Cnoc Cobhain, January 16, 2010. Some of Timm’s ashes are buried at the rear, where sunlight hits on the Winter solstice.
A note to you on your monthly death-date anniversary from Columcille in Pennsylvania where some of your remains sleep.
I haven’t been since the fall of 2007, yet Columcille is deeply now what it always has been, beautiful and restful and full of animated talk with Dad, its time out of time, a gift to many, the product of decades of hard, hard work by Dad and Fred and the community.
I haven’t been since the fall of 2007, yet Columcille is deeply now what it always has been, beautiful and restful and full of animated talk with Dad, its time out of time, a gift to many, the product of decades of hard, hard work by Dad and Fred and the community.
Saturday it was bright and sunny and in the low 40's as Dad and I walked the grounds, stopping a great while at the Cnoc Cobhain and the Chapel to spend time with that absence which is now your presence. Evidence of the deep freeze earlier in the week was ebbing as pond-ice began to thin and clumps of snow became ghostlier. Yet in winter, yet too in brightness, you remain. Dad and I talked much about you, how much we miss you, how your quiet being was such an assuring thing, even in death.
Some of the standing stones on Signal Hill next to Cnoc Cobhain, with Loch, the current border collie of Columcille, checking things out.
Inside the St. Columba chapel, sitting on pew looking at the center stone and the crypt in which some more of Timm’s ashes are interred. Some of Dad’s eventual ashes will go in there, too.
The Manannan megalith at the far side of the field cast a long, long shadow in the wintertime.
That night we went over to Will and Sarah's for dinner, and Will took many pictures with your camera of Dad and I and then the three of us using a timed release. He's taken up your photography with a passion, purchasing studio lights and extra lenses and software, building on your solid though incomplete foundation something which will continue, perhaps endure, your own love of beauty. Portrait photography has become Will's current enthusiasm - catching a person's soul in the stillness of a frame. I include a few of those pictures as evidence of the craft. (We, however, just look older, ever more so than the last images we have of you in any frame.)
One of Will’s portrait pictures, showing Dad, myself and Will (he used a timed release). He's using Tmm's camera, in the same manner that I post this on Timm's laptop. (I hate wearing hats, so I had to mug for the camera).
A portrait by Will of Dad and I. Very smooth work.
Another shot in the studio. The empty chair is for Timm, first of the Cohea boys to fade from the frame.
A picture of Will and Sarah that I shot. Sarah is happy and proud of all the weight she’s lost, and she looks great.
Yesterday the weather turned dark and it began to rain, slowly, a cold seepage from the sky which built over the hours into a steady pour, just warm enough to keep from freezing but insinuating, in the way of winter rains, into the body. I woke then with a bad migraine which hasn't abated yet, and Fred's joints turned up their fire in response to the low pressure. Outside the pond looked slushier yet remained frozen and a sad grey clung to the standing stones in the field and the bare bones of the forest. But there was stillness on the land, absent of living presence in a way and teeming in that other way, like a sea-bed whose residents aren't visible in the murk yet you know they're there for the occasional warps in the density by fins. When the everyday recedes, the backdrop comes forward, and the veil between our world and yours becomes thin. At least it feels that way sometimes: I could have walked out into that rain and the woods and we would have taken a walk together, silently, brothers forever.
A rainy winter’s day at Columcille.
You would have enjoyed the St. Oran Academy event yesterday afternoon. About 25 or so braved the rain (which was forecast to freeze later in the day and become snow through the night) to enter what Dad calls a "playground of the spirit", using the scientific discovery of the dark matter halo as a point of departure to talk about our individual quests for a mystery which is distant, perhaps unknowable.
I'd written a long piece, antithetically titled "Disconnecting the Dots, Or, How I Came to Love My Inner Cosmic Bomber" in preparation for the event, stirring and preparing my thoughts. I had intended that it be distributed prior to the event by email to perhaps stir the collective soup, but Dad decided to print it up and offer it, for a $3 donation (to cover printing costs), at the event. Better idea: it was so damn long, it would have unintentionally hogged the conversation like I often do on Themes which I've spent so many years digging down into.
A Columcille-style mix of people there, as many men as women, with backgrounds ranging from academic to veterinarian (two actually), postmen (a postmaster and delivery guy), owners of spiritual shops and masseuses, a musician, an actor, practitioners of the divine from a dozen disciplines, Dad and Fred and Berte: You would recognize the mix from your last visit here to celebrate Dad's 80th birthday ...
