As part of my grieving process, I decided to take several trips around the U.S. to visit family and friends to reconnect after the isolation of COVID as well as to memorialize Tricia with caring individuals along the way. As part of the grieving process, I had a number of glass eggs made by a local artist that are clear, with a multi-colored swirl inside the egg in Tricia’s favorite colors. Also, inside the egg is a small pinch of her ashes. These were for some very long-time friends and family. Two very special eggs were given to our good friends Rick and Ellen Levine and another to a dear friend Wendy Wibbens, who is the maker of this website.
My Memorial Trips to Honor the Life of Tricia
Heading South on the West Coast
The first trip was to California by way of Grants Pass Oregon. On the way, I stopped in Salem Oregon to give an egg to Dolores Wisbrock, one of our rafting buddies. I spent the first night with friends Sue Oris and Ferron in Merlin OR, just north of Grants Pass. We drove to Grave Creek boat landing as this was the beginning of our many raft trips down the wild and scenic section of the Rogue River. It was also the location of Tricia and my first outing before we even started dating, but more importantly, the location where we were married back in 1985. Sue, Penny and Kathy, and Patti Kramer-Borjorsky (on the return trip) were given memorial eggs. Another TWGer, Andrea Beardsley, was given an egg via mail.
Sue and I were joined by friends Penny Shipley and Kathy Burkey. I acknowledged the location as being important to me and Tricia as well as the friendship of the Traveling Women’s Group that included Sue, Penny and Kathy among others. We shared stories of Tricia, her giving spirit, quick with a joke or funny story, and strong connections with the important people in her life. We spread some ashes where we were married and then some in the river itself. It was so nice to think that these ashes would travel the length of the river to the Pacific Ocean and mingle with ashes Tricia placed in the ocean in honor of her mother, years before this evening.
Unfortunately, my plan for recording comments by those present didn’t work technically and I abandoned the effort for this and future trips of this nature. But because my plan was to make audio recordings, I neglected to take any pictures on the trip.
The next day I drove to Santa Cruz to stay a few days with a niece, Elyse Siegle, who works for Google. I spent a day doing house projects for her and the next day we toured the Google Campus, the Campus of UC Santa Cruz, and downtown Sana Cruz.
From here I drove to San Diego to visit my sister, Robin Siegle (mother of the niece in Santa Cruz), where here, too, I did a number of house projects. We had several conversations about Tricia and how much she was loved and regarded, and I gave her a memorial egg.
We had dinner one night with a cousin’s family on my mother’s side, Jenny Winkler-Oren. Her father Alan and his wife Sara were visiting there from Ohio. He’s my second cousin. Again, there were private conversations that night about Tricia where we told stories and I recounted the details of her passing.
On the return trip, I stopped in Grants Pass and gave an egg to another rafting couple, the Conleys. We spent an hour catching up and sharing Tricia stories.
Off to Wyoming
The next trip was to Sheridan, Wyoming in the NE corner of the state. I flew to Billings, Montana on Mark’s birthday and was picked up at the airport by Mark and Rachel. We did a few errands before returning to Sheridan where they live with their two sons, Avi and Zachary. That night we went out to dinner to celebrate Mark’s special day
I spent a week with them and we had lots of fun riding bikes, hiking several days, doing a mystery room, and enjoying the finer things in the community.
On one of the hikes, Mark and I trekked up Piney Creek Trail. At one fine location we spread some of Tricia’s ashes, placed a cairn of rocks over the location and shared thoughts of Tricia and stories that were meaningful. The week after I left, Mark took the entire family on the same hike and showed them the location where her ashes were placed.
A mystery room is a place you go to find a treasure.
You have one hour to follow the clues to find the treasure. Here we are displaying our time in minutes. Yay, Bergmans!
The East Coast
So many of our family and friends are on the east coast, I decided it would be more meaningful for me to travel to them, rather than all of them to travel to a central place. I flew to Atlanta and rented a car for a month and started my trek northward.
First stop, Greenville, SC (about 2.5 hours from the Atlanta airport), where Tricia’s sister and her family live. Toni just turned 84 and her four grown children live nearby except for Mary who lives in Charleston, SC. I arrived at Toni’s second daughter’s house (which had been Toni’s, but Martha bought it so her parents could retire to their mountain cabin, just 20 minutes away). Toni was at the house, and Martha arrived later after work.
The first night there, we had dinner at home and chatted to get caught up. I had sent several packages ahead that had some family items I thought needed to stay with the family rather than for me to keep them. Most were family pictures of Tricia’s mother’s family and her father’s family. But other items were from Tricia’s mother that were inherited, such as ivory jewelry from Alaska. I also sent Tricia’s collection of unstrung beads she collected from our travels, as her grand niece (Mary’s daughter, Emma) does wonderful bead work. So, these were for her. I presented Toni with her glass egg. The next day we did errands and settled into east coast time, taking a long walk around the neighborhood.
