fly fishing, grief, living forward, memories, moving forward, Photograph by Tamara Beachum, Remembering, saudade
Well, that was a tangled mess. Somehow I’d managed to get my fishing line wrapped around itself in a knot that reminded me of the tangles I used to get in my hair as a child. I sat down on the bank with our fly fishing guide as he cut line and retied flies. Watching him use the clamp and clippers dangling from his vest, I had a flash of memory of watching Ken in similar motion. “You have two kids?” I asked, suddenly thinking about fathers. “Two boys, 19 months and 5 weeks.” The second son had been injured during childbirth. Nothing too serious but painful for the little guy. We talked about nursing; it’s the only thing that soothes him. His wife has struggled more with the demands after this birth. I told him about my own nursing experience as a new mom and the time the young man fishing downstream seemed to have turned me into his own personal pacifier. How hard it was and how important at the same time. “Sometimes you feel like you just need five minutes of the old you,” I said. “I can understand that,” he replied. His wife had agreed that he needed some time to go fishing when she was safely harbored in the hospital. He took an hour and caught 30 fish in that same spot. He was fully himself in that moment. My son created his own tangle so the guide left me holding my partially repaired line and went to help him. Our conversation had given me a glimpse back to that early life when the...
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...
Creative Grief Tool, gratitude, Kairos, landscape, memories, National Parks, Photograph by Ken Gehle, Photograph by Tamara Beachum, Photography, prayer, quest, tool
“Let’s go to Death Valley,” he said. This was in response to my question about where we should go for my husband’s forty-fourth birthday and our first vacation away from our two small children in several years. I laughed, “No, really where do you want to go?” “Death Valley!” he grinned looking over the top of his glasses and that’s when I knew he was serious. Death Valley National Park is a place of odd beauty. Compared to what I perceived as the lush landscape of the Southeast, most of the vistas in Death Valley could best be described as simply, brown. To an inexperienced eye, such as mine, the ridiculously vivid blue sky was met only by tones of sepia. All the same, once Ken had convinced me to be there, I found it a place full of wonders I was eager to experience. We hiked and explored everywhere: salt flats, enormous sand dunes, a salt creek, abandoned mines, steep trails leading to surreal rock formations and even a ghost town. After days of exploring the park mostly at sunrise and sunset a curious thing happened, my eyes adjusted. One evening Ken set up for a shot in an area of the park known as the Artist’s Palette. Our trip was almost over. Faint hues of white, verdigris and deep red were visible on the range in front of us. As the sun approached the horizon behind us the colors of the arid earth began to reveal themselves. The mountainside was luminous with yellow, green, blue and even purple. The variety, there all along, was subdued and unappreciated...
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....
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...
children, grief, letting go, memories, parenting, Photograph by Tamara Beachum
When my kids were small I would easily purge toys and ephemera from their rooms with some regularity. A few items that they couldn’t quite release yet would be put in boxes that I would store for them to go through later. Later never really came though and now that they are all grown up they don’t have an interest in those boxes at all. “Give it all away,” my daughter said casually. She didn’t feel the need to look. Now that they are on the other side of childhood it’s harder for me to just load up the boxes for donation. So I’ve been going through them and, even though very few objects are making the cut, it has been an emotionally challenging job. But there was a bright spot that lifted my spirits when I got to the bottom of the most recent box and found this little sweetheart of a snow globe. I can’t recall all of the details around it and my co-rememberer (yes, I made that up), her father, is not here for me to ask. I seem to remember this snow globe was in my daughter’s Easter basket one year. The date on the bottom, 1998, probably means it was her last Easter basket as an only child. Her nickname at the time was “little duck.” When her brother began to talk he gave her a new nickname and there was no going back. Immediately, I knew where this snow globe would live next. A friend’s daughter has Asperger’s Syndrome. Birthdays are hard for her. While she would like to have a...
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