Happy New Year, to and from Timm

A self-portrait of Timm dated 2003. (Found on a CD in his archives.)

Frequently at the New Year, Timm journalled his thoughts about the previous year and the year ahead. This passage from Jan. 1, 1988, when Timm was 24, is typical:

... The year past is a tough one to try and summarize. It has been fraught with struggles. Trying to stay alive in England, working in Holland then the Ranch. Fall came and so did school. Overall, last year was very tough. I guess in spirit of the difficulties I grew a lot. The biggest area that growth can be seen is in my thoughts - namely marriage. I no longer look on it as a curse - in fact, I look forwards to it with much expectancy.

Looking ahead I can see at least one major move -- possibly to Seattle: There may be two moves -- with one being to a summer job. It will be strange finally graduating in May. A kind of freedom of sorts until I think of grad school with the infinite amount of work that will be required.

Reading that passage from our vantage -- going on nine months after Timm's death, at the cusp of the first year in which he is fully gone, as we see our futures without him -- the intent of the words are fully ours, reading in our history of pain sure growth, rounding out toward new opportunities which, for Timm, kept him in motion while circling round the calyx of more or better love, planning a better crop of happiness in the year ahead.

Who doesn't whisper the same incantation every New Year, leaving the worst of wounds behind, praying for better times ahead?

Timm's story is complete; it has reached perfection, it cannot change, there are no new wounds to endure nor new vistas of love to enter. His is forever 44 now, forever healed and together and creative and employable and a future husband and son and brother; he is forever hesitant at the doorstep of those things, about to knock, quailing somewhat. The file is saved now in a manner which cannot be revised again; his life is writ in stone.

His life is wholly ours now to name and claim and let go, the way our individual histories have wings and additions and basements in which other histories -- Timm's, for one -- contain.

As I sit this New Year's Day -- cool and dark at 5 a.m., our town so very still, our cats sleeping in their nooks, Beth yet to stir upstairs -- I say, in Timm's fashion: Last year was very tough. The pain was instructive. I grew. My brother died suddenly last April and it's been a slow process of grieving his loss - he was so distant, and yet as I got familiar with his life from his journals and photo archives, I came to know him as a distant twin, separated long ago from the vein of my days though ever-present and akin to the way I think and feel. Members of our family grieved in their own ways. Gas shot up over $4 a gallon and then tumbled when the economy of this country and much of the rest of the world suffered its worst recession in decades. Much uncertainty in the present but I pray it will be better in 2009 - more financial security here, improved health, continued happiness with what we have in our homes and loved ones.

And I say: God bless the coming year. And I do so with another bucket of images drawn from Timm's deep well, these from the archive of 4x5 film positives Timm had collected for some greatest use -- a coffee table book perhaps. Continuing that work for him is healing, somewhat, of the loss, as if a good thing stays good as it passes around in the world.

Happy New Year to all -- and thanks to Timm for being forever Timm.