The next day (Thursday), Toni and I travelled up to the cabin. It was so nice to be back in the mountains at this cabin and lake we had visited so many times before. Here are a few pictures of the place.
We discussed what we would do on Saturday when the extended family would gather for a get together and informal celebration of life for Tricia.
On Friday, I drove a bit over an hour to North Carolina to visit with a college friend of Tricia. Many of you may remember the large portrait painting of Tricia when she was in college. Sara Jenkins was a college friend who first took a photo of Tricia for a photography class, and then used that photo for an art class to “paint a picture from a photo”. Voila, the picture. Sara now lives with her brother at a family cabin at lake Junaluska, NC.
Sara served a wonderful lunch and we shared stories of travel and memories of Tricia on our adventures with her. I presented Sara with one of the glass eggs. She was thrilled. The drive back to Toni’s cabin was much longer than going as the Memorial Day weekend traffic had already begun. Google maps must have changed my route four times on the way to avoid delays.
The next day was the family gathering and we spent the morning getting ready by cleaning up the picnic shelter, doing some cooking prep, but most was being done by Toni’s children. Martha thought it would be nice to display some of the pictures I sent ahead.
Missy (Toni’s oldest) and her husband Bill grilled chicken on the barbeque. Southern food was the highlight.
After the meal, I rose and began my tribute to my wonderful wife: Tricia was my life partner and best friend. She made me a better person. She was the sweetest, kindest, most giving person I’ve ever known. Yet she was strong and independent, but oh so approachable in a caring way - always quick with a joke or cute story.
I described how we became friends first, through work. And only started dating about a year later. I told them how scared I was of making a commitment and that the L word got stuck in my throat for the longest time. But that it was the best decision of my life to love this wonderful woman with all my heart and soul.
We never had a serious argument, and all our disagreements ended in one of two ways:
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I’d say: “I’m so sorry, I’ll never do that again!”
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or, I’d say: “Do you want to drive?”
We had so many adventures and experiences. From whitewater rafting in many states including 300 miles of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, doing fixer houses and flipping them, and international travel. Definitely a life well lived.
I described some of the wonderful gifts and life changing support we gave to people we met on our travels. I always supported these efforts, but they were always Tricia’s idea. And that I wanted to become more giving and to carry on the kind of work she undertook and to carry on that legacy.
I ended with the Jackson Brown lyric we recited to each other on a regular basis:
You are…
The high in my noon,
The flap in my jack,
The jelly in my bean,
The hop in my scotch,
The fortune in my cookie,
The grand in my canyon,
The bees in my knees,
The zig in my zag,
The rock in my roll,
The fox in my trot,
The pow in my wow, and
The gee in my whiz.
And many stories and memories were shared.
That evening, Mary gave me a book, Bearing the Unbearable, by Joanne Cacciatore, Phd. It seemed like a very good book, as I started the early chapters.
Over the next day and a half, I drove north to Alexandria, Virginia, where I connected with two friends we’d met in the Republic of Georgia, Laurie Denton and Kirsten Michener. So, for several days we walked around Alexandria, ate, talked, attended Kirsten’s son Quill’s High School Graduation (I’d forgotten how BORING these can be). But it was fun to reconnect, to hear about Kirsten’s new assignment in Trinidad, to see Laurie’s new condo, and help her with some projects. All in all, it was a good connection. We walked along the Potomac to the sound of cicadas. We did talk about Tricia, but no formal reverberance activity, just as part of conversation.
I next moved up to DC and spent two nights with my niece Leah Siegle (daughter of Robin in California and sister of Elyse in Santa Cruz), who works as scheduler for Senator Whitehouse of Rhode Island. I helped her with a couple of projects at her condo, but she also took me to see the “Black Lives Matter” painted street next to the White House and the Lincoln Cottage, the summer home of President Lincoln only 3.5 miles from the White House, located at a retired soldier’s home. Who knew he rode a horse into work at the White House every day, stopping to chat with people like Walt Whitman as he went?
From here I met up with Laurie again and we drove to Beaver, PA to visit another friend from the Republic of Georgia, Leslie Wilson. Leslie’s next assignment after Georgia was in Bangkok. So, for the past five years every time Tricia and I flew in or out of Bangkok we’d stay with Leslie. She’s now retired to her hometown where she purchased her childhood home from her mother some years ago. It was a short couple of days in this idyllic little town that could have been the inspiration for Disney’s main street. It was fun seeing Leslie in her new surroundings as she worked to get settled.
