Fearless but shattered beneath her mask
Silky brown hair and perfectly manicured nails coated with residue from welding machinery or fixing a tractor, and soles covered in dirt from hiking, fishing, and hunting barefoot — that was Amanda. She was feminine, wild, and fierce, with a heart tender enough to rescue a fawn in need, or a skunk for that matter, and hands gentle enough to pick wildflower bouquets for her mother and her grandmother. She was a breath of fresh air in a stale world, making time with her unforgettable.
Her mother, Lisa, understood this best. As a wildlife photographer, her camera documented countless adventures, which she always shared with Amanda first. Amanda adored Lisa’s photos so much that she had two of them tattooed on her body. They also shared a love of hiking. Once, they revisited a waterfall, but this time, they needed a route directly to its base. Amanda hypothesized the brook would guide them there, so she hauled Lisa’s photography gear and blazed ahead and arrived exactly as Amanda suspected. While Lisa set up her camera, Amanda vanished into the trees, climbed up the steep incline surrounding the falls, and called back to her mother from the top. When she came back down, Lisa captured videos of Amanda plunging into its cold basin.
Amanda also shone professionally. Initially, Amanda worked in a gravel pit. She amazed her coworkers with her strength and fearlessness, but could be playful too, like the time her grandfather visited. She coaxed him into the front seat of her dumptruck and gleefully carted him around.
She was also a welder and learned the trade at her high school Technical Career Center before taking a summer of college welding classes. Renowned locally for her metalwork, Amanda could repair any equipment or signage, and the local country club even commissioned her to make benches. She attracted so much clientele that she quit the gravel pit and started her own welding business at twenty-two, for which Lisa happily made business cards. Welding was also her art. She crafted metal barrels into stunning firepits adorned with natural scenes, and her mother proudly received a bear and tree-themed firepit and a four-foot-tall butterfly sculpture for her flower garden.
Amanda was the youngest of her sisters, Jessica and Emily, whom Lisa had with her first husband. When her mother remarried, they moved from New Hampshire to Vermont, and Amanda got a bonus sister and two brothers. The group formed a family–just like the Brady Bunch. Tragically, her brothers, Nathan and Zachary, would pass away in accidents. At only eight, Amanda tried to fill Nathan’s role for the sake of her stepfather, learning how to hunt just like him. She tried to be tough after experiencing incredible pain.
Toughness was an asset, but it was also the mask she used to hide her intense emotional world. Though Lisa and her daughter were close, Amanda disguised her struggles with substance use disorder well, leaving her mother blindsided by the news that a lethal dose of a drug containing fentanyl and carfentanyl had taken Amanda’s life.
Amanda never chose the easiest path. She preferred to bushwhack through the hardest one, and in doing so, she cleared the way for others to embrace lives of strength and softness, and do everything with their entire selves, just as she had.
Amanda’s mother, Lisa Allard, provided the information for this narrative. September 21, 1999-October 4, 2021–Age 22
Portrait Artist: Clayton Conner
Narrative Writer: Willow Kline
