Heavy leather belts begin to turn the wheels of the giant Columbia oscillating sander. Photo by author.
He was bobbing around laughing and smiling, his broad chested yet smallish stature accentuated by the 23,000 lbs of 19th century iron machinery that he was tweaking here and there to coax it back to life. It came from an era when the railroad industry was at its height, three drums of varying sandpaper oscillating to prepare the wood, and a fourth drum covered in brushes to clean it off and ready to use.
I sat there watching him, though surreptitiously as I was supposed to be doing my homework for my doctoral program. My books and iPad were perched upon the hand-built wooden table saw that the original owner of this post & beam furniture factory had built for himself complete with little victorian flourishes of details in the handles and guards.
But I just couldn’t help trying to keep track of my new beau Steve’s efforts as he climbed up on top of the giant Columbia sanding machine. Then he would hop down again to check the webbing of more large leather belts and their matching steel pulleys that would have made the machine turn its wheels back in the days of steam power.
I remembered when my husband Keith and I first bought this property, not even two years before. We bought it at first sight, a 20th Century post and beam building filled with many pieces of 19th and early 20th century heavy machinery all used to make furniture. An accomplished woodworker himself, Keith had planned to make it all his. Alas, the stars were aligned differently and he passed away from a very aggressive cancer barely a year after we purchased it leaving me, his widow, to sort out what to do with it all.
And then the stars sent Steve. I think KEITH sent Steve, perhaps after being horrified at my poor attempts to try and sell some of the tools I knew I would never use, but that had left me grifted by his own friend. Steve would become my protector. But perhaps in this case it was not that he had fallen in love only with me, I wondered sometimes. It was this place, where it seemed that many ghosts had congregated to protect the legacy of this old maker space.
I looked up and there was Steve, dancing around the machine grinning from ear to ear.
As I tried to go back to my homework on my table-saw desk, I heard the roar and rattle as the beast came to life. Keith had tried to do this before, but the belts were too loose and fell off within seconds. He never had the chance to go back and try again before his illness had progressed too far.
I looked up and there was Steve, dancing around the machine grinning from ear to ear. As I watched this elfish man jump around this iron giant, he went to one end of the machine where large wood panels would come out, fully sanded and brushed off, ready to use for railroad cars. I snapped a picture of him with the light behind him.
The ghosts that haunt me now. Photo by author.
Later that day I would look again at this photo only to catch my breath. There it was, a ghostly shadow of a slim man leaning over just behind Steve. Keith was there, cheering for the success of this rebirth of this giant, perhaps the last operational Columbia belt-driven panel sander left in the country I’d discovered after further research. I took this rebirthing as a sign that I should never take for granted that I am ever alone on this path. And to accept that my angels are never very far from me, despite the temptation to succumb to sadness. That death of my loved one is not an ending. But a new beginning.
– Mara Jevera Fulmer, February 18, 2026
The “K” at the end of the line. Photo by author.
The above prose was expanded from a 13-minute writing exercise during a six-week workshop offered by @LauraLentzWriter and her Literati Academy. The writers participating in this series are exploring their way through grief and the hero’s journey.
We’d just begun a new chapter of being just the two of us again, children grown, new challenges and opportunities… after 34 years together, like young newlyweds, the world would be our oyster again hiding the pearl we knew would glimmer and shine its lustrous colors upon us. I’d rushed back from an overseas trip only to find myself now in charge of your healthcare.
And then you were gone.
So abrupt, from diagnosis to death in less than three months.
Crushed, angry, resentful for you having left me right when the adventures were getting even more interesting than the 30+ years before!
I restarted my studies, knowing that if I just immersed myself in the work I could hide away from my grief, ignore the wound in my heart. But by Christmas, I sat crying on the side of the bed…
I just. want. a hug.
I’d tried a dance class, a restorative process where I could lose myself in the movements, and connect to my grandmother, a dancer in her own day. You never wanted to dance with me… though there was that one last time. But still, the movements and the music began to heal me.
I don’t bite except on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
The dreams were so vivid that I looked forward to your visits. But the loneliness wouldn’t go away. Perhaps, if only there was someone, not one of our children, or friends, or anyone who knew you. Someone I could talk to who didn’t have your ghost to guide the conversations.