I'd written a long piece, antithetically titled "Disconnecting the Dots, Or, How I Came to Love My Inner Cosmic Bomber" in preparation for the event, stirring and preparing my thoughts. I had intended that it be distributed prior to the event by email to perhaps stir the collective soup, but Dad decided to print it up and offer it, for a $3 donation (to cover printing costs), at the event. Better idea: it was so damn long, it would have unintentionally hogged the conversation like I often do on Themes which I've spent so many years digging down into.
A Columcille-style mix of people there, as many men as women, with backgrounds ranging from academic to veterinarian (two actually), postmen (a postmaster and delivery guy), owners of spiritual shops and masseuses, a musician, an actor, practitioners of the divine from a dozen disciplines, Dad and Fred and Berte: You would recognize the mix from your last visit here to celebrate Dad's 80th birthday ...
A Columcille gathering for Dad’s 80th birthday, which Timm attended and shot picture at, including this one. I recognize some of the people in the picture from yesterday’s event.
Dad and Timm at the same event in 2007.
Dad with the Blue Dragon, actually a cement-colored statue which Timm colored in Photoshop. The Blue Dragon is what Dad fancifully—always fancifully—likens to the spirit of Blue Mountain, in whose valley Columcille nests.
Dad opened things up with some comments, welcoming all, reminding people to leave their dogmas as the door and be prepared to play, and let them know we'd be breaking into smaller groups to press further into the starting-points of the event which I would overview. Then he turned it over to me to warm the group with some comments based on the piece I wrote, touching on my fleeting research about the dark matter halo--that unknowable Presence which holds galaxies together--winding on from there to talk about Jung's descent into the unconscious (first consciously renouncing all of his scientific background, listening and writing down what he encountered, then assembling the contents back together with a conscious intent to understand the psyche at its foundations), going from there to brain research and the St. Oran myth. (My usually blather.)
It was odd to stand there, much in Dad’s place, or remitted to me by him: Yet the weave I found fun to deliver (not as the editor, but the delivery boy, as the AA adage goes). You would have been much more comfortable leading the presentation, as I am just the reading and writing in solitude. But I had to carry on without you ... Anyway, what proceeded seems (to me, at least) to confirm that I got the pot stirred, because what followed was a couple of hours of intensely animated conversations in groups of four to six people (only one group sat down). In our group we talked up a massive salad of ideas, ranging from talk of the impress of digital technology for better and ill, the new movie "Avatar" and digital gaming which so successfully animate alternate realities, brain research, astronomy, divination, spiritual quests, the evolution of the species replicated in human development, et cetera almost ad infinitum but never ad nauseum: A free-form whirl of ideas, no one dominating the conversation and everyone in it.
How rare it was for me to have a chance to voice the quest, how wonderful to find out that it's not as solitary as it might seem ...
Anyway, the groups went on for an hour or so and then we re-convened for some final-ish remarks, many saying that their own groups proceeded the same way as ours. Then we stood up, held hands, offered thanks for the moment and said goodbye, only to continue chattering on, as the ranks slowly whittled in batches of one or two heading out into the now-dark rain. About eight or so of us remained by the fire for another couple of hours, the booze coming out as it does come dark, the conversation intense, some times too much so (I'll blame that on whiskey, which confounds what it stirs - but that's just my sober bias), but again a fun, complicate, whirling, penetrating, joyful sort of weave, agnostics and Christians finding common ground, old and young matching ways, an intense diversity of minds saying Yes together to meanings which have no apparent end-point and yet are so obvious: all we can do is live the moment fully.
You came into the conversation at a point, where we were talking about the presence of the dead—a dark halo of sorts--among the living, carrying on even in absence. One guy had talked about a very real encounter with his dead niece, her invitation to be present at a moment where he was filled with the sense of the overwhelming abundance of everything, living and dead. That made me remember the saying, "death ends a life, but not a relationship," and I thought of your occasional presence walking beside me - just a fleeting, tangential feeling. More substantial is the way you've become present to me through the process of telling your stories and sharing your pictures, writing these posts, maintaining your memorial site which I return to today after almost a month's hiatus. Your presence grows the more I hold on to memories of you, even though I know you must fade into oblivion, as all the dead must, secure in knowing that you are free and happy forever now with your Creator.
