anxiety, friends, grief, letting go, loss, memories, panic attack, prayer, spiritual, widow
“I’m going to come sit with you tomorrow. I’m good at hospitals,” she said. It was September 28, 2008, the night before my husband had major surgery to remove his cancer and his esophagus along with it. I’m not sure what I was thinking by not planning to have someone sit with me that day. Clearly, I wasn’t thinking at all. Thankfully, Laurie and the rest of my book club came to the rescue. Laurie arrived in the waiting room that morning and presented me with a cute book bag with giant polka dots of blue and green. It was filled with items I didn’t know I would need: tissues, water bottle, lip balm, lotion, hand sanitizer, a shawl for cold waiting rooms, a starter kit for knitting, a small spiral-bound notebook with pen and more. Others wandered in before work or after kids were seen off to school bearing hot drinks and cheer. Team Ken was formed. These women I had known for a decade or more by then made me laugh and forget why we were sitting in those uncomfortable straight back chairs in tight rows across from cartoonish prints that had us inexplicably looking out castle windows to other castles beyond. The distraction was complete until it became too late in the day and the surgery was taking too long for the news to be good. Some had to go; it was time to get kids from school and think about dinner. Our pastor arrived. I noticed the surgeon the second he walked through the door, his eyes on the ground, legs propelling him toward a...
art, creativity, grief, Kairos, landscape, living forward, memories, Photograph by Ken Gehle, Photograph by Tamara Beachum, Photography, widow
On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the act creating the National Park Service. This year the parks will celebrate their centennial. The National Parks have been and continue to be important places for our family. We have made memories that will last a lifetime in these special places, some beautiful and some heart-wrenching. None of them would I trade. For me they are places of healing and joy. Ken and I took a rare solo vacation to Death Valley National Park for his 44th birthday. He and the kids spent time in Cades Cove of the Great Smokey National Park while I had to stay home to work. I have few regrets, that I didn’t go with them is one. We celebrated remission with a two week tour of Utah and Arizona. Ken made some of the most spectacular landscape photos of his career. We spent what would turn out to be our last family Spring Break at the Cumberland Island National Seashore. We had planned to do an RV trip to Yosemite the following summer. We scattered Ken’s ashes there instead. Half Dome is his monument. Glacier National Park was the first park I explored while learning how to live forward after such a devastating loss. Grand Teton was the amazing location of my second wedding when I found love again. My daughter spent three summers in neighboring Yellowstone National Park. She now lives in Grand Canyon National Park, just steps from the south rim. These places are precious to us. I think Ken’s love for the parks shines through in the images he created. I...
grief, loss, memories, Photograph by Ken Gehle, widow
Picture a giant warehouse stacked to the ceiling with boxes. Now imagine those boxes are filled with types of losses: divorce, death of a parent, bankruptcy, chronic illness, death of a spouse, pet loss, a child moving to another state, and more. What shelves do you put the losses on? Does pet loss go on a low shelf? That’s not so hard, right? Lost a job. So you just get another one. Simple right? Death of a spouse. Well, that one goes up toward the top. Death of a child…higher, much higher. This is the hierarchy of loss… and it’s not useful. Not only that, it’s hurtful. “Hard is not relative. Hard is hard.” ~ Ash Beckam We are often quick to compare our losses to those of others. Sometimes we minimize our own. Do I even have a right to grieve my loss if someone else has one that I consider worse? Sometimes we minimize another person’s loss. Do I get to decide whether or not you have a right to grieve - and for how long - if I believe my loss is worse? Where does all this leave us? The hierarchy is not only a tool of shame but its use can break relationships, even irreparably so. We live in relationship to our own losses. Those are the ones we feel deeply. We need to feel them to integrate the change that comes about as a result. But we don’t have to compare, instead we can empathize. About the time my husband died a friend was going through a divorce. If we had compared our losses,...
grief, Kairos, Photograph by Ken Gehle, prayer, spiritual
I have a confession. I’m a life-long Presbyterian who went to Catholic school (that’s not the confession but probably enough to make one crazy right there.) I am currently an elder in my church which would make my grandparents bust with pride. My grandfather was a stalwart Presbyterian church elder and my grandmother was the quintessential church lady and official silver communion plate polisher. Not a meal was taken in their house without grace spoken before it. Sandwich over the sink? Say grace. So here it is: I don’t know how to pray. My grandfather and father were the official family grace sayers and used a standard prayer. Check. In school we had the rote memorization of the rosary prayers. Done. None of those prayers felt like a personal conversation with God though. Don’t get me wrong, I have spoken to God quite a bit in the last five years but I’m not sure begging counts as prayer. My prayers sound a lot like wishes to my ears: that my husband would live, that my father would live and before that that my grandfather would live at least long enough to meet the great-grandchild I carried. He did not. My timing is off. The futility of when I pray has led me not to do it so much. It seems I’m always asking for the thing I so desperately desire after the conclusion has already been reached. “Please let this test be clean,” I pleaded. Too late, the cancer was growing. The test was just there to show the foregone conclusion. This was the case with my father. I...
art, close up, creativity, grief, landscape, letting go, loss, Love Lives On, memories, moving forward, Photograph by Ken Gehle, Photography, Products, widow
There is so little that is untouched, five years later; not much is as he left it. His studio has new occupants. The photography equipment - other than his camera that is now mine - has been sold. It has taken me all this time to finally find the will to begin the process of updating his website. This too is a letting go. Other than the cover page, I have made no changes. Technology does not wait. When he died he carried a first generation iPhone. These days, pulling up his website on a phone or iPad, which didn’t even exist at the time, results in nothing…a blank screen. I’ve had to start pointing people to the limited selection of photos in his online portfolio that was not meant for showcasing fine art prints. There is an odd noise coming from the computer he used to manage the site. The software it was created in is totally unfriendly and beyond my computer skills. Ironic, when I think back to the days when I first taught him how to use a computer. So change continues as it will. I have to move along with it. The first small improvement I made was behind the scenes but has begun to stem the tide of daily spam that has been an overwhelming problem for too long. Now the stage is set for converting the site to something that actually works to keep his work in the world. Ken was an award-winning photographer who had National ADDYs to his credit, the advertising industries’ equivalent of an Academy Award. It would break...
children, grief, landscape, moving forward, Photograph by Tamara Beachum
This is the overwhelming thought that I have these days: “You are missing so much.” Life events, big and small still occur. A problem with which we had long struggled is slowly beginning to resolve. Decisions are made. The lives of our children are beginning to take shape as they become young adults. We go off on new adventures. I see your influence. I hear your voice (and sometimes I choose not to listen.) We continue to live and I wouldn’t have that any other way. “He knows,” I’ve been told. “He’s still with you,” they say. Maybe that’s right. I don’t know yet and, frankly, neither do they. I’ll hope for that but in the meantime I can’t help but think of all you are missing. Does this phrase resonate with you? I’d love to know. Leave a comment in the box below....
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