Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One and Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Bertram is also the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, Daughter Am I, More Deaths Than One, and A Spark of Heavenly Fire.
People have a harder time scamming me than some would-be victims because I have so few of the accoutrements of modern life that most people need to live, such as a credit card, or dreams of a fabulous and free vacation. I certainly have no interest in talking to a real IRS agent let alone a fake one. And my car isn’t new enough to be caught in the “your warranty is about to expire” scam, though I must admit, such calls do amuse me. After all, my warranty expired almost fifty years ago.
Since we’re talking about my car — I got a Thanksgiving card from my insurance agency, offering a sincere thank you for my business. I must admit, I’d believe the sincerity more if the note and signature hadn’t been stamped rather than actually signed by a real person.
And, still on the topic of my vehicle — a couple of days ago, the contractor came and set the slag around the garage apron to get rid of the four-inch lip the car needed to climb to get into the garage. Looks nice!
He’d actually planned to do the work a couple of weeks ago, but the gas company kept tearing up the alley, first to put in new gas lines, and then later to connect everyone along this stretch. It’s too bad they’d also dug up the the gravel that made the alley negotiable, but perhaps someday they will replace it.
A worker is here right now putting decorative rock around the foundation of the garage. Yay! Even better, from my knees’ point of view, he helped me finish digging out all grass in my “island” and planted the tiled cinderblock I found here in the yard.
The tree is the extra greengage plum tree I ordered, and since we didn’t know where else to put it, it ended up in the island. I liked the way the rock looked around the garage, so I considered filling the island with rock, too, but on the off chance that my plum ever blossomed and then fruited, I figured it would be too messy to clean up. At least, if I plant zinnias or some such, any fruit that fell would only nourish the soil.
So much excitement!
I’m not really being as ironic as it might seem. Having any work done around here is the highlight of my day, so much more exciting than calls from scammers or cards from insincere insurance agents.
***
What if God decided to re-create the world and turn it into a galactic theme park for galactic tourists? What then?
Jeff and I had such a deep, seemingly cosmic connection that for many years, I thought I’d be pulled into death when he died. It didn’t seem fair because he was five years older than me, and I thought I’d be cheated out of five years of my life.
About a year before he died, I hugged him and accidentally touched his left ear. I know now cancer had metastasized all the way up his left side and into his brain, but at the time, all I knew was that he pushed me away, wincing in agony. Some part of me closed down at that moment, and a voice deep inside me said, “He might dying, but I have to live.” During that year, we went our separate ways, he to dying, me to living. Then, six weeks before he died, he made the connection with me again. He needed to talk about what was happening to him so he could gather courage to face what was coming, and during that daylong conversation, I remembered why I’d fallen in love with him all those years ago.
Because of the disconnect during our final year, a year where I felt dissociated from him and our life, I didn’t expect to grieve, so the depth of my pain stunned me. I struggled for many years to deal with the wreckage of our shared life. Although he did not pull all of me into death with him, apparently he did pull part of me into the abyss, and that hole — that amputation — will always be a part of me.
During my grief struggles, I felt at times as if I’d betrayed our love because in the end, our connection wasn’t strong enough to keep us together, not in life and not in death. I did get my five years. And more. I continued to grow older than Jeff ever would, to develop my own unshared and solitary life.
As of today, I have lived exactly six years longer than he did. It doesn’t seem right, not that I have lived all these years, but that he didn’t have the choice. Well, neither of us had a choice. That voice inside me didn’t say “I want to live.” It said, “I have to live.’
I no longer feel any sense of betrayal. We each did what we needed to do, both when we were together and when death ripped us apart.
During those last weeks after we reconnected, we tried to support each other, each of us thinking the other was getting the worse of the deal. I thought he had it worse because he had to die in pain; he thought I had it worse because I had to live and suffer through life — and grief — alone. I still don’t know who got the better deal. I had these years, but I will also have to deal with dying one of these days.
But not today. Today I am honoring the six years of life that were given to me, years that were denied to him. It’s not exactly a celebration, but it is something worth reflecting on.
Or not. In the end, we each live our allotted years the best we can, and hope we can meet the end with courage.
***
Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator
If someone doesn’t like one of my books, I feel as if I should apologize, as if I fell down on the job as an author.
Because everyone should like my books, right?
Well, no. Of course, I would like it if more people read my books, though inevitably that would mean more people would dislike one or two. And I would like it if everyone who read my books liked all they read, but that’s not always a feasible expectation.
People don’t all dislike the same book. For some, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare was too girlish. For some, Light Bringer was too complicated. For others, Bob, the Right Hand of God is a bit . . . I don’t know . . . blasphemous, maybe, though it wasn’t intended as such.
I do appreciate the candor (as long as they keep their disappointment between us) and despite my urge to apologize, I try not to take their assessment personally. After all, it was my vision I tried to put into words, not theirs, and to that extent, I succeeded. So, I have no need to apologize or feel bad or have any opinion about other people’s opinions.
