Tag: Anniversaries

September Sadness

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Over the weekend, I learned that one of Nick’s (my older son’s) high school buddies from the late 1990s/early 2000s, died recently of an apparent suicide. He was forty-two years old.

The timing of this devastating event for his family and friends has dredged up another dose of September sadness for me.

***

In September 2023, Tom and I received a letter in the mail from a close friend, who–less than a year before–had moved from the Phoenix area to another part of the country. I’ll call this friend Brett.

Brett’s snail-mail message was an eerie, lengthy, desperate, and personal admission–typed and folded meticulously. In it, Brett recounted a series of voluntary testosterone injections that messed with his body and mind.

He told us: ” … I had consulted with several friends in the medical field, all of whom told me there were no side effects to these testosterone injections and it would raise my numbers. Unfortunately, this did not turn out to be true … and it destroyed me forever.”

I know how much Brett cared for Tom and me, and we certainly listened and cared for him. “Our talks on our hikes always inspired me,” he went on to say. He told us he wished he had made better decisions in his new hometown.

When Tom and I finished reading the letter, we both felt dumbfounded. So much so that Tom ran a search on Brett’s full name. Brett’s obituary popped up.

Through a few subsequent texts and phone calls, we discovered Brett had committed suicide.

Evidently, Brett had left a short stack of letters to close friends in his home. Soon after he died, a member of his family mailed them.

In late September 2023, we heard from one of his brothers. He told us Brett had spoken highly of us. We told him how much we cared about Brett, and how frequently he mentioned his love for his family.

We sent him pictures of Brett, Tom and me banging on drums at the Musical Instrument Museum in Scottsdale. It was a fun day in May 2021, though you couldn’t see our smiles. We were wearing masks. It was the height of Covid.

We will never know the full detail of what happened to Brett or why he felt he had no recourse but to take his life. But, with time, Tom and I became acquainted with Brett’s mother and sister, too.

I am certain that talking with us about Brett provided much-needed comfort, but I can’t presume to know the devastation of what they feel when Brett’s birthday appears on the calendar every January … or when this day–September 8–reignites the fire of grief.

It is an endless nightmare.

***

Depression doesn’t only emanate from one man’s worries over his testosterone levels.

The division in our country in 2026 boggles the mind. So many people live in fear and isolation as our nation’s government–and many of the institutions we once trusted–breeds disarray, pain, anxiety, and uncertainty.

If you know someone who is struggling mightily, I encourage you to reach out to them and lend a listening ear.

Or, if that person in pain is you, please know that you matter. Help is available around the clock.

Call or text 988 to be connected to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Do it for yourself. Do it for Brett.

Whether you are facing mental health struggles, emotional distress, alcohol or drug related concerns, or just need to talk with someone, a caring counselor will provide confidential emotional support.

Remember, you are not alone.

A lone blue heron stands at the water’s edge at Chaparral Lake in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Canad-ahh

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Somewhere between Jasper and Banff–during the last week of July 2026 in Alberta, Canada, on a coach, on a trail, or in a hotel room–I lost my neon-yellow Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus cap.

But what I found with my husband in Canada’s astounding scenery and emerald waters is far greater, more meaningful, and certainly more lasting in the flipping pages of my memory.

Tom and I planned our Canada adventure months ago to commemorate thirty years of being together. (We met in the Chicago suburbs in August 1996.) Fresh Tracks, a Canadian tour group, helped us orchestrate our eight-day itinerary.

I told my husband, “I want to spend money in Canada in 2026.” I wanted to see the beauty above us on the map. I wanted to embrace the scenery and people, who are our northern neighbors.

I wanted them to know that many–probably most–Americans love and respect them. We admire their commitment to protect their natural resources.

Over the course of the next week, I was able to see that first-hand in the cleanliness of their national parks. No plastic bottles rattled around in rivers, lakes, or streams.

I have craved a visit to the coastline and mountains of Vancouver for years. So, we started there.

Fresh Tracks arranged an exquisite dinner for us at the Coal Harbour Cactus Club. We toasted each of with a glass of prosecco and watched the sun set over the bay. It painted a tranquil mood across a colorful canvas.

We expected to spend the following few days traveling via train on the Rocky Mountaineer through the Canadian Rockies. But fires in British Columbia limited the rail portion of our excursion to one day.

