Photograph by Ken Gehle | Artful Living After Loss with Tamara Beachum

Getting to Amen

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...

Untouched

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...

What Is On Your Wholehearted Playlist?

grief, music, Photograph by Ken Gehle

We have been talking about making meaning from our losses and learning to live wholeheartedly again in The Creative Grief Studio course for which I am a teaching assistant. Grief alters who we knew ourselves to be and a new self begins to emerge as we carry the loss and the love. Something one of our participants said got me to thinking about the evolution of my music playlists. When my husband died I took over his phone. It had all the music he loved on it and much of that we had shared on long car rides. I couldn’t listen to it. I wiped it clean. The playlist I came up with reflected where I was: Be Here Now, Stand Back Up, Just Breathe, hymns from the memorial service… As time went on I added music from new artists I was discovering, music we hadn’t shared: Sarah Jarosz, Jonsi & Alex, Fleet Foxes. It was comfortingly unfamiliar. Looking at my playlist today I see it has evolved again. It has truly become a Wholehearted Playlist. Gone are the songs from the service but some of the old songs we shared are back. They no longer cut me open. Folk music has been added as what speaks to me now has changed. A certain tempo and tone and artistry are important to where I am now. And my most played song on that list since the slate was wiped clean? “A Home” by the Dixie Chicks. The Wholehearted Playlist grows. I grow into this new self carrying the loss and the love. Has the music you listen to...

Moving Forward

grief, Motivational poster, moving forward, Photograph by Ken Gehle, Photography, Quote

My husband died on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in 2010. Years like this I live through the day twice, once on the eighteenth and again on MLK day. This year was the fifth anniversary of his death. I wanted to write about it - to process all that I was feeling - for a week before and for days after. But the words wouldn’t come. I took a stroll through some of the images of our children that he has taken over the years. This one of our son flying through the air struck me and called to mind a quote I have referred to quote often. Sometimes I crawl but always I keep moving...