It was odd to stand there, much in Dad’s place, or remitted to me by him: Yet the weave I found fun to deliver (not as the editor, but the delivery boy, as the AA adage goes). You would have been much more comfortable leading the presentation, as I am just the reading and writing in solitude. But I had to carry on without you ... Anyway, what proceeded seems (to me, at least) to confirm that I got the pot stirred, because what followed was a couple of hours of intensely animated conversations in groups of four to six people (only one group sat down). In our group we talked up a massive salad of ideas, ranging from talk of the impress of digital technology for better and ill, the new movie "Avatar" and digital gaming which so successfully animate alternate realities, brain research, astronomy, divination, spiritual quests, the evolution of the species replicated in human development, et cetera almost ad infinitum but never ad nauseum: A free-form whirl of ideas, no one dominating the conversation and everyone in it.
How rare it was for me to have a chance to voice the quest, how wonderful to find out that it's not as solitary as it might seem ...
Anyway, the groups went on for an hour or so and then we re-convened for some final-ish remarks, many saying that their own groups proceeded the same way as ours. Then we stood up, held hands, offered thanks for the moment and said goodbye, only to continue chattering on, as the ranks slowly whittled in batches of one or two heading out into the now-dark rain. About eight or so of us remained by the fire for another couple of hours, the booze coming out as it does come dark, the conversation intense, some times too much so (I'll blame that on whiskey, which confounds what it stirs - but that's just my sober bias), but again a fun, complicate, whirling, penetrating, joyful sort of weave, agnostics and Christians finding common ground, old and young matching ways, an intense diversity of minds saying Yes together to meanings which have no apparent end-point and yet are so obvious: all we can do is live the moment fully.
You came into the conversation at a point, where we were talking about the presence of the dead—a dark halo of sorts--among the living, carrying on even in absence. One guy had talked about a very real encounter with his dead niece, her invitation to be present at a moment where he was filled with the sense of the overwhelming abundance of everything, living and dead. That made me remember the saying, "death ends a life, but not a relationship," and I thought of your occasional presence walking beside me - just a fleeting, tangential feeling. More substantial is the way you've become present to me through the process of telling your stories and sharing your pictures, writing these posts, maintaining your memorial site which I return to today after almost a month's hiatus. Your presence grows the more I hold on to memories of you, even though I know you must fade into oblivion, as all the dead must, secure in knowing that you are free and happy forever now with your Creator.
We talked some about you--some had seen the book “Beauty Heals” I put together featuring your photos, others remembered you from your last visit here. We remembered your gentleness, your love of beauty, your devotion to caring for others. Amid much ranging, intellectual talk, you helped bring us back to the earth we so love and respect and the relationships it is so important to maintain a fierce devotion to. (I so missed waking with my wife this morning, missed feeding all of our cats, missed my home, the garden, the chair I usually spend my early early mornings writing from: "I'll be home soon," I whispered after kneeling to say my waking prayers.)
I'll be home soon, or soon enough: of course flying home and returning to the full engagement of my own life, the way you flew back from Pennsylvania to resume the difficulty of dailiness, with all of your hopes and dreams intact in your photography and work with Congresswoman Hooley and your AA involvement-sponsoring all those guys-and your music (playing guitar and singing in the church choir, loving so to spread the wings of your spirit with your baritone), reengaging your life-long love affair with the healing power of beauty and living as fully as possible from the heart…:
--A heart which when it filled beyond capacity poured you into the life to come, leaving us alone and feeling still terribly lost, our own forsaken hearts resembling, at the ever-more-fleeting moments of grief, exactly like a cold and rainy winter's day. But as yesterday proved, that emptiness is your fullness. You are still so much among us, in me at least, my hands on your laptop, your brother Will re-engaging photography with your camera with a tenacity and seriousness which comes from the relationship he feels with you whenever he holds that camera. So thanks again, bro, for the fullness even in absence. Thanks for being exactly who you are and were.
For the very few who might read this blog, I hope you join with me in memory of Timm O'Cobthaigh; may it be a private and small ceremony which emulates the spirit of this day, January 18, in which the nation remembers Martin Luther King, Jr. Dead forty years before Timm, King's spirit of love and service so much resonates in our brother and son, the one who as a child was always the first to run to the aid of a classmate in distress, who was remembered at his memorial service by Congresswoman Dianne Hooley as the first to run to the aid of a suffering constituent. "Who will be that person to be the first to reach out," she asked the congregation.
Who will keep the message of love and truth marching on the streets of our sadder neighborhoods?
Who will celebrate beauty in the fullness of the heart?
I will do what I can – in your memory, for the relationship with you which abides …
There we are, together in spirit, walking on in the beauty of the life that is and the life to come.
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