Grieving at Solstice

Lois and me at the No Kings protest, March 28, 2026

Once again I am grieving on Summer Solstice. On June 20, 1982—44 years ago—my mother died of metastatic breast cancer. Four weeks ago, Lois Thetford, one of my closest friends, died of an aggressive form of abdominal cancer. She was ill for just a month and a half before she passed. I felt, and feel, shocked. How can she be gone? How can I still be here?

I turn to the earth for healing. In the past few weeks, I prepared the soil for and planted lettuce, beans, basil, chard, and a tomato plant in our front-yard garden. I weeded the broccoli, kale, and peas that I planted when the weather was still chilly and wet, when I had no idea I was about to lose someone I loved and still love.

I met Lois 51 years ago, shortly after I moved to Seattle. We were both part of an improvisational dance group called Loose Women. In that group, I learned to trust my body, to entrust my weight, my movements, myself to this small, creative, bodacious circle of women. My trust was well-placed; they held me. From then on, Lois and I enjoyed a close, affectionate friendship around community, political activism, family, relationships, creative work, spirituality, everything. With my partner, Martha, she literally held me up while I gave birth to our son in 1983. There wasn’t anything I couldn’t talk about and process with Lois. Until she was gone.

This week, I walked in Seward Park’s old-growth Magnificent Forest. Some of the trees are 250 years old. These elders have stood since before Seattle was colonized by white settlers. I sat on the thick root of a huge bigleaf maple and felt Lois’ spirit. The message that came to me: I need to be fully present with the beauty around me. Lois no longer has a body to sit in the woods, eyes to see the translucent green leaves stretching far overhead toward the sun, ears to hear the eagles and crows, skin to feel the cool breeze. I do. Be fully present in my body as long as I have one on this earth. In that way, I can honor her life, her spirit, our connection.

In her book, When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy, Beronda Montgomery combines memoir, botanical knowledge, and Black history to describe the significance of eight tree species native to the American South. She writes about the close relationships she and other Black people have had with trees—for support, shelter, shade, and medicine—and the traumatic events, especially lynchings, that reshaped the trees’ bodies and terrorized Black communities. Her introduction imparted an idea I had never thought about:

“Like all plants, trees literally carry evidence in their material lives of all those with whom they have shared space. The carbon dioxide exhaled by animals and humans is ‘inhaled’ by plants and transformed into sugars through the process of photosynthesis. These sugars are then used to support plants’ existence and to produce their form, including wood. Thus, plants carry material evidence of the very exhaled quintessence of humans, past and present…These beautiful and majestic beings are undeniable witnesses to lives lived and legacies realized.”[1]

I think about the many times Lois and I sat under trees to talk. Our exhaled carbon dioxide became part of the trees’ bodies. In this way, Lois, my mother, and all who have passed on are still with us in physical form. The trees are our history books, our journals, our memorials.

I am grateful for the support of community, garden, and forest. In the Pacific Northwest, nothing ever really dies. A tree that falls over becomes a nurse log, nurturing the next generation of saplings and undergrowth. Forests are collaborative communities. At our best, humans live like them. Lois lived that ideal in her life’s vision and work. I’m grateful to have had her at my side.

[1] Beronda Montgomery, When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy, (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2025), xxxii-xxxiii.