I once saw a plaque that I disagreed with when I read it, but now I see the truth of the saying.
What other people think of me is none of my business. I suppose this is the same with my books — that what other people think of them is none of my business. It feels as if it should be my business, since after all, other people’s opinions are what fuels the book market. And writing is my business.
I do know that if one writes to please other people, one ends up pleasing no one, least of all oneself.
Still, I hope you like my books. Or at least one of them anyway.
***
Please check out my new book!
“I am Bob, the Right Hand of God. As part of the galactic renewal program, God has accepted an offer from a development company on the planet Xerxes to turn Earth into a theme park. Not even God can stop progress, but to tell the truth, He’s glad of the change. He’s never been satisfied with Earth. For one thing, there are too many humans on it. He’s decided to eliminate anyone who isn’t nice, and because He’s God, He knows who you are; you can’t talk your way out of it as you humans normally do.”
After almost six months of picking a daily tarot card to study, I’ve seen some trends — out of a total of 78 cards, about one third have not yet shown up, about one third have shown up sporadically, and the final third are constant companions.
One of the cards that turns up frequently is the queen of wands. The court cards (the face cards) are traditionally linked to those asking the question of the cards. In some readings, the court cards are removed except for the card that most represents the querent. (The querent is the one asking the question.) I’d like to think that the queen of wands represents me, both for what I know I am as well as what I would want to be. For example, the queen of wands is adaptable, kind, generous, warm-hearted to her friends, intelligent and capable. Her ways of thinking are varied and complex, but she can grasp the moment and make what she wants of it.
Sounds like someone I would like to be! One thing the card has wrong (or at least one interpretation of the card that is wrong) is the advice not to be afraid to speak up and be heard; no one will silence me. That makes me laugh because Facebook and its minions or algorithms or something has effectively silenced me since it has blocked any link to my blog from the site. In an effort to overcome that block, I reblog this blog onto another blog and post that link, but apparently, their computers can pick up that it isn’t the original link, and hence they subdue it. Instead of the hundred or so people who used to see my blog on FB, now only a handful do.
And FB isn’t the only one who has silenced me — left-leaning folks tend not to like what I say, and override me if we’re in person, or insult me if we’re online. Nothing is worth that. Well, that’s not true — I never let anyone silence me when it came to my grief writings, even though more than one person told me it was time for me to drop the mantle of grief and move on.
But I’m straying from the point, which is learning the tarot.
Although most people use a single deck and learn the cards by the interpretation in the booklet that comes with cards, I use a variety of decks (a different one each month) and a variety of sources, so the interpretation of the card becomes deeper than the few simple words that generally are used to explain the deck. And what I am learning from this is that the tarot seems like a great story and character generator.
Cards have an up and down (called dignified and ill-dignified). I shuffle the cards so they all face the same direction thinking that the world is unfriendly enough without focusing on the shadow side of the world, but the ill-dignified aspect of the cards, especially the face cards, adds an additional dimension to the character — a shadow side. (I prefer to think of it as a shadow side rather than a “flaw” because it isn’t a “flaw” it’s part of the person, just not something to be proud about. For example, the queen of wands can be jealous and domineering, perhaps obstinate, and tending to imagine wrongs done to her.
I’m not yet ready to embark on writing another book, but when I do, I will use the tarot to help flesh out my characters, give them depth. The other cards will help direct the action, sending the characters on various adventures.
Until then, I will continue my study of the cards. Who knows — I might discover something else. The secrets of the universe perhaps, or maybe the secrets of my heart. If nothing else, I will discover some of the secrets of the cards.
***
Please check out my new book!
“I am Bob, the Right Hand of God. As part of the galactic renewal program, God has accepted an offer from a development company on the planet Xerxes to turn Earth into a theme park. Not even God can stop progress, but to tell the truth, He’s glad of the change. He’s never been satisfied with Earth. For one thing, there are too many humans on it. He’s decided to eliminate anyone who isn’t nice, and because He’s God, He knows who you are; you can’t talk your way out of it as you humans normally do.”
It’s kind of funny that after all these years after Jeff died, after all the years of grief and then the subsequent years of no grief (at least not more than a momentary pang or two of nostalgia), I still sometimes fall into the magical, quantum state of grief where Jeff seems to be both alive and dead.
I know he’s gone. I feel it in the very depths of my being. But sometimes, when I’m going about my daily life (that doesn’t seem anywhere near as ill-fitting as it once did), I find myself thinking one of those quantum thoughts.
Last night, as I wandered from room to room preparing for the night (checking to make sure the doors are locked, turning down the bed covers, making sure I have a glass of water on the nightstand), I thought that I should call his mother to find out how she’s doing, so I can let him know the next time I see him.