We made the best of it, traveling from Vancouver to Kamloops via coach with about thirty others. Two kind, upbeat Rocky Mountaineer staffers walked down the aisle handing out water and snacks–packages of chips, cookies, and candy.

Early on the morning of July 24, we climbed onto another coach that escorted us to the Rocky Mountaineer rail station in Kamloops a mere twenty minutes away.

Sifting through the smoke-tinged skies of Kamloops, we boarded the train and arrived on the top deck for a Gold Leaf view through a glass-encased dome.

We introduced ourselves to Mark and Kim, a fun-and-friendly couple from Abilene, Texas, who sat across the aisle. All four of us–and a train full of others–faced forward.

For the following ten hours, the welcoming, service-focused Rocky Mountaineer team entertained us with vivid stories of the landscape we would traverse together and the animals we might encounter.

At scheduled intervals, they invited us to the lower level of the train for a sumptuous, gourmet breakfast … I fell in love with the lemon cranberry bread topped with a decadent glaze.

Several hours later, we returned there for a delicious lunch/dinner, prepared magically by a team of chefs on board. The wine and drinks were free flowing.

We downed a glass of mimosa–and later pinot noir–as we traded stories with Mark and Kim and gasped at the steep river-laden mountains and canyons that brought us to Jasper … an easy-going ski-town still recovering and rebuilding after a devastating forest fire in 2024.

Along the way, eagles, elk, and big horn sheep guided us sparingly. They appeared unimpressed and unconcerned with our presence as we rode by, though we on our train cars and coaches lunged for our cameras and phones in pockets to bring home evidence that we had actually seen wildlife, unjaded and unaware of the news in any day.

Midway on our vacation, after leaving Jasper, we spent a night and morning frolicking at the iconic Chateau Lake Louise. We absorbed the privilege of simply being there and seized the moment by capturing photos of the breathtaking scenery … something Tom’s parents had done when they visited Lake Louise in 1988.

A highlight of our trip was journeying to the Columbia Icefield in Alberta. When we arrived there in our Sundog coach, we donned four layers each, including our easily packed windbreakers. They proved ideal as we ventured out to walk on a glacier.

The temperature on my phone said fifty degrees Fahrenheit. In the icy, pine-scented air it felt more like forty with a biting breeze. Of course, my blood is thinner now, living nearly all of my days in the Sonoran Desert.

By the time we arrived in Banff, it meant we were nearing the end of our Canada adventure. I did my best to “soak up the scenery” as my father said back in the 60s as we rode up and down hairpin turns in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina.

Well-appointed lodges and snazzy shops line the main streets in Banff. At times we felt the size of overflowing, late-July crowds and traffic there.

None of that deterred my fascination with the Bow River rapids–and ultimately its falls–that raced through town or the eight-minute gondola ride we took on our final Banff day beyond alpine heights to the top of Sulphur Mountain.

Through it all — as I paused to “soak up” breathtaking scenery in the form of still photos and even a few videos of waterfalls and vast mountain ranges stretching far beyond my senses — I realized the most important thing of all: I was blessed to witness the wonder of western Canada in July 2026 and to see all of it with the man I love.

Looking Over My Shoulder

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Back and forth from one end of the pool to the other on this hotter-than-average, magnificent March morning. March 24, 2026, from 9:00 to 9:30 a.m. to be precise. Thirty lengths in the deep end of Eldorado Pool in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Somehow, I wrangled my own lane today. I don’t mind sharing but always feel freer on unobstructed Tuesdays and Thursdays. There are fewer swim-class participants to contend with on those days and–now that the Cactus League baseball games have ended–some of the snowbirds have begun to flock home.

Breathing every eight or ten strokes, looking over my right shoulder, swimming south to north, I spy the blazing sun that threatens my sensitive skin and the wispy-white contrail of a commercial plane flying high above.

Serendipitously, the repetitive swimming motion reminds me what I want to write about today. It is the tenth anniversary of publishing my first book: From Fertile Ground.

On March 24, 2016, Barack Obama was president. I didn’t imagine the waves of what was to come: the growing political insanity, the dismantling of once-reliable American institutions, the general implosion of our democracy in one decade. Who could?

Back then, Tom and I were snowbirds–splitting time between our homes in Mount Prospect, Illinois, and Scottsdale, Arizona.

