Tag Archives for grief

A Bittersweet Time


                       

                                                By Neal Lemery

                        (published in the Tillamook County Pioneer, 12/24/2025)

            When I was a kid, Christmas was always a bittersweet time.  Lots of emotions were at play, even though the family worked together to make it a joyous and happy time with lots of festiveness and fun.  It had all the attributes of a good time for a kid:  a Christmas tree, happy music, great food, presents, and family members singing uplifting music. There was mystery and magic, good surprises, Midnight Mass, and hugs all around.

            It was also the only time of the year I would see my grandma cry, weeping and then sobbing, and running off to her room for a half hour to compose herself, right when she was making the mulled sauce for the traditional Christmas Eve ham. No one would talk about why she would burst into tears, until I, being the impertinent child, asked her one year. My question got a scathing look from my mother, but I persisted.

            I learned that Grandma’s mom had died on Christmas Eve, many years ago, and what was supposed to be a happy day was marked by deep sadness, and grief.  Our family didn’t talk much about grief and loss anyway, so it didn’t surprise me that the anniversary was tough on all of the family, especially my grandmother. She was the queen at burying her emotions and not sharing difficult times.  She didn’t share her emotions with anyone, especially the hard and deeply personal emotions of losing one’s parent when they were a kid.  

Once I learned about the anniversary, I went out of my way to be kind to Grandma at Christmas, and gave her some hugs, and shared funny stories.  I was able to get Grandma to talk about her mom, and tell some sweet and loving stories of her, and how she loved her family. After our talk, and sharing her feelings with the rest of the family, she warmed up, and became more open about being emotional and kind. Christmas wasn’t a mine field anymore, and we were all better at talking about our feelings. 

            This Christmas is a lot like that Christmas. It is a time of raw and tender emotions, a time of having a deep sense of loss and grief, and not knowing how to deal with a lot of complicated and conflicting emotions. The air feels heavy, and I’m not navigating through the season with a sense of joy or enjoyment. It seems that many of us are grieving and struggling in a tough year, where our lives are unsettled, and we are adrift, unsatisfied, and hurting.  

A lot of that is our political experiences, but other aspects of our cultural and social life also seem out of whack, disoriented, and blurry.  Watching the news or attending a concert of what should be our favorite and happy music seems to leave me unsettled, unsatisfied, and yes, disturbed, often angry and adrift. There’s a big chunk of a sense of order and goodness that is missing or just out of place. And, I don’t have good words to describe that.  Like my grandmother grieving for her mother’s death anniversary at Christmas, I don’t have the words, and I resist talking about it. Part of me wants to hide, and live in denial. 

            This fall, I watched Ken Burns’ engaging documentary on the American Revolution, which gave me new insight into the American psyche and a renewed sense of history and the deep roots of the American spirit. There was a discussion of Thomas Paine’s influential pamphlet, Common Sense, and its opening sentence: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”  

            We are living in a similar time, where we are grieving the loss of some of our culture, values, and sense of morality.  We often feel adrift, unsure of where the country is headed, of what our own place is in what is coming.  It seems to be a good time for being reflective and purposeful.  I often feel lost and aimless, and not really being able to give words to what I’m feeling.  

            Joan Baez recently spoke on finding and rediscovering one’s own sense of purpose and moral center. She was receiving a big award for her creativity, and spoke candidly and intensely to the Hollywood elite at the awards event.

            ‘If your voice can move millions and you choose not to use it for those who have no voice, then you are not creating change – you are creating noise.”

            “If you have more than you need, it no longer belongs only to you. Your responsibility is to lift up those who are still beneath you.  

            “Legacy is not built on what you earn. It is built on what you give.”

            I’m feeling I’ve misplaced my mojo, my sense of purpose, but Baez’ words are a wake-up call.  We Americans have a rich heritage, and we have the tools to strengthen and rebuild our culture, and rediscover our sense of purpose and mission. I now see a lot of that renewal, that renaissance, and it gives me joy and hope.

 Like my grandmother, we can give ourselves permission to grieve our losses, deal with our shared pain, and move forward, to give love to our families and our communities, and to make a real difference.

12/24/2025

From Catastrophe to Opportunity


                        By Neal Lemery                                                                                    

(published in the Tillamook County Pioneer, 3/11/2025)

            Often, a disaster turns into a positive asset, and life improves, comes into focus, and good things emerge from the gray somber atmosphere of disaster.

            Such change comes unexpectedly. 

            The Chinese character for catastrophe is the same character for opportunity.  

