Help Cassidy Travel to Lisa's Funeral

Hi, my name is Cassidy, and I'm fundraising to attend a close friend's funeral in California. It's kind of a long story, plus a few extenuating circumstances. The cover picture is from 2011: L to R it's Cassidy McFadden, Lisa Penner, Nina Park (exchange student) and Arthur Kauffman, taken at Bethel College in N. Newton, KS.

On April 29, less than 2 months after her 34rd birthday, my friend Lisa was put on hospice. After a year long battle with stage 4 breast cancer and 10 days on hospice, she passed on May 9. Thanks to my sweet girlfriend, I was able to find reasonably priced tickets to Fresno, California surprisingly quickly, so I was able to spend a few days with Lisa and her husband Matt + their extended family + dogs during her first week on hospice. I felt especially lucky to be able to travel with a mutual college friend once there in CA, which gave the trip a lovely silver lining of connection when it could have been lonely and melancholy. I want to go back for the funeral (June 29), but it's quickly expensive to travel between Indianapolis and California. I've done my best to decrease costs (driving 4 hrs to Chicago to fly out from O'Hare instead of Indianapolis, which cuts airfare in half), but between housing + car + airfare, it's a big price tag to take on again so soon.

This part's a very long story, but Lisa had a major cardiac event during our senior year of college (KS). After a few weeks hospitalized in Kansas and Oklahoma, she moved home to finish her degree in Fresno. Throughout junior year, the initial cardiac crisis, that weeks-long hospitalized ordeal, and a spring break road trip from Kansas to Fresno my senior year, I got to know a lot more of Lisa's family than anyone had remembered! It was fun to come up with a list recently with her little brother and parents; it turns out I've stayed over at aunts' and uncles' houses in at least 4 different states (KS, SD, NC + CA) and on both sides of her family :) I really enjoyed printing and sharing a few dozen college photos with her family, because happy photos from that time are a bit scarce. I'd love to have time to celebrate her life with her family and friends, because after this, I don't know if I'll have the chance to see them again.

Before April, I'd been helping a friend in Indianapolis get back on their feet by sharing my car for about six weeks. She's so close to getting an apartment! And maybe a job outside the gig economy! But we're (understandably!) a ways out from her being able to pay back the car insurance bills that result from adding her to my plan, so a lot more than usual has been going on my personal credit card. It felt like a fairly manageable amount before an impromptu trip to California.

Then on Wednesday, May 22, my paternal grandfather suddenly died. I'm so glad I moved to Indiana in 2022, because I had just seen him the week before to discuss fairly elaborate travel plans for an upcoming family trip. The extended McFadden family is going to Florida at the beginning of June, to an island he and my grandma started visiting in 1994. We were going to celebrate his 93rd birthday together, but now it'll be a celebrating his life together. The original travel plan included a small group driving and flying (4 total driving legs and a round trip flight) together from his assisted living home, with me as chauffeur and RN. I'd also just come out as trans to my extended family (partially in anticipation of the FL trip), and he had supportive questions to ask--so we had a lot to talk about! Last Thursday, I took off the afternoon and drove 2 hrs up to see him. I brought along Jockamo's pizzas (my gluten free and a Jockamo's Special for him) and we spent 4 full hours talking. I keep thinking that if we'd waited a week, I would have missed my chance. He died the next Wednesday.

My grandpa Wilbur's funeral will be June 22nd, and Lisa's is June 29th. I'm suddenly traveling for most of June, and to many more funerals than desired--but it's worth it to grieve in person with these different communities. If you're able to help me defray the travel costs, every little bit helps. Thanks for considering!