From here I drove both Laurie and Leslie to Philadelphia, where I dropped them off at the train station for their return trip to DC, as I went to visit my aunt and uncle in Philly. He is my mother’s youngest brother and the last of their generation, turning 90 in August. They have a spectacular condo in downtown Philadelphia in easy walking distance to restaurants and cultural attractions. My aunt and took a long walk along the river and all of us visited an African American museum.
On Tricia’s birthday, June 11, I drove to New York for a weeklong visit with David and his family. In honor of her birthday, we all walked up to Tryon Park, near their home, and spread some of Tricia’s ashes in the same place we spread some of my mother’s ashes years ago. They could commune together in the universe. We all said words and memories of Tricia that were meaningful to each of us. It’s good to grieve with family.
We went to the opening of New York’s Little Island Park, built and donated to the City by Barry Diller. It’s an amazing piece of architecture creating an Island in the Hudson River with bridge access from the main city. It is created from a host of pods built into the river that support the project, shown in these photos.
Most of my daytime was on my own as David and Anne were both working and Elisheva was in school, so I partook of the cultural delights of NYC - the Tenement Museum, MOMA, the Art and Design Museum. I went to the movies to see In the Heights, the new Lin-Manuel Miranda musical. I was the only person in the theater…. so I clapped my hands and said “start the movie” - and it did!
We also partook a of a new exhibit called Immersive Van Gogh. Anne had seen it in Amsterdam and thought it worthwhile there. It was held in a warehouse with loud music, and projected images of the collected Van Gogh works. Unfortunately, there was no connection between the music and the pictures that blended into each other. No sense of a story being told. Were these pictures related? Where they in chronological order? Who knew?
I enjoyed the stay in New York, but after a week, I was ready to leave. The visit with David and his family was very nice and I enjoyed being with them - it was the city that got to me.
From here I drove north to South Kingston Rhode Island to visit my sister Sandi and her husband Bill. I was also able to see their daughters, Rachel (and son Reid) and Maxine (and her partner Pete). This was a really nice visit. I always enjoy being with them.
We would take walks around the neighborhood and on the campus of URI where Bill was a Chemistry Professor for most of his career. He now serves on the town zoning board. They two are helping care for Reid as his mother needs to work or take care of other business.
On one walk on the URI campus, just outside the Chemistry Building where bill worked there is a wildflower garden where Sandi had spread some of our mother’s ashes. So, to promote afterlife commuting with each other, we spread some of Tricia’s in the same place. Makes for an easy two-fer.
We also walked along the Narraganset Bay, where locals defy regulations and build spectacular cairns with beach and erosion control rocks.
My Perspectives
For me, the trip was all that I’d hoped for. In a way, it was a return to “normal” from a year and a half of COVID isolation, but also a beginning of life again by interacting with friends and family every day. The contrast was stark when I came back to a month of weeds in the garden and I spent over a week cleaning up. This is when I came to the conclusion that something had to be done to make the gardening easier and less dominant in my daily activities as it would prevent me from mixing more with other people. So I hired a crew to strip out most of the offending ground cover that was infested with weeds and replace it with bark dust. This allowed any weed growth to be highlighted so early intervention could rid the garden of these pests.
When I returned home, we had an intense heat wave with temps up to 116 degrees. I was a recluse in the air-conditioned house, and it gave me time to read the grief book Mary had given me in South Carolina. The approach of the book changed my perspective. Rather than grief being an emotional response to loss, I came to understand that these feelings of sadness, loneliness, regret, etc., were just the flip side of the love we had shared. That if we hadn’t loved so much these emotions wouldn’t be so strong or pervasive. The author suggests when these feeling arise, to embrace them as the symbol of our love. They do pass in a relatively short time so that I can move forward to creating a new life for myself. I still have more to go, but I feel I am making important progress. I’m focusing on developing volunteer opportunities that will be meaningful to me and carry on the legacy of Tricia’s generosity and caring. I’m also working on cultivating a wider circle of people to connect with.
I truly believe that the trips were a deflection point for me in the grieving process. I have more to do, but I’m now migrating my focus from internal emotional work to external issues of building of a new life. I don’t know what that is, but I know I won’t find it if I stay at home all the time.
I do want to do one more trip to honor Tricia. This will be to Thailand and to Sri Lanka to share eggs with some special people there. But these trips will have to wait until they get their COVID response under control, hopefully by next year sometime. In the meantime, I am exploring Road Scholar trips, OLI classes, and another road trip to the southwest this fall. I have another egg to deliver to another rafting couple, Dave & Betsy Fuller, in Bend, Oregon.
Thank you to all who have been so generous with their time to help me get to this point. Tricia was a very big part of my life and she will be with me in my heart for the rest of my life. I know the moments of sadness or loss will arise from time to time, but I recognize these are a reflection of how important she was in my life.
Ron