And then he reached out and I ignored him. Each week he’d check in. “I don’t bite except on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” he wrote. And I finally couldn’t stifle the laugh. The nerve, I thought. So we wrote to each other, first just a couple of times a week, then every day, and then we’d talk all night.
“I wish I could dance with you, ya know,” he wrote offering to join me in a dance class when he visited. It became our connection. He was awful at it, and I loved him for it anyway.
As we shared our stories with each other I realized it wasn’t just my tears that were falling for the one I’d lost. He cried for it, too, a life of wonder and adventure that he hoped to build with me.
And then… we did.
The above prose was written as part of a 13-minute writing exercise during a six-week workshop offered by @LauraLentzWriter and her Literati Academy. The writers participating in this series are exploring their way through grief and the hero’s journey.
Happy times. Me and Steven were wandering the wineries of the Mission Peninsula in Traverse City. June 2019
Before grief, I spoke the language of we. What were we doing today? Even if we were working separately our days rotated around each other like two stars in synchronous orbits, each shining our light upon the other with love and kindness.
Before grief, I still grieved for my first love. But you stepped into my life, two roses in hand, with a smile so bright it still makes me laugh when I think of it… Memories can be both healing and hurtful in their teasing. But I’d rather the smile, than the tears.
It was always like that with us, my sesame chicken to your homey meatloaf. The doctor and the hillbilly, the designer and the maker. We were in sync in this third chapter of our lives and I was looking forward to a long one together. But it wasn’t meant to be, I guess. The dogs sleeping on your side of the bed has a way of reminding me of that.
So now I speak of possibilities, though I am charting a new path without a roadmap to guide me. No late night nudges to ask you “Is this possible?” And for you to answer me “of course it is!” I miss that. But grief can’t take away my dreams, not completely anyway. They have shifted, adapted, and are still remolding themselves.
[A]fter grief, I’m learning to believe in myself again.
I’ve been through this before. And I know that it can only lead to something bigger than myself. That my life is not just a big empty house in a forest filled with darkness.
After grief, I’m learning anew. You always knew that I was a lifelong learner. Back to school again and again and again. But now it’s not what I know or who I love that matters. It’s what I believe. And after grief, I’m learning to believe in myself again. To apply the lessons of the before-times to a party of one with room to invite fellow believers.
That’s harder than it sounds. But I’m working on it.
The above prose was written as part of a 13-minute writing exercise during a six-week workshop offered by @LauraLentzWriter and her Literati Academy. The writers participating in this series are exploring their way through grief and the hero’s journey.
This continues my effort at catching up on reminiscences and memories from over the summer and early fall 2025.
Tuesday, 9/9/2025, 1:20 am
One of my favorite tunes came seeping through the haze of my sleep as I napped Monday afternoon, exhausted from being up so late the night before. I really NEEDED that nap.
Peter Gabriel, Solsbury Hill, 1977, hummed through as I caught the words.
“I did not believe the information, just had to trust imagination, My heart going Boom-Boom-Boom”. “Son,” he said, “Grab your things, I’ve come to take you home.”
Yet my dreams were unformed. Just the lyrics and tune floating through them.
“When illusion spin her net, I’m never where I wanna be. And liberty, she pirouette, When I think that I am free.
As the notes wafted through my dream state, my consciousness began to float upwards to just before wakefulness.
“Watched by empty silhouettes, Who close their eyes but still can see. No one taught them etiquette. I will show another me.”
And then I saw him, standing in the woods, the golden colors of fall leaves surrounding him, just as he had been when we went on that hike before we discovered his cancer. But rather than sitting alone in an office chair in the middle of the forest, he was standing, looking back over his shoulder towards me and smiled.
“Today, I don’t need a replacement. I’ll tell them what the smile on my face meant. My heart going, “Boom-boom-boom”
He turned to his left and reached down to a very small child, a little boy, Richard. And somehow I knew it was the brother he’d never met, one who died as a young child, and who we discovered only when we went to write Steve’s obituary when we reviewed his mother Florence’s.
As he looked back towards me, I asked him: “but where is your older brother, John?” The first born child of Florence and Charles James, John had died in an automobile accident when he was only 19 years old and it had devastated the family.
And no sooner had I asked this question when a taller thin young man appeared beside Steve on his right side. Steve turned away and the three of them walked off into the forest.
‘”Hey,” I said, “You can keep my things, they’ve come to take me home.”’
