Jenn – In the Woods

remember how he loved you

5.14.26 ~ Elm Grove Cemetery, Mystic, Connecticut
photo by Larisa

It rained all day on May 14th. I didn’t take a single picture for the entire day. But I’m glad Larisa captured this last moment Finn had with his Grandpa, checking to see how heavy his ashes were. The two of them shared a birthday and were two peas in a pod. I will never forget how much fun it was to watch them playing together.

I chose to bury Tim’s ashes in Elm Grove Cemetery because it is located in the county where we lived for 47 years of our marriage, and because the plot was purchased by my 2nd-great-grandfather, who lies buried there with his own parents and great-grandparents and other relations. They all also lived in southeastern Connecticut, and there is still room there to bury ashes, so it seemed like a good choice. Tim & I took many walks in this beautiful cemetery, which sits on the banks of the Mystic River, just north of Mystic Seaport.

We may fear change or we may embrace it, but the planets turn, life goes on, the Great Cycles continue. These cycles move Nature and our lives through death and rebirth, through containment and release, through holding and letting go. The seed pod tightens and hardens around its precious cargo, then it breaks and releases the new life into the waiting earth.
~ Philip Carr-Gomm
(Inspiration for Life, May 25, 2026)

image credit: Wolf Rock Nature Preserve website

Later in the day we all drove up to Wolf Rock in Mansfield, our northeastern Connecticut hometown, to scatter some of Tim’s ashes along with the remaining ashes he had kept of his brother, Toby. Still raining, it was a quarter-mile hike up very rocky and very muddy terrain through the woods to the glacial erratic where Tim and his brothers used to hang out as teens. Tim and Josh scattered some of Toby’s ashes here in December 2013, but now Dan, Matt and Jed had a chance to be here to scatter the rest of them.

The next day, on May 15th, we held an afternoon celebration of life at the Zbierski House at “our” little city beach. Besides the family, we were now joined by old friends and neighbors and lots of Tim’s buddies from the ham radio clubs he belonged to. It was wonderful. I had spent weeks working on a slide show of Tim’s life which was playing on a TV continuously and started many pleasant conversations and quite a few trips down memory lane…

Below is one of my favorite pictures, taken before the first heart attack and the battle with heart disease began. The fun, empty nest, middle-aged period of our lives. He was 51 and only just beginning to go gray…

Zbierski House at Eastern Point Beach ~ photo by Jenn

I feel more settled now that Tim’s ashes have been returned to the earth and that his family got to be together to say good-bye. The trip was grueling for me physically but somehow I made it and the emotional healing was worth the effort. I’m still incredibly sad and lonely for him but am learning how to carry the grief. How to take walks without him pointing things out to me…

I think my last hurdle will be resuming family history research. It’s going to be hard not having him in the next room, doing ham radio stuff, but always ready to drop everything when I came in to share new discoveries with him. I still have those last three boxes to go through… And several other projects waiting in line…

sunset from the Zbierski House ~ photo by Jenn

whenever we’re not looking

5.11.26 ~ Race Point Beach, Provincetown, Massachusetts
photo by Jon

In May I took a whirlwind trip to Cape Cod and Connecticut to scatter and bury Tim’s ashes. Five intense days of sharing memories and enjoying the family and friends and activities that Tim used to love. It’s taking me a while to recover but I’ve decided to share a few pictures here to help me remember.

On May 11th, 27 of us headed out to Race Point Beach in Provincetown where I scattered some of Tim’s ashes on the beach where he spent many of the happiest days of his life. Tim’s brother Dan shared stories of their childhood adventures in P’town. And many in the gathering took turns spontaneously sharing their favorite memories. Moments after I scattered Tim’s ashes, we heard the particular call of a laughing gull flying overhead, gently reminding me of Tim’s wonderful sense of humor.

While we were there we took advantage of the opportunity, with all of Tim’s remaining brothers gathered, Dan, Matt, Jed, and Josh, to scatter some of their father’s ashes. Erik had died back in 2008 and also had close ties to Provincetown. And Tim’s cousin Allegra scattered some of her mother’s ashes there on the sand, too. Her mother was Tim’s beloved Aunt Delorma, who died in January, only three months after him.

We all have such happy memories of vacationing at the family home in Provincetown. The current owner of 180 Bradford St. was very gracious to allow us to leave two memorial blown glass hearts in the garden. Allegra sculpted them, with some of their ashes inside, the red one is Tim’s.

The next day, Fran, Allegra and I had an amazing family history adventure, locating 72B Commercial St., where Tim and Dan’s 2nd-great-grandparents, Elijah & Zipporah Rodgers had lived. When Tim and Dan were kids they were taken to the house and met the widow of his great-granduncle, Capt. Neadom Oscar Rodgers (1876-1953), Aunt Lil, and Neadom’s son Oscar. (Oscar was Aunt Lil’s stepson.) Allegra was also taken there, as a very small child, on a separate occasion. Tim showed me the place on our honeymoon but my memory of its location got very fuzzy.

As we were checking it out a man came down the grass-covered lane it was located on and, after explaining who I was, I asked him a few questions. One thing led to another and the next thing we knew we were sitting in the dining room of an elderly neighbor who has lived there his whole life and remembered Aunt Lil Rodgers and playing in the lane. Aunt Lil died in 1979. The information we got from him led me to find more information about the house and its occupants online.

That afternoon I took a walk on Beech Forest Trail with my sons and nieces and nephew and some of their spouses. (No one in my generation was up for the hike!) I told them the story of Tim & me taking this walk on our honeymoon, and how we took it again after getting our first digital camera in 2009. The picture of the squirrel on the sidebar of this blog came from that walk, and was my first taste of enjoying nature photography. Sadly, this time, I, and some of the others, came back with a tick.

I’m thinking the universe may be trying to tell me that fewer nature walks and more genealogy research will be my new direction in life…

At the end of this mile-long loop walk my sons discovered a poem by one of my favorite poets under glass on the top of a picnic table. They brought me back to see it and it seemed like a beautiful reflection of my mood about the changes in focus I’m going through in my life.

For example, what the trees do
not only in lightning storms
or the watery dark of a summer’s night
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now – whenever
we’re not looking. Surely you can’t imagine
they don’t dance, from the root up, wishing
to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting
a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly
more shade – surely you can’t imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings
of the years slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit, surely you can’t imagine
patience, and happiness, like that.
~ Mary Oliver
(Can You Imagine?)

…to be continued

the harvest of a troubled year

Hard, hard it is, this anxious autumn,
To lift the heavy mind from its dark forebodings;
To sit at the bright feast, and with ruddy cheer,
Give thanks for the harvest of a troubled year.

From the apprehensive present, from a future packed
With unknown dangers, monstrous, terrible and new—
Let us turn for comfort to this simple fact:
We have been in trouble before . . . and we came through.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
(Thanksgiving…1950)