To Holli Hawthorn, With Love

This is the story about a girl and her special friends.

The girl is Hollis Hawthorn, a West Coast dancer with a radiant smile and a burst of golden hair. In February, she was straddling a motorcycle, cruising down the Kollidam Bridge in Chidambaram, a major pilgrimage site for the worshipers of Shiva. According to The Hindu, a local newspaper, when a bus swerved to overtake a lorry, Hollis found herself in the middle. As she struggled to get out of the way, she was flung off the bike. The helmet she was wearing saved her life, but her head injury left her in a coma, precariously balanced on a tightrope between life and death.

Deep in the heart of Tamil Nadu, with her boyfriend and her mother by her bedside, Hollis lay unconscious in a Chennai hospital. Meanwhile, learning that Hollis' medical expenses and her flight home on an air ambulance would round out at about $150,000, Hollis' friends sprung into action. They launched a grassroots fund-raising effort, driven by a handful of blogs, words of mouth, and sheer determination.

Emerald, one of Hollis' friends, blogged, "The time has come to unify and come together for a special person and an important cause. Hollis needs our HELP to get back home to heal."

In the online zine Coilhouse (a love letter to alternative culture), Meredith wrote, "There’s this awesome, beautiful gal I only kinda sorta barely know through our many mutual circus friends ... Now she’s in a coma in a rural hospital ... if, in some small way, we can help someone in our community to come back from the brink, we really should."

I was brought into Hollis' circle by Love, quite literally.

Love is a friend of mine, a cancer survivor, a Habitat for Humanity volunteer, and a camp counselor. Contrary to what you might think, Love is not one of those adopted hippie monikers like Sunflower or Butterfly. It's her real name (of English origin, she verified).

On Wednesday, Love left me a message, telling me about a series of performances at a local club. The event is titled Gold Rush: A Benefit for Hollis Hawthorn.

At 9:30 PM, I met Love inside Slim's nightclub. Under a flood of warm red lights, we joined the crowd of cyclists, circus performers, burlesque dancers, and Burning Man aficionados, some draped in gold-colored fabric. (The flyer reads, "Wear Gold. We're Blinging Her Home!") Some were personal friends of Hollis. Others were strangers like us, moved by Hollis' story.

The first to take the stage was Conspiracy of Venus, a local women's choir. As the conductor's hand counted down the slow, soulful beat, the singers, each an angel in her own right, filled the room with their harmonies.

Ain't no sunshine when she's gone.
It's not warm when she's away.
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone,
And she's always gone too long,
Anytime she goes away.

"I keep an Excel spreadsheet with people's contact info and tasks," Love confessed. "That way, if I'm unable to speak for myself, my family knows who to contact for what. They'll have my password for Facebook, know that I want my bedsheets changed twice a week (at least), and know which of my friends I want to come read to me. I want people to read me poetry--like Pablo Neruda."
"You can put me down for that," I volunteered. "I've got you covered for Neruda."

Somehow, Hollis must have heard her friends' songs and poems, must have received the outpouring of prayers from overseas.

On March 12, the Help Holli Get Home blog reported, "They had changed out Holli's catheter and she was resting comfortably." On March 14 (the day of the fundraiser at Slim's), the blog exclaimed, "THEY"RE COMING HOME!!!"

On Monday, if all goes as planned, Hollis and her mother will board a plane bound for California, where she's been admitted to Stanford Hospital as a charity case.

The total collected for Hollis, as reported by the Friends of Hollis Hawthorn blog, is $89,500.

In her last mail before the accident (cited by The Times of India), Hollis gleefully wrote, "The journey so far has been filled with shock and awe (heh heh)."

The toughest part of the journey may be just beginning. Back at home, she may need round-the-clock care, possibly for the rest of her life. But she just might be able to beat the odds and emerge from the dark.

This is the story about the guardians of sunshine, about gods and goddesses disguised as humans, about love that's so strong it can yank you back from the jaws of death.

(Photo of Hollis Hawthorn by Kyle Hailey [at] Wetribe.com.)