I wrote most of my inaugural book–a three-generation writer’s mosaic about love and loss in my family–from the suburban flatness of northern Illinois.

But working online–back and forth like a swimmer logging laps between my editor and book designer in Nashville, Tennessee, and me in Scottsdale–I made my final edits in the rugged western landscape of the Grand Canyon State.

I remember the pride of holding the first physical copy of my first book later that week. I know I cried. It was a release of joy and amazement. Most definitely, a seminal moment I shared with my husband.

Sadness crept in, too, because I had written the book to process my grief after my mother’s passing. In a physical sense, I wasn’t able to celebrate that literary moment with her.

But I also know that writing about her and her wisdom-filled letters, my father and his unrealized poetry, my grandfather and fifty-three years of diary entries, and the general sense of freedom I felt visiting my grandparents in the 1960s at their rambling North Carolina farm allowed me to create a healing path out of my grief.

It was–and still is–a story I was meant to write and publish. One I wanted to share with others navigating the devastation of grief.

In the past ten years since From Fertile Ground was born, writing has become that free, unbridled swimming lane that is purely mine. Welcome waves of water and creativity running from my mid-fifties to my late sixties.

Whenever I jump into my writing in the deep end of my emotions, I find a way back to the surface with a new story. Many of them have landed on the pages of my other five books: Tales of a Rollercoaster Operator in 2017; An Unobstructed View in 2018; I Think I’ll Prune the Lemon Tree in 2021; A Path I Might Have Missed in 2023; and Sixty-Something Days in 2025.

Of course, I take pride in that body of work and–more recently–find it tremendously gratifying to share what I have learned with other writers, who need an experienced coach … and a few practical ideas … to tell their own stories.

Today, I also pause and wonder–with a touch of sadness as I write this–how many more stories lie ahead for me. Though I still feel strong, capable, creative, and alive in these golden years swimming back and forth under the Arizona sun, I also feel more vulnerable.

Part of it is the process of aging. The other is the narrowing swim lanes of American society that constrain freedom and the expression of ideas.

Having said that, I choose to end this story on a positive note. Today, I choose to relish the goodness of my life with Tom in this rugged landscape. To give thanks for all the stories that have come from fertile ground over the past ten years … as well as those I have salvaged from the depths of the pool looking over my shoulder to beloved people and places that now live on the page.

Thirteen

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It is inevitable that we will lose some of those we love along life’s journey. But all is not lost.

When seminal I’ll-Be-Seeing-You moments, birthdays, anniversaries, songs reappear, we can’t help but acknowledge them.

Over the years, I have chosen to pay tribute to those I love in my memoirs in significant ways. None more than my mother.

These three sentences appear in my first book, From Fertile Ground, which I wrote and published in 2016.

“She died in the wees hours of January 26, 2013, at age eighty-nine and a half. The air was arctic cold and the moon was full. Every time I see a full moon now or experience the change in seasons, I’m reminded of my mother’s undaunted spirit.”

On this — the thirteenth anniversary of her passing — I pause.

I give thanks for Helen Matilda Ferrell Johnson.

I remember her unconditional love, her letters, her wisdom, her level-headedness, her resiliency, her love of nature.

And I do my best to carry on.

I keep writing.

Nostalgia

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Music is a great elixir for what ails you.

What ailed me for three years–2013 to 2016–was grief spawned by the loss of my mother.

Listening to Annie Lennox’ soaring voice–her Nostalgia--pulled me through and beckoned me to complete my first book From Fertile Ground.

You see, Annie’s rendition of twelve stirring and mostly southern-sometimes-smoldering tunes written in the 1930s and 1940s primed the pump of my southern sensory memories.

Sometime in 2015, I unearthed a tender memory of making homemade peach ice cream with my grandmother Georgia on the rickety porch of my grandparents’ North Carolina farm.

It was Annie who reminded me that I had Georgia on My Mind. Sherrell Richardson Ferrell, too–S.R. for short. He was my farming grandfather who left behind more than fifty years of diary entries.

Annie’s music, Georgia’s love, S.R.’s spartan stories (primitive blog entries really), and Helen’s litany of letters (she was my wise mother) gave me all the creative inspiration I needed to finish and publish my first book in 2016.

