July is an anniversary of leaving dates for both a dear friend and of Dad. It too is full of birthdays for many I love, including the baby brother I so badly wanted to be a sister. I didn’t intend to blog this weekend; but writing calms and soothes me. Nearly always.

In all this brain cycling of sadness, joy and grief, I too noticed the continued haphazard uptick of two of my blogs, A story hidden in the mist (11/2020) and Stories of our generation: Mount St. Helens (5/2020). I’ve stopped wondering why readers suddenly discover these old blogs. But it did make me revisit how poorly I marketed my one self-published blog to ebook, Then, Now and In-Between: Place, Memories and Loss in Oregon (3/2020). I wrote the two blogs linked above later in 2020; the book I dedicated to another dear friend who died late in 2019. She a poet, lover of nature, gardening, children and people. The book came out as COVID was taking off, and I held my softer-than-soft launch via Zoom in my dining room. Dear friend Kris stopped by to support me. Kris too was a reader, lover of nature, gardening, children and people, and we sat next to each other at Karen’s memorial just before our lives became shuttered due to COVID. Kris was born in July, and died just a few months later in July 2020. I think of these two dear friends often, as so many others do, especially when walking in our local parks.

Table of Contents:
Sections: Place, Memories, Loss
Introduction: Why this book?
Place
Places of thanks
Biddle’s Rock: A beacon of the Gorge
Before the Oregon Trail
A road to the coast
Returning to place
Columbia River Bar Pilots: A job like no other
Do you remember Henry?
Early bookselling: Ticknor & Fields to Gills
Portland’s coffee habit: From Boyd’s to Stumptown
From Methodism to McMenamins
Wilsonville 1968: The big vote by a small community
The Falls: History, stories and lamprey
Willamette Falls Locks reimagined today
Resurrecting the magic of a Peninsula expedition
Winding and carving
From togas to trails in Cottage Grove
River stories
Breathing in special places: Mary S. Young
From William Stafford to George Rogers and back again
Oregon’s visitor from the sky: the Willamette Meteorite
Portland Pipe and Book Club
Memories
Where do memories go?
Find my friend: Then and now
Creating portraits from the past
Of blizzards, snow drifts and ice
Women of the past: Clark and Beecher
Barges, I would like to go with you
From Zidell to Illahee: Put these bunks to bed
The Portland Steamer keeps on puffing
About those ferries
In appreciation of Oregon’s Century Farms
My San Antonio rose medallion moments
July means baseball
Early Portland and the flying pigskin
Rip City, Bill Schonely and Title IX
Take me as I am, not as you want me to be
About that Husky grudge
Diaries, notes and letters: Leave ’em laughing
To the Clackamas
Loss
Sadness in the beauty
Let’s talk about it
Teach our children well
Reflections on #MeToo
You come back, again and again
In this moment I eat blackberries
Yes, I will use the D word”
My boat and I
In our final moments: an anniversary
On the day you were born: Let’s remember pie
Those things left behind: Dick Montgomery’s train tribute, forever
References
Acknowledgements
Other Works

“I honor and thank Karen for offering constant, profound encouragement and friendship: I will forever feel your spirit in the whispering of the cottonwoods and ripples of the river.”

Print Length: 202 pages, 31566 KB
E-book available from Amazon and all suppliers: for $2.99.

In addition to insufferable heat for many and worsened climate reports, this week was further marked by gun violence that ended the life of a special person and ricocheted grief, anger and loss throughout healthcare, and among this hero’s family and friends. A grief heavily felt throughout Portland and beyond.

Then, yesterday was Friday. My Grandma Day. Us Grands, whether tied by blood, love, or both, understand the joy that surges through us when we are fortunate to spend time with these loved ones. I’m learning that the moments I spend with this wee but getting bigger grandchild are different than those once spent as a parent. I find my attention fully focused on him; I don’t hold the myriads of worries that may surround us when when are parents. And we parents work to learn to leave alone worries we might have for our grown children, the parents. I too felt my own mother channeling through me while so heavily feeling her loss as I finish From First Breath to Last. I felt conflicted – how can I be so happy in these moments on top of everything else? And yet, I remind myself. Grief and joy, cycle over, up and down, around and through, and in and out, of this experience of living.

I breathe, laugh, smile, and cry.

Looking to read more about grief, loss and gratitude? I appreciate my newer writer friends, and their work around grief. I encourage you to visit the blog and poetry of Anne Richardson, and the work of Anne Gudger, including the podcast Grief and Gratitude (with Annie and daughter Maria). Although time to grieve alone is important, in community we too connect, listen, cry, hope, validate and understand.

Learn more about Dede’s books.