Honoring
Abby Wheeler

What a gift to share life together with Abigail Grace Wheeler. All too soon, at the age of forty-three, Abby died gracefully, on a summer day, at home, on August 29, 2026. She was the most thoughtful and kindhearted person you could know. Like the shimmering sight of a purple hummingbird that you wish you could hold onto, Abby kept the feeders full so we could know her sweetness and care. She was loved and will be missed.

Abby’s heart was intertwined with family: younger brother, Clark (Chiedza); sister, Emily (Jared) – their blossoming kids, Wesley and Naomi, were an ebullient joy for Abby. Along with her dad, Lonnie, who passed in 2020, and mom, Martie, Abby’s family includes her Uncle Dave Kuhl (Cathie), as well as Martie’s two deceased brothers, Tom and Dick Kuhl. Their tight-knit extended family spends every holiday keeping up with each other – celebrating and weathering the highs and lows of life.

Born April 2, 1983, Abby grew up in New Richmond, upriver from Cincinnati, Ohio. As the firstborn and oldest sibling, she just knew best; she wanted people to be taken care of. Abby was a role model with her academic acuity and in her full-selfed activities, like synchronized swimming and the arts: the love of language sinking roots. Her example was not that others should do the same things, but that they should find their own paths – not alone but all together. Abby was the best gift-giver because she intuitively knew what you would like, more than you knew yourself.

Like her family, her high school friend group recognized that she was quiet and observant, with a wry, surprising humor, and a gentle yet direct nature. Abby was true to herself. She attended Denison University, where her pattern of forging friendship was followed with those who somehow landed in Beta House freshman year. She had a knack for curating small joys, like arranging both colorful rocks and the books themselves, in rainbow order on a bookshelf.

Everyone knew she was soft-spoken and somewhat mysterious, but it was her sarcastic wit, her sense of adventure, and her intimate inclusiveness that resonated so deeply with others. This carried over to an Americorps stint tutoring students in Entiat, Washington, where Abby picked fruit, built snowmen, and went camping with her newfound life companions. Her interior landscape was as vast as the North Cascades.

Returning home and for the next decade, Abby worked as a copywriter for School Outfitters – close friends can even be found at work. Along the way, the use of words needed a new container, and Abby embodied poetry as a way of expressing her innate sense of paying attention to the world around her. She loved native plants and trees – their resilience and beauty – the birds and creatures inhabiting our shared environment. She knew the rituals of days, the rhythms of seasons, and the rootedness of place.

Joining writing circles at Women Writing for (a) Change helped develop her voice as a natural writer – a poet of nature – and led to the publication of her chapbook, In the Roots. Her poems have been featured in numerous journals – we should revisit them often. An online assemblage of disparate writers that formed after a workshop became a sustaining fountain of sharing poetry. She brought her true self to her work.

Abby met her husband, Jon, at a coffee shop, and with love leading the way, the two bought a house in Bond Hill and were married in the backyard in 2020. Their trips to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Northern Michigan, and the coast of Maine, were sources of elemental connection. Abby would spend the day plucking interesting rocks and shells from a riverbed or shoreline. At home, they could be found engrossed in 00’s-era shows and rooting on the Reds. She was a steadfast presence for Jon’s kids, Aya and Van, who grew up learning from her quirky cool creativity – their home has been a communal hub for Coffee on the House gatherings, the annual Cider Press, and Ham Party, aka Hamstravaganza. True love will find you in the end.

We all also witnessed Abby’s determined conviction. She always acted with a sense of equity, justice, and compassion; she imagined and made the world a better place. From an early age, Abby had a complicated relationship with her own body. It was Crohn’s that meant countless doctors’ visits and procedures. And it was colon cancer that led to a massive surgery and then metastasized – treatments, scans, and hospital stays were par for her course. But it wasn’t disease that defined her life, which baffled and endeared the medical community. Abby simply lived. She processed it all in her own quiet and determined way; she never complained, and staying true in spite of it all is what makes her story so profoundly inspiring. 

Oftentimes, we say ‘there are no words’ when there are too many words, when it is too painful and difficult, when life is disorienting. If Abby has taught us anything, it is that there are words – you just have to tend the soil in the garden of your soul; and discover what comes up in the shared vulnerability and strength of your family, friends, and community. Of the many scattered scraps of paper with her luminous musings, here’s one that Abby lived by and we can all take to heart: ‘never let your grace fall.’