And my eyes open to see his smiling face in the photo across from me.
These next few posts are adapted from diary entries during the final days/hours of Steven’s life. It was a second marriage for both of us, and far too short. I’m playing catch up now and wanted to share some of the moments I’ve written about recently.
Steve’s visions
As I write this, on 5/25/25, I remember something you told me about when two of your children visited a few days earlier. You had described to them that there was a large owl standing on the chair on the deck just outside the French doors of the bedroom. I looked and there was a brown patterned pillow on the chair, but that was all. I wondered if you were mistaking the pillow for an owl. And remembered also that there was an owl decoy on the retaining wall that could be seen out another window but that’s not where you were looking. But I was reminded that in some cultures the sight of an owl was a sign of impending death. In some Native cultures, owls could even be messengers from the afterlife.
It was you who told me about your other vision. You told me you saw a vision of God. He was standing at the foot of his bed. I slowly prodded you for answers to a few questions.
What did he look like? You responded, God looked like he was in his mid-30s. He had dark shoulder-length hair. And most notably, he was wearing a white suit. You also added that he was wearing glasses.
So I asked, could you see his eyes? Were they nice eyes? You responded that they were kind eyes. Speaking with my voice low, I responded to you that, should God reach his hand out to you that it would be okay if you took his hand to go with him.
May 25, 2025
My dearest Steve, I know you’d love the symmetry of the date as a point to mark your passing, your transition to the space of love, light, and free of the bonds of the physical body that has tortured you these last couple of years.
The terminal restless that has plagued us both these last couple of days has been replaced by the torturous gurgles of your breaths, still coming strong and regular, though with a gulping lurch consistent with the 83% blood oxygen levels I measured just moments ago.
Your heart races at 136 beats per minute as that muscle does its darnedest to keep itself going. But, like a runner who keeps going despite their legs collapsing beneath them, you, too, will face the end of your physical capacity. Simply put, it will wear itself out, and quickly.
Steven, yours is a magnificent soul. An old soul craftsman who has lived a life of joyful creation with the youthful exuberance of the 12-yr-old you oft-claimed to be. I wonder how life for you would have been if you’d been able to live with that joyful abandon before I met you.
Father Joe came to visit Thursday morning at my invitation. I knew your daughter would appreciate it and I was so glad you were able to meet him. We’d laughed often at his FB posts about parking in the parrish parking lot. He always wrote with a disarming humor that made it hard to argue with. So I was actually excited and honored that he’d accepted this Jewish girl’s request to have him visit my (lapsed) Catholic husband. Your daughter was even able to get here just in time to join in the prayers. As he left he offered to come back, though I wasn’t sure how I’d reach him over the holiday weekend.
We had a visit yesterday, Saturday, by your ex-wife, along with both your daughters. I have no ill will when it comes to your ex. After all, she let you go so you would find me, and for that I am grateful.
They arrived just as you and I were in a struggle, having wrestled a bit for more than 20 minutes as you insisted on getting out of bed. Your mind was disoriented, oxygen-deprived, and could no longer understand the words I spoke, pleading to you to stay in bed, that the catheter would now limit your movements.
But you looked at me with wild eyes, and a physical strength I would have found impressive at your late stage of dying, that is, if I weren’t trying to keep you from knocking me over, as well.
We stood in a strange embrace, you with the look of a caged animal desperate to leave the chains of your body, and me with tears welling up as I tried to find ways to reason with you on our next dance steps.
Part of me actually was taken back to our first dates together, a dance class you said you’d take with me. It was part of your pickup line. “I wish I could dance with you,” that you wrote when I had shared that I’d started a dance class after Keith had died. I had needed to move, to feel part of the music, to feed my aching soul.
And you willingly put yourself out there, to try and dance with me, sheepishly and a bit out of rhythm and step. But you gave it your best try. You did it for me, to help heal my aching heart while also getting closer to me. It worked.
Now 12 years later, we are standing here in an embrace, your body degrading against your will, your mind disintegrating from the lack of oxygen. And all I want to do is take away your pain.
A moment of understanding happened when I asked you “Steve, do you want your ex and your daughters to see you like this?” No, you shook your head. So I managed to get you to sit and then lie down on the bed. The next struggle would be to get you to a better position since you had ended up too close to the foot of the bed.
