grief, memories, Photograph by Ken Gehle, Photography, travel
I’m not sure why this popped into my head – grief will bring up random memories unbidden – but I was thinking about the last trip that my husband took to shoot landscapes. It was September 15th. The prior September on the night before that trip to Maine had originally been planned, he got the call that the eating problems he had been having were due to esophageal cancer. He cancelled the trip even though the first appointments with the medical team were after he would have returned. My anxiety was already through the roof and would have only been made worse if he was gone. He knew that. He painted the house that week instead. Travel is beginning to look like a possibility again now that I’m fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and restrictions are being eased. Maybe that’s what brought this memory to the front. The relief I felt booking a trip might have been similar for Ken when he could, once again, make those plans to go to Maine. He purposely set the flight out for the 1-year anniversary of his cancer diagnosis to make it a real celebration. Not being able to travel at all the last year was difficult. I had a glimpse of what it was like for him in some small way. Of course, he had the real possibility that he would not travel again while my situation has been temporary. I’m glad he didn’t know it was to be his last trip. Remission ended less than two months later and the images from that trip live in 1s and 0s on his...
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...
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...
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, 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...
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