Savannah’s Hands: An Essay

Content warning: mentions of death and graphic descriptions of a dead body.

It was a quiet November morning in coastal Maine. In my pajamas, I opened my front door and ran my bare feet on the damp snow. Throwing my knees onto the cold ground, I looked up at the gray clouds barely aglow with the rising sun and began to wail and pray that my sister was dead. 

I had woken up to a hundred notifications from my family on my phone that morning. After looking through them in a panic, what I had gathered was this: Savannah, who was working as a waitress in Zion National Park, was hiking with friends up Angel’s Landing the night before. She went ahead of the rest of the group and disappeared. And they still hadn’t found her. California, Oregon, Montana, Australia, and now Utah. After two and a half years of traveling the world, our worst fears for her were beginning to manifest. 

Exactly three years before, I had visited Zion myself. After a stationary childhood flirting with the poverty line, I was anxious to run away when I finally had the means to, something Savannah and I had in common. So when I was nineteen, I did and one of my first stops was Zion. 

Because I had been to Zion, I knew Angel’s Landing. I knew that it was one of the deadliest hikes in the country. At its peak, it was over fourteen hundred feet above the canyon floor, and, for much of the hike, the trail is only a foot or two wide and straight down on both sides. I knew that trail and I knew that if she wasn’t on it, there was only one way for her to go–and that was down. 

So I prayed to whatever god might be listening that she was dead. Because, if she wasn’t, that meant she would have spent the night in unbelievable agony on the cold and rainy canyon floor. I would have much rather her be dead than suffer like that. So, for what it was worth, I begged that she was without any of that pain. 

Later that day, I got the call saying they found her body, and the next morning, I was boarding a flight to Utah. My mom and uncle had gotten on a flight the night they found out she was missing, so it was me and Savannah’s best friend flying to Utah together. I felt really bad for anyone who had to sit beside me and my stress sweat.

As soon as we landed, we met up with my mom and uncle. After a lot of crying and hugging, my mom informed us that, if we were going to see Savannah’s body, we had to see it that night. I panicked. “I’m not ready,” I said, “I need the night to settle in before I have the ability to see her.” She told me that, in order for the cremation process to finish in time to take her home with us, the process needed to start that night. So it was now or never. 

We drove to the funeral home. It was maybe seven o’clock at night so the roads were dark and the red rock of the desert was hidden from me. We arrived and met the funeral director who gave us all the information he had. There was no doubt she died on impact which meant she didn’t suffer. She also sustained a variety of injuries: a broken jaw, broken collar bone, dislocated shoulders and hips, broken ribs, a broken femur, and a massive blow to the back of the head. That last injury was likely the one that killed her. He told us that she was in the next room and we could see her whenever we were ready. 

My mom went into the room first. Then it was my turn, and when it was, I asked her to come in, too. At that time, I didn’t have the strength to go in alone. I opened the door and at the other side of the room was a large cardboard box sitting on a pedestal with a white sheet over the top half. Savannah would have been pissed to learn we bought her a $300 cardboard box to be cremated in. 

The funeral director warned us about what we would see. Because we didn’t want her body to be embalmed, we were going to see all of her injuries. He told us that, because of that injury to the back of the head, her face would look sunken in, too wide, and misshapen. For that reason, he put the white sheet over the top half of the box so we could pull it back when we were ready to see her face. 

After some pacing and hyperventilating at the back of the room, I was ready to see her. Well, as ready as I could have been. I walked to the front of the room and could see–resting on top of the second white sheet covering her body–her hands. When Savannah was about fifteen, she gave herself stick and poke finger tattoos: a sun on one middle finger, a moon on the other, and dots on the rest to represent stars. And there they were on the hands of the body in front of me. Although her skin was unnaturally pale, I could see the short fingernails and other features I recognized. I didn’t need to see her face, I didn’t even need to see those cheap tattoos. Those were Savannah’s hands. 

I stood there for a moment just looking. The panic I walked into the room with transmuted into an unexpected embodied presence. I was looking at my dead sister’s body, it was real. It was so real there was no room for fear anymore. Even if there was fear, there was something instinctual that took over and began to move me. I could feel my feet on the ground and the cool air return to my lungs. One of my worse fears was laying in front of me, but I was strangely ok. If this was how it was going to be, then I needed this. I needed to see her like this. 