I called out for Steve’s oldest daughter who I knew was now in the house with her sister and mom. I called again, but no answer. Finally I went to the bedroom door and opened it to find his younger daughter standing in the kitchen. Her sister had been in the bathroom down the hall. “I need physical help,” I told her urgently. Soon both the girls were in the bedroom struggling to get Steve further up the bed, lifting his arm from each side.
As I stepped back to let them work, I turned around to see his first wife standing beside me. I did what I’d done the last time we’d met, almost exactly 11 years before. I held out my hand to shake hers and said “Hi. I’m so sorry that we keep having to meet around death and dying.” I was referring to the first time we’d met at Steve’s mother’s funeral. Thankfully, she was gracious and responded warmly to thank me for allowing her to come to see him. It had been an interesting turn since I had invited her a week or so earlier and she had politely declined. But apparently her daughter had been able to convince her it was important to them.
The rest of that day, Saturday, was a bit of a blur. The on-call nurse finally arrived again after taking care of another patient who’d fallen. It was Memorial Day weekend and she was the one on call for the weekend. And she’d already been here until 3 am that same day to insert the aforementioned catheter.
Before the nurse had left from that middle-of-the-night visit, and after she’d admonished me to get some rest myself, I confided that I’d need it because Steve’s ex and daughters would be arriving in the morning. “Oh, I want to HEAR about that, girl!” We laughed. So when she’d arrived for the second time, with all of them present, I was very pointed in introducing everyone before she got too far. She met my eyes with a knowing look (so THIS is the ex!) after I’d introduced them all.
Later, after I’d taken the short nap that my favorite nurse had urged while admonishing the girls that they needed to do their part, I suggested to their mom that she might like a tour of the place and a short walk outside. I needed it myself. The sun was shining, though the air was still a cool 52 degrees, rather chilly for this time of year. As we walked around, I shared stories of the property and what we’d done to it. And more than once, and then again in the workshops, she remarked that Steve had found his heaven on earth with everything… the tools, the shop, the playful space for creating. She seemed to understand more about why Steve had found me.
They’d left around 3 pm Saturday to head home, saying their goodbyes to you, Steve, knowing that would likely be the last time they’d see you alive. And your youngest son arrived around dinner time and we began to trade shifts through the longest night.
The Last Hours
It’s 9:50 am on Sunday now and I’ve been writing and listening to music, your favorite tunes, as I try and capture my thoughts during these last hours.
Your breathing has gotten “jerkier”, for lack of a better description. The gurgling is a bit louder, deeper in the chest. I checked your O2 and it briefly showed 60% with only 40 bpm. But when I checked the left hand, and then again your right, I could get no reading at all. The line that indicated your pulse rate would only occasionally show a blip. For a moment I was fascinated by this data-informed visualization of your impending departure from this earthly plain.
But then my own heart began to ache. Your phone had been dinging, messages from a close friend. She was desperate to hear from you, to get comfort for a difficult diagnosis she was facing. But I’m concentrating on you, my dear love. Do I bother with the last dose of morphine? You’re not in pain. So maybe it’s best to leave that alone. You’re done being the subject of medicine.
It’s time to release your soul to the other side… a place of peace and love. Part of me envies you that you will find peace while the rest of us deal with the pain of missing you.
Go with love, my sweetheart. Go with love and peace.
I play the Beatles for you. I’d bought tickets to Rain, a Beatles-tribute band, and you absolutely loved every minute of it. Finding our shared joy in music was another thing that brought us closer.
It’s 10:19 am. The Beatles music ended with “Shake it up Baby”. And so did you, and so will I.
Love you, my sweetheart. Go in love and peace.
Preparing for the Public Goodbyes
It’s 1 am on 5/31/25, nearly a week after you left this earthly plane. I’ve been keeping busy… making your final arrangements, researching and ordering up the hourglass urns, navigating the conflicts arising from my inability to please everyone all the time.
A couple of hours ago, I glanced at the clock and it read 11:11 pm. The angel number that may mean you’re trying to send me a message, that everything is anew… for you in the afterlife… and for me here in among the living.
This is an icon I created when working in Fiji. It was one of 24 icon-style illustrations with Pacific themes. Being my favorite, I adopted this one as a psuedo-logo.
Mara Jevera Fulmer's Blog 