Why is this all relevant today? Because I have Helen on my mind. She died twelve years ago on January 26, 2013.

For the most part, my writing and the constant love and support from my husband Tom have helped soften the grief as the years continue to roll by.

Helen would have been happy for me on both counts. She suspected Tom and I would retire in Arizona one day.

However, I doubt she would have imagined the entirety of this literary chapter for me, which lately includes teaching memoir writing at our local library. (I’ve been asked to lead a third workshop in April.)

Or the growing community of loyal followers Tom has inspired with every immersive movie series he hosts (also at the Scottsdale Public Library). His next series–Movies That Matter: The 1970s (a tribute to six film directors)–begins tomorrow and continues on most Mondays until early April.

I firmly believe it is the arts and the artists–like Annie Lennox, even the less renowned ones like Mark Johnson and Tom Samp–who through their music, writing, painting, poetry, and true cultural perspectives will help pull us through this dark and uber-turbulent period in our once-proud country.

For now, that is the hope I cling to. Along with the memories of love and gratitude–the nostalgia–framed by indelible moments with family and friends past and present, who I love dearly.

You Wouldn’t Believe

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Since you’ve been gone, you

wouldn’t believe how the world

and our lives have changed.

You never knew that I married

a man I love, or that we live

in the desert where I can swim

outside in the winter, or that

I survived a heart attack on

my sixtieth birthday, in the

city where both of us

were born, or that

the grandsons you loved as

children are thriving, though

they have nearly reached

middle age, or that some people

now ride in cars with no

actual drivers, or that it’s kind

of a metaphor for our

country, which has lost

its moral compass, or that

the flag you defended and

saluted is no longer yours, or

that I am thankful to write and

sing in my late sixties, because

I was meant to do those all

along. All of this is true, and

it prompts me to worry and

hope–mostly worry–that

even though I am thankful

for good health, my kind and

compassionate husband, my

own boundless empathy, and

the relationships I’ve nurtured

with my sons, and many diverse

friends, I feel heavy uncertainty

in our country, and anticipate

more losses ahead only

to protect myself, and

of course, it reminds me of

other losses I’ve endured,

especially on the anniversary

of your passing the day after

a big Thanksgiving meal

with your sisters. By now,

you can see that the world

you knew is most definitely

gone, but you live in

my memories, and

I still love you, I grieve for you,

I grieve for me, I grieve for us.

Most of all, I still remember the

many monumental moments

–the good and bad–we shared

so long ago, Dad.

Blogging … or Something

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I heard him tell the other one that this is his sixth anniversary of blogging … or something.

I don’t really know what “anniversary” or “blogging” means, but they seem nice enough.

I don’t really care about any of that, as long as they keep feeding me.

I heard him tell the other one–again–that he is going to blog … or something.

It must be important to him, even though he doesn’t know what to say.

Oh, well, I guess it’s time for me to leave now.

I don’t really know when I’ll be back, but I’ll be on my way.

Another Day, Another Story

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After my mother died on this day in 2013 at age eighty-nine, my grief took root.

With a little time, a lot of reflecting and journaling, and the support of a small circle of family and friends, I found and nurtured my own path from the branches of despair.

By 2015, I had carved out a storyteller’s life Helen Johnson would have loved. Late that year, I flew to North Carolina to visit Frances, her only sister.

Spending time with Frances in the state where both were born–and revisiting childhood memories of my grandparents’ farm in Huntersville, NC–propelled my creativity.

In March of 2016, I completed and published my first book, From Fertile Ground. It is the story of my journey and grief.

If you’ve read this story about three writers (my grandfather, mother, and me) and their love of family, you know this isn’t really the cover.

Today I’ve superimposed this photo of Helen and Frances together (in my sister’s backyard in 2003 or 2004 in northern Illinois) to remember them both.

Why? Because Frances was the last physical vestige of that rural, 1960s world for me. When she died six months ago at age ninety-one, I metaphorically waved goodbye to those years of running amok barefoot on warm summer days in the Tar Heel State.

Of course, I will always have rich memories of my wise-and-frugal mother, who wrote countless letters, and my fun-loving aunt, who traveled the world in her retirement years. In their own ways, they inspired me to tell my story.

