Sadness and Joy
. . . on my 81st birthday
Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. Psalm 30:5
Today’s my eighty-first birthday. The paths through Brandywine Park were free of ice, so I went for a photo walk this morning. That’s been a restorative activity for me ever since ‘99 when my wife and I moved into a six-block neighborhood called Midtown Brandywine. We were lucky to get one of the “river houses,” with a second story view of the rapids.
My dear wife Alice died from dementia last month. Sadness comes and goes, but gratitude is my steadying emotion; and where gratitude abounds, a quiet joy often follows.
This morning as I walked I remembered all the places that she and I had visited during our 57 years of marriage. I may have missed some items in my reverie, but here’s what I do remember:
Alice visited all 50 states. But together, or with family, she and I visited:
Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carlina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, South Dakota, Montana, New Mexico, and Colorado.
We sailed through the Panama Canal.
We toured in Chile, as far south as Patagonia.
We took a bus tour through East Germany and heard from a guide who was among the young people who brought down the Berlin wall.
We bused across Ireland and rode a train east to west across Canada.
Several times we visited our son, Adam, who lives in London.
In France we visited Provence and Normandy, and lodged several times with Alice’s cousin, Susan, who lives in Paris.
We visited the Umbria region of Italy during the olive harvesting season, and sampled local red and white wines.
We hiked in the Sonora Desert of Arizona, the low country of Scotland, the sheep studded rolling hills of south Wales.
We spent three weeks on a mission trip to Mbuji-Mayi, Zaire (now in the Republic of the Congo); and we visited friends of color in Capetown, South Africa and heard stories from their friends about the struggle against apartheid.
In 2012 we cruised down the Mekong River, starting in Laos, turning east in Cambodia, and ending near to where I patrolled in wooden junks in 1970, serving as an advisor to the South Vietnamese navy.
Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, Alice and I traveled with fellow Presbyterians to meet with hosts in the Russian Orthodox Church to discuss nuclear disarmament.
We were so blessed to experience all that travel, and also, to find a place to retire familiar to us both, a beautiful and historic place in the American colonies, the Brandywine River Valley, where water-driven mills gave birth to the industrial revolution.
Following are some photos taken recently in that place. I rejoice to have come back home. And so did Alice.
Beautiful piece! Happy birthday Thomas and my sincere condolences on your wife's passing
For an old guy, you have created a great post, Tom. It celebrates the art of the photographic essay as a reflection of grace, serenity and beauty that was the stock and trade of the great photojournalists such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank and Irving Penn, luminaries we admired in our youthful days, a rare achievement in this age of sensational imagery.