6 Generations

Wednesday, August 5, 2026

Remembering Tom

Last week Tom would have been 68 years old, and every year on his birthday, I think of how much older I am now than he will ever be. Some years have passed with my noting his birthday with grief but no tears. This year hit me harder, and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's just that emotions are high now with so much going on in our country that is cause for alarm, situations that would have angered and saddened Tom as they anger and sadden me. I so miss the comfort we provided one another during tough times. I miss his humor, his puns (!), his intelligence and knowledge, his kindness, his love. The following photos are in no particular order, as jumbled as the memories that rise unbidden from a past we shared for 46 years.

(Click on--most--photos for a clearer view.)

1975-1976, our senior year in high school

on the C-6 Ranch with our son in Bryan, Texas (circa 1989 or 1990)

Tom and the kids at our home in Bryan, Texas, 1993

camping on Goat Island, Caddo Lake State Park, Texas

minus the beard

Belton, Texas (2006 or 2007) with the kids

Caddo Lake State Park, circa 1986

New Orleans marathon (2012?)

planting onions in our Arizona garden (2015 or 2016)

Lake District, England, 2006

building a kayak in Abita Springs, LA (circa 2013)

the shed Tom built at our home in Abita Springs, LA (I later painted it)

with our kids in Cloquet, MN, where we lived from 2003-2006

gathering plants for his aquariums, near Abita Springs, Louisiana

camping in Big Bend National Park, TX (1988)

overlook of Zion National Park, Utah (2009)

with our daughter at Cafe du Monde, New Orleans

among tomato plants in our Abita Springs, LA, garden

with our daughter at the University of Georgia (2010)

with our son, 2018

In Nova Scotia with me and a distant Acadian cousin

Mardi Gras in Abita Springs, LA

4th of July, Eagar, Arizona, 2016

at a nephew's wedding (2016)

Seattle, Washington (2017)

our Arizona garden (2016)

Tom's 8th and last marathon (Petrified Forest, AZ, 2016)

We spent the fall of 2017 gathering firewood in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, wood which Tom chopped and split himself; enough of that wood was left to keep me warm the winter of 2019-2020, after Tom died.