Will you help us remember Timm on April 18?

The Salem capitol building in spring, shot by Timm in a series on April 2, 2008. These and several hundred other shots were retrieved from Timm's Nikon camera after he passed away on April 18, 2008.

The one-year anniversary of Timm's passing is April 18.

I've thought much these days about his death and the days following, when Mom and Will and Molly and I flew west to attend to his viewing and memorial service, and all of the details of closing down the remains of his life in Salem. I think of all of Timm's friends and co-workers we met out there, his pastor, his girlfriend, folks in recovery programs whom Timm had helped for so many years.

These days, I'm reminded how much it hurts to have a full heart; how much beauty heals, as Timm so asserted in his work; and how much beauty hurts, too. It's spring here in Florida and gorgeous, with everything in bloom and fair, warm winds carrying the scent of orange blossoms and jasmine in through open windows. Beautiful - but then I remember how it was exactly this way when we heard that Timm was gone, and the beauty of it all has that shadow to it.

It's been almost a year since Timm died, and for many, Timm is just gone, faded into oblivion the way the dead must, joining perhaps other friends or family who have died in the past year (quite a few, in my own story). For others, the shock of losing Timm has barely ebbed, and the wounds which have cut us so deeply in his absence seem so slow to heal.

In the way of such tragedies, everything seems normal and pedestrian immediately before the early morning hours of April 18, when phones began ringing in the dead of night and Timm was breathing his last in Salem Hospital, fatally wounded by a massive myocardial infarction. Life was just life and then Timm died and everything screeched to a halt, becoming this other, wounded, bewildered, immensely bereaving thing. I remember sitting in Mom's living room that Friday morning, soon to head over to the airport to make the first flight west, looking through a window a tababoulia tree across the street in full yellow bloom, thinking that it was obscenely beautiful -- too alive with Timm's death so present.

For those in his family like myself who knew Timm mostly in absence -- as a son and brother who had moved far away long ago to make his own way, who in his latter years was beginning to reconnect, becoming again a part of the family -- there was just so much about Timm we didn't know. This memorial website was a way of getting to know him through his writings and massive photo archives, through the recollections of friends and co-workers. We sifted our own memories for stories of Timm as he was growing up, everyone sending me pictures of Timm in various stages of childhood and adulthood. Timm's laptop -- so much a part of his working arsenal -- became the vehicle for retrieving his life and work and then preparing it for view of all who wished to stop by.

Remembering Timm, for us, was as much about getting to know Timm for the first time, and in so doing coming to know how much of Timm there is to miss. What a fine, elegant, wounded, caring, talented, hard-working, music-loving, playful, pun-loving, committed, challenged, God-loving person Timm was, a propounder beauty (of women and children and animals and the great great outdoors) who found such sights astonishing, exciting, calming and even healing.

In losing Timm, we are reminded how important it is to stay connected with each other, to make the present count, to do the work of reaching out and take the risk of loving.

We've done our grieving, each in our own way. I spent a good part of the past year working on this memorial site, often to the exclusion of all other creative work. Dad carved a stone in Timm's honor and had his ashes buried beneath that stone in his chapel. Mom and Molly embellished the memorial site for her son Nicholas with a yellow taboboulia tree and stone for Timm. Brother Will has been taking many pictures with Timm's camera, connecting with his younger brother's spirit that way. I understand he's putting those photos together into some kind of book. For many of Timm's closest friends in Oregon, it remains a mystery here how they have fared -- they have chosen to grieve separately. Perhaps this blog could only have been a family's blog; but I wish I knew how it has gone for you.

Sometimes the grieving seems done - life resumes a sort of normalcy, though forever changed by his loss; and then the grief returns with its scythe, slicing away at the heart and guts, wounding us all over again, stilling us in our tracks.

On April 18, we here in Florida will gather at the memorial site Molly wrote about in the preceding post, remembering Timm as a group. I'm curious to hear from other readers of this blog if you have plans for that date. I'd like to do a special Remembering Timm memorial on this website that day, sharing the reflections and pictures and poetry and prayers which will be offered up to Timm's spirit.

I hope you will share here what you do where you are on that day.

And then we go on ... with the work of remembering Timm ever unfinished, like a bell tower without a roof, like a picture that is only half-developed, like the first three stanzas of a song whose final lines never got composed.

Another shot from the same series. Look how beautiful it was on that day. I remember hearing how Salem was enjoying a spate of glorious spring weather in the weeks before Timm died. The day after he passed away -- when we started showing up in Salem for his memorial -- it turned dark and wet, with some of the latest winter weather on record attending our four-day visit.