponentially so since May 2022 when my partner and I decided to divorce and sell the house. It was a busy and stressful summer and this fall continues to stress me with more transitions. Adjusting to my new situation has taken some time. So it was in the last two weeks that I finally felt the mental space to check in on some folx that my brain had kept asking me how they were doing. One of whom was Caleb. So two weeks ago, I messaged him on Facebook and asked him how he was doing. And I am so glad that I did. He responded saying he wasn’t doing well, honestly. I had figured so since I had seen he had moved back to live with his parents in Kansas. I asked what was going on and if he wanted to get caught up on a phone call. He said a phone call would be nice. And then sent me a nasty picture of his ankle, saying that he’d been dealing with the ankle mishap part 2. I was shocked and responded, “What happened!?” which he read but never responded to…
I never got that phone call.
September 19, 2022 | The News
Last week I got a DM from Caleb’s friend Kayleen telling me that Caleb had died the night before. She knew we were friends and wanted to make sure I knew. I hadn’t known. I was shocked. Numb at first, to be honest. But then I got more information about how Caleb had been doing the last 1.5 years and my heart broke. I find myself wondering if he was embarrassed and was hiding his struggle from me. Maybe from us all? The emotional protection I put up slowly melted that day as I allowed myself to understand what had happened and to reconnect with the memory of our relationship (this blog is the external manifestation of that internal, private process). I have been in deep mourning ever since, just wanting to talk with others who knew him,… more than anything, I want to tell his mother how much he talked about his “mama” and how unapologetically he talked about loving her. He was proud to love his mom. I leave for the funeral this Friday. I will meet his father and his brothers and take up a space with others who also knew the essence and love of Caleb Rowe. It’s all I want right now.
That and one more evening of drinking dark beers at New Bohemia, eating weird brats, then watching TV in my basement on the couch until we both fall asleep, waking up in the morning, driving him home but stopping at Wendy’s first to get breakfast sandwiches.
So much of what my life has become… how much of it I treasure… is directly due to Caleb’s influence. I hear him in my head all the time now. Teasing me for being sentimental. For having all the dates that we hung out on my calendar and listing them on this post. We were opposites in a lot of ways. He showed me new ways of seeing the world, of responding to Christianity. He was one of the few who could dish it right back to me. He never let an awkward moment pass without doing some bit or shuffling around and dancing. He seemed to never give up… he would always make it work. He’d make something work.
God, I miss him so much.
