Starting a Journal of Travel and Grief

Following up on the CaringBridge for Julie Davis

Dear Readers of Julie’s CaringBridge-

Julie died three months ago today. I am traveling a journey through grief, navigating new emotional and physical terrain. The physical is amenable to listing so let’s start there:

• April 19-27: Moab, Utah for 4-wheel and mountain biking adventures with son-in-law Daniel Molloy

• May 3-18: Cape Cod and Manchester, Massachusetts to see my brother and sister-in-law, Tim and Stephanie

  • May 9-11 Travel to Vermont to bury Julie’s mom, Pat.

• May 19-25: Seattle to care for baby Emory and see family and friends

• June 21-27: Return to Seattle to see family and friends

• June 28-July 6: Massachusetts to see family & friends

• July 6-July 20: Sea voyage to Greenland on M/V Sarah-Sarah concluding with several days of climbing in Greenland. See expedition website here.

• July 20-August 10: Great Divide Mountain Bike Route from Salina CO to Mexican border

• August 11-29: San Francisco and Seattle

• August 30-Sept 6: Boating in San Juans with Margot, Daniel, Lucy, Burgess, Ksenia and Emory.

• Sept 13-Oct 4: Biking in Spain and Portugal with Seattle friends followed by solo travel

I am still working remotely part-time doing research for the University of Washington. By the wonders of satellites and fiber optics, I’ll be on-line and working for all but six weeks during these four months of travel. A wonderful couple is looking after the house and dogs in Boise.

The emotional terrain reminds me of my travels along the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route: 2,700 miles of distance and 2,500 feet of elevation gain and descent every day. There are daily bright spots, most often a picture or FaceTime call from one of our two grandchildren, Lucy and Emory. I know I’ll be traveling this route for years and am uncertain when, if ever, I’ll be done.

Several of you commented to me that my CaringBridge posts about Julie’s cancer served as a guide for what is to come for all of us. Those posts also helped me integrate a flood of new information, feelings, and perspectives on illness, life and death. I’ve decided it would also help me to write about my experience as a grieving partner this year. So I’ve started this Substack newsletter where I hope to combine a travel diary and reflections on loss and this next chapter of my life.

I’m not sure that I would want to read a newsletter called “Grief Journey” because it sounds too sad and depressing. I am sometimes terribly sad, but I am not depressed. I mostly live in a place of gratitude for my life with Julie, the life I have now, and the future that awaits me. I’d like to try to convey what delights me, what saddens me, what inspires me, and what makes me get up every morning.

My friend Alan Durning wrote to me after Julie died and noted "how unpredictable and idiosyncratic the process of grieving can be" and how I inhabit a "replica world - so familiar and yet now different for her absence." If you would like to receive an email from me as I move through this new world, you are invited (but certainly not obliged) to stay subscribed. If not, please click the Unsubscribe button above.

Warm regards,

Daniel

Paddling “Julie Rae” last week for the first time in Manchester harbor.

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