art, creativity, grief, loss, Love Lives On, moving forward, openness, Photograph by Ken Gehle, Photography, Products, transformation, widow
The last decade has involved quite a bit of figuring out who I am now. Any time we have a big loss in our lives we eventually come to this point: who am I now that my children are no longer at home, who am I now that I no longer work in my previous occupation, who am I now that now that I will not have my own biological children? The list is endless. The evolution of who I am today even after being widowed has had its twists and turns. Leaving a corporate job that no longer fit. Remarriage and figuring out the role of bonus mom. My children growing up and leaving home to live their own lives. Even my pottery avocation has shifted and evolved into a bigger part of my vocation. I’ve talked about vocation some before. These days I still lead the widow social support group but we’ve added a co-leader so it’s not all on me. I spend more time in the pottery studio than out of it (when there’s not a pandemic, that is). I’m finding a new balance and a new me. There is an equilibrium that, if you’d asked me 10 years ago, I would have told you I would likely never experience again. So how did I find that equilibrium? Interesting question to consider. There was no one technique that did the trick. I’ve had some great coaches and mentors. There has been some natural evolution in my work life (nothing is constant but change, as they say.) I’ve done values surveys to try to figure out what...
grief, letting go, loss, memories, Pottery
When we moved into this house almost 30 years ago there was a beautiful Dogwood tree in the center of the backyard. The previous owners warned us that it was over 50 years old and not to expect too much more life out of it. But here it is still. I have images in my minds eye and a few photos of my late husband in the hammock under it with each of our babies on his chest, of our kids swinging underneath it in their own swings later, of my son passing by as he learned to mow the lawn for the first time, of my daughter’s prom photos being taken with the tree’s branches as the filter. And there has been my own time sitting in its shade with a good book, in prayer or in mourning. In the richness of its mid-life, the full moon and the Dogwood conspired to create a magic light reflected off of its shock of white blooms. The glow filled our family room every spring. I can picture the shadow it casts on the side of the studio in the early mornings of the fall. It has more dead branches than live ones now. I’m anticipating its loss. I know I can’t keep it forever…and maybe not even for another year. Some trees aren’t just trees though; they are members of the family. Recently, it sacrificed a small tip of a branch to me and I memorized it in clay. I’ll be able to keep it a little bit longer...
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...
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,...
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...
grief, grief as teacher, letting go, loss, Photograph by Tamara Beachum, Quote
I am tired to the bone, more teary now than I was at my mother-in-law, Peggy’s, memorial service and I smell like other people’s perfume from all the hugs. (That’s a good thing.) My stoic Scottish side automatically comes out at memorial services but stories do sink in when I let them. Robin, my sister-in-love, spoke beautifully of her mom during the service. I can only hope that someone speaks as eloquently of me when I’m gone. Some of that history I had known for a while and some I had only learned recently when Peggy and I sat together during the last weeks of her illness. She was a remarkable woman who erred on the side of inclusion and for that I will forever be grateful. I came along late in her son’s life but she observed us and pronounced our union good. That meant a lot to me, to both of us. I realize now that Peggy and I should have had some mother/daughter dates long ago without having our men around. They are fantastic people but the four of us together had too much to say. I will cherish these last few weeks when she and I swapped our stories, past and present, with pregnant pauses in between. Given a similar love of nature, we sat on the porch naming the birds we knew and questioning each other on the ones we didn’t. Fellow pluviophiles, when a thunderstorm rolled through we relished the sudden darkness and I opened the blinds so she could see the deluge from her bed. We talked about simple pleasures...
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