There was a time in college that I had lost direction, adrift despite the abundance of good opportunities and challenges from my professors and fellow students.  I was adapting well, mastering my subjects and, at least outwardly, achieving great strides in my abilities and my knowledge of my favorite subjects. 

            Yet, I was adrift, often wondering what I was doing there, and what direction I needed to take. There were a lot of possibilities, but I didn’t have a good sense of what was right for me.  Everyone around me seemed content, hard at work, and feeling directed and motivated.  Maybe I needed to take a term off, get a job, and get my act together, stop spinning my wheels.  

            During one Christmas break, one of my aunts suddenly died.  We were all in shock, as she had been healthy, vigorous in her retirement, and embracing her passion for botany and nature conservation.  Her heart attack on a hiking trail doing what she loved left all of us feeling lost, shook up.

            She lived far away from me, but would visit several times a year, telling stories of her adventures and always bringing a special book for me.  When I was little, she’d read to me, animating the story with her voice, her laughter, and her passion for kids.  We’d have great conversations, she being a vocal advocate for education, reading, and bettering the community.  “Being of service” was the theme of a lot of our conversations and letters.  

            Her sudden passing brought my “lost in college” questions to the forefront.  I recalled her wise counsel, her urgings to me to make a difference, and do something in life.  Reminiscing about her life and her messages to me brought my dilemma into sharp focus, giving me impetus to regroup, to rethink my intentions of why I was in college, and what I was doing with my life.

            Mourning her death, and celebrating her life woke me up. I applied that grief into fuel to regroup, to have a serious talk with myself, and strive to make a difference in my life.  There were some hard lessons on not realizing the value of a person in your life until they are gone. Having my aunt in my life made a big difference in my own life, and I resolved to continue her presence, her message in my life, and our relationship.  

            Her funeral was on the day I went back to college, to start winter term. The eulogies, and the story telling among family recharged me, and I began the new year and the new term with a revitalized focus, looking for possibilities and opportunities.  I felt her spirit and vowed to remember her with my own zeal for making a difference. 

            Recently, a good friend passed away, and again I am shaken by this loss, this departing of a mentor, whose wisdom and talent were bright lights in my life.  We’d met for lunch a year ago, telling stories, laughing, and, true to her form, mentoring me and calling me out to refocus and regroup.  She’d plant seeds with me, giving me story ideas and action items, sometimes acting with such subtlety that I didn’t realize that her seeds were even in my garden. She was a master of “guerrilla gardening”. 

She was a writer, capturing the joys and treasures in ordinary life, always aiming at celebrating the community she loved and cared for.  She wrote about simple things, events and happenings, but always with an ear for the deeper message, the profound experiences of friendships and listening to our souls.  

            She was blunt, open, honest, and passionately cared about people.  Her stories of daily life were much more than a casual observation.  They were deep and profound, and the reader was often gently lured into her observations, not always expecting the strong message she had set out to convey.  She got her point across, with love and humor, but also with a depth and intensity you didn’t notice until you came to the end of her writing.  

            There were many gifts in her writings and in our conversations. She was a literary craftsman, with a big heart.  Kindness was her mantra. 

            My friend and my aunt would have been dear friends, soul mates, and I imagine they would find much to laugh about and comment on.  My sorrow for missing my aunt is rekindled by my friend’s passing.  I’m reminded that out of catastrophe comes opportunity.  

In my grief, there is renewal, there is new hunger for opportunity, for change, growth, betterment. My aunt and my friend are still there for me, still offering their gifts, and their love, still teaching me, still changing the world. 

3/11/2025

Reaching Out — One to One


                                                Reaching Out — One to One

                                                            by Neal Lemery

                                    (published in the Tillamook County Pioneer, 1/8/2022

            I like the quiet of January.  All the holiday activity ends, the decorations are put away, and the social calendar slows to almost nothing.  There is clean, empty space, not only at home but in my life.  It is time to breathe.

            It is a time to be quiet, to connect with a friend, to have time for those serious and deep conversations that live deep in our hearts, to say what needs to be said and to put life in perspective.

            The last few weeks have been marked by those quiet, almost sacred moments with someone close, to give some thinking time to a recent experience, or just getting to know myself better.

            A friend who’d moved away a year ago unexpectedly showed up at a coffee shop where I catching up with another friend. He crashed my time with my other friend, yet he clearly needed to talk. Moving and retiring from a long, demanding career had been hard for him, giving him a much-needed space to rest and to find himself.  No longer identified by his job and his responsibilities, he was reconnecting with his wife and finding that he was enjoying life and putting together a new way of living.  He was discovering he liked himself, that he enjoyed his friends, and he had a new purpose.