I was preparing myself to see something gruesome. The way the funeral director described her appearance, I was fully prepared to see something terrible and painful. But when I pulled back that sheet to look at her face, what I saw was a child. A child with a beautiful, clean face and tight ringlet curls she hadn’t let anyone see in years. Any fear left in my body transmuted again into an overwhelming sense of peace. I cried looking at the sweet face of my baby sister. 

Before seeing Savannah’s body, my mom told me that she wouldn’t touch her. When my mom was seventeen, her mom died unexpectedly. The coldness of her dead mother’s hands was something that never left her and she didn’t want to have to feel that unsettling feeling with her daughter, too. But standing in front of Savannah, I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave without it. So I put my hand on hers and my mom was right. They were cold and stiff in a way that was deeply confusing. No one’s hands should feel like that. Hands are supposed to be warm. They’re supposed to move and respond to your touch but her’s weren’t. They were still and cold and obviously not alive anymore. 

That’s the moment when it sank in for me. My sister was really dead. These hands would never be animated again and she wasn’t waking up. Her eyes wouldn’t open, she wouldn’t sit up. The part of me that was secretly hoping this was all a very cruel prank–even though I honestly wouldn’t put it past her–was humbled and quelled. 

Touching her hands gave me the courage to touch her face so I did. I ran my fingers over her broken jaw, I brushed her pale cheek, I touched her cute nose. I ran my fingers through her curly hair and, moving from that instinctual place, brought my hand to the back of her head. You know that feeling in your bones when you accidentally rub two metals together and they make an awful noise? That’s what I felt when I touched the back of Savannah’s head. It was so painful but I had to do it. I had to feel her flattened skull. So I did and I wept. 

I touched her other injuries, too. Her shoulders, her hips, her femur. It was like I was taking away any last trauma from those places so she could move on without it. And finally, I laid my head on her belly and closed my eyes. My head was cradled by her arms resting on top of her. Her belly was hard and cold. There was no breath moving my head up and down, even if I expected there to be. But I closed my eyes and I was just with her in that moment. My mom was still in the room but it was just me and Sav then. Two siblings having one last morbid, untimely, cruel goodbye. 

The rest of my family and Savannah’s boyfriend said goodbye to her, too. One by one, they worked up the courage to see her and say goodbye. My mom even gathered the courage to touch Savannah’s hands and face. As we were wrapping up, I put my hand into my coat pocket and found some clusters of white pine needles. Before I left for Utah, I was on a walk and found a particularly beautiful bunch of pine needles that I decided to take with me. And now they were with me there in that place. I asked the funeral director if I could see her one more time.

In the room, alone this time, I placed the pine needles in her hands. We are Mainers, born and raised, so I figured the touch of home would bring her some comfort as she was cremated in this strange, far-off place. I think she appreciated the gift. I said goodbye to her one last time and left. 

We spent the next few days in the park. When the sun rose the next morning, the red rock of Zion canyon illuminated herself in such heartwrenching glory. It was hard to enjoy the beauty of that place but I did as much as I could. Savannah had a secret spot where she would spend a lot of time so I spent a lot of time there, too. We went out to eat at her favorite restaurants. Her work family at the lodge organized a memorial service for her and we packed up her room. We picked up her urn before heading to the airport and we left Utah behind for home. 

 A lot happened in the following weeks. Family drama, personal changes, beginning to adjust to a world without Savannah. I came out as trans and queer, and it saddens me to know Savannah will never get to know me as I really am. I bought a van and began traveling the country. Although I never had the chance to create an adult relationship with her–we’ll never be able to talk about our travels together–I appreciate her story. Her death wasn’t a tragedy; she died in a place she called home with people she loved doing something she had centered her whole life around. I think she was meant to die young and free.

I still think of her sometimes when I look at my hands. We were very different in a lot of ways, but our hands looked similar. Our nails, the shape of our fingers, our palms. I look at my hands and imagine those finger tattoos and it’s like I’m looking at her again. And sometimes, on cold nights up in the mountains, I’ll place one hand on top of the other and I’m transported back to that room touching her cold hands for the first time. The grief is ever present but is sobering and helps to ground me in what matters. It’s painful but I’m grateful for it and reminds me of how deeply I will always love Savannah. 

Savannah Mary McTague died on November 20, 2019 in Zion National Park, Utah, after falling from Angel’s Landing. She was nineteen years old, but had already traveled the world. She was a free spirited adventurer, spending her time in the mountains, forests, and streams. She was well loved by many and her legacy will continue to live on in the adventures of her loved ones.