At the start of October, Kristen Coe and her husband, Mark, opened their home to friends and family and neighbors for a backyard gathering and neighborhood scavenger hunt.
Their daughter’s second-grade teacher came. Their son’s rowing coach came. The social worker from their kids’ middle school came. The woman who shared fourth-grade room-mom duties with Coe came.
“I walked into the backyard and saw people from all the paths of the life I’ve walked,” Coe said. “In the moment it felt very intense and very cooperative and collaborative, and like such a gift.”
This year marks the 10-year anniversary of their son Hunter’s death. Hunter died by suicide when he was 24 years old, and his family has spent the last decade making sense and meaning of his life and their loss.
Community, Coe said, has been essential.
“I think that it’s easy and understandable when a traumatic event occurs to turn inward,” she said. “That is a safe place. It’s a comfortable place. It’s a place of reflection — all of which have benefits. But when Hunter died, we made a conscious decision to be open about his journey and to discuss sort of all the colors of his rainbow.”
In 2016, on what would have been Hunter’s 25th birthday, the Coes launched the Hunter Quigley Coe Be The Boat Fund to raise money for mental health interventions for young people whose families may not otherwise be able to access them. The fund is focused on families in Oak Park, North Lawndale and Maywood, communities near the River Forest home where Hunter grew up and where his parents remain.
The backyard gathering and scavenger hunt were in service of that.
“The idea of buoying others is very important to us,” Coe said.
Since 2016, Be The Boat has underwritten $430,000 in grants to area organizations that provide, among other things, art therapy, pet therapy, suicide grief support, swim lessons, and a camp for siblings who were separated when they were removed from their home because of abuse or neglect.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Coes mostly fundraised by hosting local events and asking attendees for donations. For the past few years, their most consistent (and impressive) fundraiser has been Hunter’s brother, Lawlor, 32, who runs ultramarathons and donates his pledge money — more than $70,000 and counting — to Be The Boat. Hunter has another brother, Jordan, 28, and a sister, Regan, who is 36.
“One of the challenges, especially to our children, has been wanting them to be able to weave the narrative of Hunter’s life into their personal journey, rather than having it dictate their journey,” Coe said. “We wanted something good to come out of something that was tragic and we didn’t quite know what shape that would take at first. But we know that moving toward something positive, rather than away from something negative, would be important.”
For the scavenger hunt, Coe selected sites around River Forest that played a role in Hunter’s life and sent participants on an adventure to visit them. There was the tree donated in his name by a family for whom Hunter babysat. There was the tennis club where Hunter worked as a lifeguard. There were his elementary and middle schools.
At each stop, Coe had placed a color swatch. When people gathered back in the Coes’ yard, they were invited to place the swatches on a giant black-and-white picture of a canoe — turning what was colorless into something full of light and life.
“When Hunter died, we had a choice of what part of the story we wished to place emphasis on,” Coe said. “For us, his open heart and his compassion were really something that we treasured. That felt like a lovely foundation on which to move forward, rather than some of the darker things in his story.”
Coe has a book of artist Houston Llew’s works that resemble ships. On the spine is a quote from merchant and philanthropist John Shedd.
“It says, ‘A ship is safe in harbor,’” Coe said. “‘But that is not what ships are for.’
That will stay with me always.
“I think about the reach that our children have,” she continued, “that Hunter can have, when we’re willing to embark on a journey that may feel fraught at first as we go into the unknown. But there’s power in leaving your comfort zone.”
Especially when you carry your community along with you.
Join the Heidi Stevens Balancing Act Facebook group, where she continues the conversation around her columns and hosts occasional live chats.
Twitter @heidistevens13