            I listened, giving him space and time, being a friend. He needed to vent, to simply be heard. My time was a good present to offer him.

            A while ago, I picked up a young man getting out of prison.  He was making that life-changing drive from a prison cell to a half-way house.  Two years “inside” had nearly snuffed out his soul. It was a long drive through beautiful, wide-open country with no bars or walls. 

            We talked of many things, me trying to be quiet, to listen to someone who hadn’t had many people listen to him throughout his life. 

            We spotted a cormorant on a riverbank, drying its wings in the sunshine. He’d never seen a cormorant before and didn’t know about their lives. We talked about freedom then, the freedom to fly, to fish on the river.  Comfortable silences filled the rest of our trip, both of us finding our friendship quiet and easy. I thought of the healing power of solitude and nature, and the simple joy of sharing an experience with a friend.  

            I recently reconnected with a good friend, who reached out to me after one of her dear friends died by suicide. She had deep pain, and I was the ear she had sought. I listened; we cried. I gave the gift of listening, of not judging her friend, not advising her how to grieve, of not assuming or condemning. I held space for her, and acknowledged her pain.

            We reconnected after the funeral, she wanting to talk about death and life and the hereafter, the messy mystery of what she was feeling and not easily understanding. I gave her time and permission to feel.

            These quiet one on one conversations go both ways. Often, I need to be the talker and a friend be the listener. And, sometimes, it’s looking at the stars or the waves on the beach, or picking my guitar all by myself, but knowing I’m not really alone.

            I’m hoping I always have the time to reach out, or be the friend with the ready and willing ear and simply be there.

1/8/2022

To One Suddenly Departed


                                                

            I can take you for granted so easily. Often, you would be there in my life, a friend, one who listens, one who cares, full of life. Today, you are quickly gone, and we will talk and laugh together no more. I struggle to know what to do with all of this. Our lives together are gifts, more fragile than I want to see. 

And I grieve.

            You were steadfast, dependable, present for me and all the others in your life who have depended upon you to care, to comfort, to share with them the small moments in life. You were a bright light for so many.

            And I grieve.

            Such times together and such friendships seem ordinary, until they aren’t there anymore. Today, there is a void, an emptiness, a forever silence now that you are so quickly, so unexpectedly missing from us. Your dependability, your presence, your wisdom in my life has not been unnoticed, certainly not unappreciated, and now thoughts of you with us are painful, incomplete, confusing.

            And I grieve.

            Your laughter, your smile, your presence in our lives is now reduced to history, but has not gone unappreciated, nor unvalued. You are forever a part of me.

            And I grieve.

            I know now that you knew all that, and we were both brave enough to be honest with each other about friendship, how important that is, even when its value goes unspoken. Some truths do not need to be spoken to be recognized and honored, cherished.

            And I grieve.

            In this new emptiness, I hear only silence in the wind, and the echoes of all that I have cherished in our friendship.  In your absence, there are spaces in me that leave me less than whole. I remember you for all the good times. In that remembering, you live on in my grief.

Neal Lemery  6/3/2021

Being Mothered


                                    

                                                By Neal Lemery

            Mother’s Day is a tough holiday, a maudlin remembrance of Mom, who has passed on, but still figures in my life.  With any family relationship, it is a mixed bag, an often-confusing mix of emotions, feelings, and memories. Popular culture tells us to be adoring, grateful, and praising offspring, yet other thoughts and patterns of grief keep the emotions in what I often envision as being a whirlpool as I navigate through life. 

            This year, I’m feeling the need for nurturance.  Perhaps it is my long-term response to the pandemic, and the range of lockdowns, quarantines, and the emotional rollercoaster of coping with this contagion that seems to be a never-ending disruptor. I’m emotionally drained. I find myself seeking emotional sustenance, comfort, and the gratifying tenderness of a mother’s love.

            Ever since I’ve had a car, I’ve carried a blanket with me.  It goes back to when I was five, traveling with my mom and grandma through the mountains. We ran into a freak snowstorm, and almost slid off the road. Waiting for the snowplow, my elders made sure we were warm, underneath the ever-present blanket in my mom’s car, sipping hot tea from my grandmother’s trusty and well-worn thermos.  The disaster turned into an adventure, comforted by the blanket, hot tea and family stories I’d never heard before.

