Hi Honey: A Story for Alicia
I've known Alicia Lassiter from around the way for years—passing waves at shows, shared friends, a handful of bright moments when she and Nick, her partner, would show up at The G Lodge. They helped us hang posters, moved lumber for our Yoga Deck, cleaned up the gardens, and radiated the kind of energy you remember even if you don’t catch their name. Alicia and Nick weren’t just a fun couple—they were a bright light. Very wild, perhaps even a bit untethered. Big-hearted. But our connection back then? Casual at best. I never really had the time—or maybe the presence—to connect intentionally. Not until life cracked wide open.
Nick died on October 1st, 2023.
Later that fall, I ran into Alicia at Dirty Blanket’s Halloween show in Naples. A town that holds a lot of laughter and a lot of ghosts. We ended up at an afterparty up the hill at Dylan Bloom’s house. Music, stories, the soft chaos of shared grief and joy. That’s when she asked me something that stopped time for a minute. My partner Michael and I were headed to Hawaii, and Alicia asked if we’d take a piece of Nick with us—his ashes. He had made it to 38 states. She wanted to get him to the other 12.
I said yes, knowing it wasn’t just a favor. It was a responsibility. A sacred one.
We started spending more time together after that. Mostly walks in the snow, her loyal pup Bo always leading the way. The first hike we went on together was to Montezuma Wildlife Preserve, and we saw two eagles on a branch moments after arriving. One time I dropped my car keys on a hike and Alicia drove me all over central New York fetching metal detectors to find them again. It was an adventure—and that’s who Alicia is. She shows up when it matters.
Before mine and Mike’s trip to Hawaii, she came over and handed me a honey jar with a sticker on the top that read, Hi Honey. She said, “There he is,” and told me Nick loved a good fire. That he’d want to be released into it, somewhere beachside.
As fate would have it, our friends Jess and Paul in Kauai had already planned a camping trip for us—to Polihale State Park. I told Jess our mission—to bring Nick there, to let him go in a fire on the beach. Jess stopped in her tracks. “You know Polihale is known as the Gateway to the Afterlife, right?”
In Hawaiian mythology, Polihale is sacred. A liminal space between worlds. It's believed that the spirits of the dead travel to Polihale before leaping from the cliffs into the sea, beginning their journey into the next realm, known as Po. To this day, the beach is still considered a portal between life and death, a place where souls pass through on their way home.
We all got chills. It was perfect.
The road to Polihale is brutal. Long, dusty, unforgiving. But it felt right. Like a pilgrimage. We set up camp and cracked a bottle—Nick wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Alicia always called him her Boozey, with a laugh that cracked through sadness like sunlight.
As the sun dipped into the Pacific, the sky came alive. The stars were bright—bright. You could see planets shining down like jewels. The kind of sky that humbles you. All around us, the waves rolled and crashed steadily into the shore, a rhythm as ancient as grief. We wandered the beach, collected shells, and returned to camp.
And then there was the fire.
I spoke of Nick’s wild heart, his laugh, his fierce love for Alicia. I pulled out the honey jar—Hi Honey—and one by one, pulled out each piece: dried herbs & flowers, a note Alicia had written to Nick, a feather, and a small red cloth bundle of his ashes. I set them into the fire with intention.
As I write this, a feather just floated in front of my face. I don’t know how else to explain that. Feathers were always their symbol.
We poured some out for Nick, and we toasted him.
As the flames rose and the wind shifted, the smoke curled upward and caught the light—just for a moment, it formed what looked like the faint outline of a face. A soft profile rising into the dark, starlit sky. We stood still, breath caught, as if the veil had parted just enough to let us feel him there.
This wasn’t just symbolism. It was presence. It was Nick, or the echo of him, or maybe something older than all of us. The universe reminding us that love, once ignited, doesn't disappear. It transforms. It moves through smoke and flame and sky.
That moment felt otherworldly. Like the kind of thing you try to explain later but never quite can.
And in that moment, I realized just how honored I was to carry him there, and just how honored I am now to carry her—to host Alicia’s first solo show at The Gauger House.
Because MOODS: Introspective Storytelling Through Photos and Poetry isn’t just an art show. It’s a release. A reckoning. A sacred space where Alicia’s grief, love, and memory finally have somewhere to go. This isn’t just a gallery full of photos and poems—it’s a window into the beautiful, brutal, aching heart of someone who loved deeply and lost greatly.
Alicia has been carrying the weight of this loss with her. But through this work—this show—she’s able to share that weight. To invite her community in. To tell us, in images and in verse, all the things she told Nick and maybe some things she never got to say.
And she’s going to stand at that podium and speak about her great love for Nick. Her Boozey. Her bird of prey. Her forever.
This show is hers. And it’s his, too.
To Alicia: thank you for trusting me with Nick’s journey, and with this one, too. I hope this space holds you the way you’ve held so many.