A legacy as enduring as the beauty of this day

For a late Tuesday (or early Wednesday), the night has been restless, our Siamese Violet scratching herself loudly at 3:30 a.m. when I got up, the sprinklers on automatic in the back yard (turning them off, we're on once-a-week watering restrictions), a dog barking, three teens walking up the street talking in low voices, something large dropped downtown, big trucks lumbering on US-441.

Unquiet, or signs thereof. It's the 18th and I always think of Timm when this day of the month comes round. I've assembled another 8 or 10 pictures by Timm I haven't published on the memorial blog and will post it with a short message and a link to the second of his three songs we have files of.

The grief for Timm here something which has gone to ground—it’s deep down, below a certain threshold. My sense of his loss is now a permanent low thing in the heart. Memories of his face arise now and then bittersweetly, are sepia-toned, more static, singular and fixed like stones in a cemetery.

But in another way, his memory is florid with the plenitude of images he left behind, showing God's bounty even though nature's cycles are hard, especially on hearts. When I think of Timm, I see him wandering alone in the Oregon wilds (or perhaps with Christie), camera bag slung over a shoulder, those big shoes padding further into wilderness, willing to go the distance
to get the shot, the picture which is all that remains of the mind which thought to frame a stream, field of flowers, a shore at dusk, clouds, trees, a butterfly, a mountain's reflection in still water ... shots from the wilderness of the human heart too, love at a banquet table, an amusement park ride at dusk whirling so fast as to suggest how fast a life passes on this earth, the frenzied movement of engagement which trails off the edge in slowing ellipses, coming to an end ...

So in the place where Timm has been lost is God's plenty, and that¹s about as great a gift as someone could impart to those he left behind. Legacy as the enduring beauty of this day.

All of Timm's heart troubles, emotional as well as physiological, prepared a resting place which has become the vantage on an ecstatic wilderness, the sum of Timm's yearning and love of beauty. So when I see these pictures I smile, and smile listening to his play his guitar, and smile knowing he was my brother in this life at a great distance, but has become so close and
familiar over the year and a half since he left.

Another song by Timm.
(Click on "Play Full Song".)