            A few years before my mom passed, she gave me a new car blanket. The hand-me-down old Pendleton blanket of my grandmother’s had finally succumbed to several generations of picnics, beach trips, and the occasional unexpected adventure. The new blanket stays behind the driver’s seat in my pickup, ready to wrap around me on a chilly evening, or become a picnic tablecloth or a dry seat on a log at the beach. When I pull it out, I am reminded of my mom, and her continual work to care for the family and keeping us safe and warm. Mom being Mom.

            This week, as Mother’s Day looms with all of its swirls of emotions and expectations, and no address for me to send Mom a card, or a phone number to call, I found myself wrapping the blanket around me, feeling its softness and its warmth. That sensual comfort chases away the emptiness, the grief that often haunts these holidays that are hyped as overly joyous events, the Hallmark moments that can easily drag me into a canyon of treacherous emotion. 

Feeling the fuzzy blanket around my shoulders is almost as good as a hug from Mom, and I can feel her presence in the room as I share a meal with family, and we tell stories of life’s adventures.  

I’m missing those times with her, sharing a pot of tea, telling stories, and planning a fun event with family.  Her blanket wrapped around me is a poor substitute for that, but I’m getting through this weekend with some much-needed sustenance and comfort, taking time for some self care and quality blanket time.   

5/8/2021

Grieving and Growing


 

 

By Neal Lemery

 

The weeks before spring, before the world comes fully awake from its winter slumber, and bursts forth with flowers and growth and new hope for a bright and joyous planet, is a time of contemplation for me. And now is a time for me to grieve, as lately I have lost some good friends.

 

Once again, the world is teaching me, and today’s lessons are about loss and leaving, about life and what we are here for. Like everything else in the School of Life, I don’t have much say in the curriculum or the class schedule. Yet, it is my job to show up and learn the lessons of the day.

 

My friends’ time has come and they have moved on, leaving this world.  I wasn’t ready to say goodbye, but then, I never am. I can rage and scream and cry, but all that is not very productive.  I still feel empty inside, and not really sure I know how to honor their lives.  I look at how their lives have shaped my own, enriching me, and given me tools and ideas from which I can be a better person, and make a bigger difference in the world. There are always lessons to be learned, and ways for me to improve myself.

 

The spaces they filled in my life are empty, though I try to fill that up with something creative, something that will make a difference in this world, as if to make up for what they aren’t doing in the world anymore.  But, that’s a fool’s errand.  I can’t fill in the gaps that they have left in my life, and I can’t duplicate what they did, or would be doing now if they hadn’t died. Each of us is special, unique. I don’t think we are here to be clones of those who have moved on. Each of us has our own work to do here.

 

In my own life, though, I can better my own life, being more of a giver, a teacher, a creator, and a lover of the world.  That’s what my lately departed friends would want too, if they were sitting here having a cup of coffee with me.  They’d be pretty insistent with me, not being people who would cry in their beer, or host a pity party on their untimely and undesired demise.  They wouldn’t want me to be doing that either.

 

“Get on with life,” I can hear several of them say. “You’ve got more work to do. Now, get to it.”

 

Look at what you have taught, what you have created with your hands, and how much love you have spread. That’s the directive I’m getting from the Universe, as I wake to another day, and wonder, once again, what I am here for.

 

It’s not my time yet to go.  So I must go on.  I must spend less time thinking about those tears in my beer, and get out into the world, get a move on.  The departed ones are still with me, in many ways, and I still hear their voices, and their ideas and wisdom.  They were in my life for many reasons, and it is up to me to discover all that they have given me in our all too brief time together on this planet.

 

I have much to learn. The days are getting longer now, and the sunshine is warmer. Spring is coming, and life is renewing. It is time for me to grow, and to love more than I have ever thought possible.

Passing On


 

 

They say life’s a journey and time moves on

And lives end and and now you are gone.

When someone goes, it’s never on my schedule

And I can mourn, I can scream, and

I can cry.

But our lives move on, and my friend has passed.

 

They say your time had come, your work was done

You were letting go, and moving on.

You let me know in many ways that this was goodbye,

And that was fine, this was what would be—

And life goes on, so the well-wishers say.

 

I’m not done with you, I scream in my head

In the darkest of my thoughts, not wanting to know

You are gone, that you have passed, before I was willing

To say good-bye.

 

You are right, I’ll hear you say,

Seeing a spark of light in the darkest of the night —-

The ache remains, the emptiness unrelieved,

Your absence is what I resent.

 

The path you made through life still guides my steps

Your smile, now just a memory—

Your voice still whispers in my ear

When the path gets rough.

You letting me know it will work out,

That I’ll know the way, the path will clear,

You still by my side, you still lighting my way.

