Father, husband, brother, uncle, friend… A very very very good man.
(obituary)
June 30, 1926 — June 11, 2012
Black and White
photography from the Chesapeake Bay watershed by Bill Emory
2012/06/12
Landon White Trigg
2012/06/07
road trip
This is a posed picture. My mom can walk. Works on it everyday. Big cerebral event two months ago. She hadn’t been in a car in nine weeks. What American does that? Beautiful weather, I proposed a test drive, “where would you like to go?”
She said, “I’d like to see my brother.”
So we did.
Drove across town.
Pausing for a
photo.
2012/04/04
2012/01/02
old girls
Always treat your parents as if they are close friends who are soon to move to a distant land from where it will be impossible ever to
return. Never take them for granted, no matter how busy life gets. You can’t imagine your mother and father dying. And then they do.–Tony Parsons
2012/01/01
my girlfriend and her dog
Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do,
forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth
unto those things which are before.–Philippians 3:13 KJV
2011/12/04
stories
The great grand-daughter and the great-great grand-daughter of the lady who built my house visited last night.
They visit partially for love of place and because they value a tradition where tales are told to succeeding generations of preceding generations.
Who will tell your story?
Who will give a tinker’s dam.
2011/08/24
my people/se082311a
I was sitting on an 8×10′ concrete slab during the seismic event yesterday. The concrete was moving, unsettling to have the frame of reference dance. The epicenter 29.5 miles from here. But happily, there were no injuries locally. Yellow jackets caused more pain than did the largest Virginia earthquake in a century. We are fortunate.
Good fortune is always temporary.
2011/03/03
homegoing
{25:6} And in this mountain shall the LORD of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.
{25:7} And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations.
{25:8} He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken [it.]
{25:9} And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this [is] our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this [is] the LORD; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.–Isaiah
2011/02/25
Sassafras albidum
My sister died this morning, I am posting photos of her below.
In Orange, Virginia with husband Sam.
Warrenton Virginia with Sam and her childhood dog Atlas.
Sam, Gray and Sam in California
Sam Coale, Gray Coale and Captain Emory on the bank of the River Ouse
with her adult hound, Ariel.
visiting in Charlottesville
In the seat of of happiness, Jane’s kitchen
Gray was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer in November of ’09.
Gray never asked the Doctor about prognosis, never Googled. She went about her life. I had a lot of ideas early on about how she should deal with her cancer but I managed to keep my mouth shut and follow her lead.
Lead she did. Gray worked her way through chemo (Gemzar, Tarceva and Cisplatin), never lost any hair, never lost her appetite, managed to fold all the medical appointments into her approach to life. (Made a lot of new friends, chemo-suite folk, doctors, nurses, custodians, ultra-sound and radiation therapy techs, she’d ask them about themselves and remember their info.)
We all think of denial as a bad thing, I think Freud taught us to do that, and then Elisabeth Kubler-Ross didn’t exactly promote the value of denial. But I read an article recently in the Washington Post which touted the benefit of denial with a diagnosis that borders on a death sentence.
I wanted to tell my friends and family about Gray’s diagnosis, asked her if that was all right, she said no. She wanted the same interaction with the world that she’d always had. I largely honored her request.
Gray’s quality of life was good for 13 months after diagnosis, but a month ago, the pancreatic cancer figured out the mechanics of metastasis, spread to her liver, stomach, lungs and bone. Secondary to that spread, she got massive edema in her legs. For the first time her mobility was compromised.
She went in to consult with her oncologist February 7 and understood there was nothing curative left in the pharmacopoeia to try. She went to hospice that same day, switching from curative to palliative care. She said she felt safe in hospice.
No pain, no fear.
May she rest in peace and rise in glory.
July 11, 1951-February 25, 2011
In lieu of flowers, please make donations to the Gray E. Coale Memorial Garden at Swan Point. Please make checks payable to Swan Point Cemetery, 585 Blackstone Boulevard, Providence, RI 02906. The idea is a grove of sourwoods (Oxydendrum arboreum), some other natives, and a place to sit and listen to the wind.
The funeral will be held at St. Martin’s Church, 50 Orchard Avenue, Providence, RI on Thursday, March 3, at 11:00 AM.