Today–as I remember them both–I can walk into the sunroom of the Scottsdale, Arizona condo where Tom and I now live. I can pull my book off the shelf and find this passage.

“What I knew before was that the farm was a place of discovery for me and the fertile ground there was a physical and psychological refuge from the hardships of our family drama in St. Louis. What I know now is that I would need to go back to North Carolina to come to terms with my grief and integrate my southern memories with my present-day, real-life adult existence.”

I can take solace in the fact that I’ve written about Helen and Frances–who they were, who they loved.

Though they are both gone, they live on the pages.

Labor of Love

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My parents labored through much of their forty-five years of marriage. In that sense, it is fitting that their wedding anniversary–September 4–often coincides with Labor Day, as it does this year.

Despite their differences, struggles, and heartaches, by the late 1980s Mom and Dad seemed more content whenever I drove from Chicago to visit them in St. Louis.

Mom had retired from her stressful government job. She spent more time in her beloved garden. Dad’s mental illness had quieted. He found solace, reading his Daily Word in their wing-backed chair.

Ironically, this more even footing in their relationship appeared as their physical frailties–and risk of falling–became more obvious.

They went to church together. They cultivated deeper friendships with neighbors. They dined regularly at nearby Grone’s Cafeteria. Life was much simpler.

Comparatively, Tom and I are far more active in our “retirement” than my parents ever were. But we have discovered a similar contentment. There are fewer demands on us. We spend more time on the things we enjoy with the people–friends and family–who mean the most to us.

Today–on what would have been Helen and Walter Johnson’s 75th wedding anniversary–the two people holding hands in this photo are the ones I choose to remember.

But, even during the troubles and heavy lifting of their younger years, I’m grateful for the many things they taught me. How to respect the elderly. How to save for a rainy day. How to be kind to neighbors and care for animals. How to put people before material things. How to be a loyal friend. How to work hard and earn my keep. How to show compassion.

Most important of all, how to love my family, warts and all.

Certainly, by watching Helen and Walter struggle, I learned lessons about how to endure in a world that can often feel unendurable. That may feel like a strange way to pay tribute to my parents on their diamond wedding anniversary. But it’s honest and true.

Though Dad has been gone thirty years and Mom ten, the love I feel for them endures.

In the summer of 1988, Helen and Walter Johnson enjoyed their suburban St. Louis backyard. Mom was 65; Dad was 74.

A Better Place

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“Dogs have no idea how wonderful they are. They walk all around us and make the world a better place.”

***

On a chilly, but sunny, Thursday morning in Scottsdale, Arizona, this was Yumi’s thought of the day.

How serendipitous that our instructor should choose these two sentences as inspiration for Tom, me and six others on February 2, 2023, as we stood on our mats and began our weekly seventy-five-minute journey into yoga.

On Ground Hog Day fifteen years ago our basset hound Maggie crossed over the Rainbow Bridge.

When it’s your pet, you never forget the highs and lows long after the calendar pages have come and gone.

The frolics with Kirk, Nick, Tom, and me in the lush green of our backyard … the comfort of her velveteen elongated ears as I stroked her coat … the gnaws and crunches of rawhide bones and petite carrots as she gobbled up another evening snack, after racing to welcome us home at the kitchen door.

Then along came that sad-and-snowy suburban Chicago morning in 2008 when our dog endured another–particularly horrible– seizure.

After the shaking had stopped, she looked up at me with resignation from the tile of our kitchen floor without the energy or inclination to lick the maple syrup off a breakfast plate.

Soon after, Tom and I scooped her into our sedan, arrived at our vet’s office, and whispered goodbye to her as she sprawled on a blanket on the floor.

***

Today, seventeen hundred miles and a lifetime away from the northern Illinois home she patrolled and dominated, I recall the “glue” and comic relief our dog provided (through her warm fur, misshapen front legs, and bellowing howl).

She was the antidote for our non-traditional family: two men (in a loving relationship just doing our best to coexist in a less enlightened world) with my two sons zooming in and out of our life as they grew.

Our dog simply demanded our constant attention and stood by our sides witnessing it all.

It was the love and companionship of Maggie and the litany of her daily adventures–walks, feedings, treats, medicines, rabbits, squirrels, accidents in the hall, and countless cuddles–that magically connected us all.

Certainly, from 1998 to 2008, our dog made our world a better place.