 

—Neal Lemery 1/9/2019

Unsaid


 

 

You would be one hundred tomorrow,

and I would have made you a cake—

your mom’s white spice cake with what we kids used to call

cement frosting – sugar boiled to death, and slathered on

like plaster, with an old kitchen knife of Grandma’s.

 

I’d make you hot Lipton tea, even though it will be a scorcher of a day–

you with your sweater on, and me breaking a sweat.

We’d talk and laugh, but when I would ask about you growing up,

and what it was like in your younger days, you’d get quiet, and

change the subject to how my garden was doing.

 

I still think about you living with your aunt that year,

while Grandma went to Fort Worth.

I figured it out that year your

cousin’s kids came to live with us for the summer,

you adding chairs and another leaf to the table—

no explanation given.

 

Years later, when I brought our foster son to meet you,

you’d baked a pie and made your favorite dish,

put out your great grandma’s English china bowl

and just smiled and gave him a hug.

 

You’ve been gone a long time now, but I still

grow your favorite rose

and think of you when I plant my peas, using Grandpa’s hoe,

and set the table when guests are coming,

using your silverware, and folding the napkins just like you.

 

I’ll even make some Lipton tea on a stormy day, and read a book—

remembering you doing that, while a roast cooked in the oven,

filling the house with love, you saying “Hi” when I got back from school.

 

A few years ago, something great happened and I picked up the phone—

halfway through the number, I realized you wouldn’t answer the call,

and laugh when I told you the news—

I miss that, sometimes more than I think I can stand.

 

The other day, I drove by Great Grandma’s house,

where you were “born and raised” and learned to ride your uncle’s horse,

the old and “new” barns gone now, the road to the cemetery just grass,

a hundred years changed most everything, I think,

Except what really mattered, what was too often left

Unsaid.

 

 

—Neal Lemery

September 2017

 

Grieving


 

 

 

They come into my life and then, too early, they are gone. And I mourn and grieve, cry and moan. I am angry at my loss, my pain, the void in my life as their sudden absence is a bleeding, infected wound that never quite seems to heal.

Grief dances its macabre and bittersweet retinue of every emotion, taking fiendish joy in ambushing me when I least expect it, when I am least able to cope with the pain.

Yet, deep down, I still carry their light and their love, and sense their their soul, still resounding with me, still an integral part of my life.

Why? What was so special about that person that I am so profoundly affected by their passing? What was it about them that reached me, touched my heart, and brought them so close to me, such an essential part of my life, my own story? What is the lesson to be learned?

I just read that plants emit light frequencies in a part of the light spectrum that is invisible to our eyes, yet photography is now able to record those images, those vibrations, and reveal another dimension of the profound beauty and intricacies of these living beings.

Is it that much of a stretch in thinking that people also emit vibrations and frequencies of light that is invisible to our eyes, yet sensed in a much deeper level by us, on a different, yet intuitive, level.

“You are special. You bring something into my life that is beautiful, meaningful for me.”

Attraction.

The law of attraction teaches us that we attract to ourselves the emotions, the feelings, the vibrations that we need. And when we open ourselves to those feelings, the presence of what we crave, then we become more complete, and more able to live the life that we deeply desire. We come closer to fulfilling our true purpose in this life.

And when a special person leaves us, there is a void, an emptiness, a loss. Yet there is also the knowing, deep down, of what they have brought to us in our all too brief time together. That memory serves us well, teaching us what we had needed and desired, to be a better, more complete person.

In that loss, that death, there are lessons to be learned, lessons on what we have needed and taken in, and grown from. When the class is over, only then do we fully appreciate the lessons learned, the experience gained, the real benefit of being present for the lesson, the experience.

At the end of a particular journey, the end of that special time when a special friend has come into my life and walked with me, only then do I first realize what I have experienced, what we had set out to learn, and how I needed to grow. I look back, and only then see from where I have come, how far I have traveled, and the name of the road I am on.

These dear ones who have passed on, the ones whose light I have needed along my own journey, have taught me great lessons, and deeply impacted my life. I find that when they are gone, only then do I start to fully realize the gifts they have given me, the lessons they have taught me, and the special places they have held in my life. Only then do I fully appreciate them, and find some sense of completeness and understanding of their presence in my life.

Somehow, their teaching to me is not complete until they are gone. Only then do I learn all the lessons they have been teaching me.

Only then is the full spectrum of the light they have shared revealed to me.

Only then can grief lead me to the understanding I have been led to eventually discover.

 

 

–Neal Lemery 6/16/2017