The realization of the illogicality of the thought didn’t send me into a spiral of grief, it just made me wonder why that thought, and why now. (Come to think of it, a friend called and mentioned that a mutual acquaintance inherited the care of her hated mother-in-law, which is probably what put the thought in my mind.)
It just goes to show that even when the pain is gone, the habits of grief and grief-thinking linger. That’s not the only stray thought — on more than a couple of occasions, I have found myself wandering through the house, wondering how and where Jeff would fit when he got here.
Hmm. I see a pattern here. I tend to think these thoughts when I am simply wandering from room to room, but that’s no reason to stay put. I do like wandering around my house, feeling the “home” of it. For so long, after he died, I never felt at home anywhere in particular (he had been my home), though I did learn to feel at home wherever I was because . . . well, because that’s where I was. Back then, I had to break myself of the habit of saying I was going home when I returned to one of the places I was inhabiting because it wasn’t home, just a place to roost. I still catch myself editing out the word “home” until I realize that hey! I have a home! It’s not just a place to go back to, but a place to settle into. A place to make my own.
I do wonder what Jeff would think about all this — my moving here, my owning a house, my getting old. (In three days, I will have lived six years longer than he lived.) But mostly, although he’s in the back of my mind and the back of my heart, thoughts of him and his death and my grief no longer dictate my life. Others things dictate the terms now, such as keeping up the house, keeping up my health, trying to hold back the infirmities of an aging body as long as I can. You know — life. Even though I knew from the beginning (odd that I still call his death and my ensuing grief “the beginning”) that the business of life is living — or do I mean the business of living is life? — I never really felt it. I felt the nearness of death and the winds of eternity more than the importance of my continued life.
But here I am, living, despite the occasional and brief lapses into the magical realism and quantum state of grief.
***
Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator
Considering all the address labels various do-gooder groups are sending me, I won’t be able to move for a thousand years, and even then, I’ll have a few labels left over as well as those they will be sending me over coming millennium.
I mean, really — in this electronic age, how many address labels does one person need? I’ve been using one each month to pay a local bill because I got out of the habit of paying in person with The Bob restrictions. (Incidentally, if you don’t know why I call this particular disease “The Bob,” it’s not just because I can’t bear to use its name, even though that’s true, it’s because of a scene from my book, A Spark of Heavenly Fire. Click here to read the explanation: The Bob)
And I might use a couple address labels for Christmas cards if I decide to send out the new cards I constructed from old cards at an Art Guild meeting the other day. But besides that, I have no use for address labels. You’d think charitable organizations would come up with some other sort of gimmick to get people to contribute to their cause, but I suppose the labels are easy to make and cheap to mail.
***
Please check out my new book!
“I am Bob, the Right Hand of God. As part of the galactic renewal program, God has accepted an offer from a development company on the planet Xerxes to turn Earth into a theme park. Not even God can stop progress, but to tell the truth, He’s glad of the change. He’s never been satisfied with Earth. For one thing, there are too many humans on it. He’s decided to eliminate anyone who isn’t nice, and because He’s God, He knows who you are; you can’t talk your way out of it as you humans normally do.”
To learn the tarot and to get familiar with the various decks I inherited from my brother, I’ve been picking a card every day, and then researching the meaning. To get the best use of such an undertaking, a person needs to ask a question, though it isn’t necessary. My question — when I remember to ask it — is always, “What do I need to know today?” I find when I don’t ask the question, the card reflects my worries more than anything else. When I do ask . . . well, sometimes I get advice and sometimes not, but it’s hard to figure out from a card what I need to know especially if I don’t know what I need to know because the cards can only tell me what I already know since I am the one interpreting them.
Still, the advice I glean is sometimes spot on, sometimes too general to be useful, and is often something I already I know about me or my life. (I haven’t yet figured out how to discover that which I don’t know about my secret inner workings, even though learning such things is supposedly the best use of the tarot.)
The one suggestion that comes up over and over again in my daily one-card reading is to trust my intuition, trust my intellect, and to stay true to myself. I can’t help but equate this advice to certain current events since my intuition — and intellect — are both at odds with what most other people think, so I tend to doubt myself.
Despite the lack of true knowledge from the tarot about what I need to know each day, it’s still an interesting exercise. Maybe it will open my mind up to this intuition I am supposed to trust. If not, at least the question helps me focus on the day and what I might glean from it.
Forgetting the cards and what they might tell me, I’m curious as to what you might tell me — me specifically, or me as a member of the human race — what I need to know today.
So, what do I need to know today?
What do you need to know?
***
My latest novel Bob, The Right Hand of God is now published!
What if God decided to re-create the world and turn it into a galactic theme park for galactic tourists? What then?
Non-authors often have suggestions of things for me to do to promote my books, which I appreciate, even though I’ve probably already implemented the suggestions. (In fact, I had two such conversations yesterday.)
Oddly, what no one ever asks is what they can do.
Admittedly, I made a mistake by spending too much time promoting other authors, presuming wrongly (in all but a handful of cases) that the authors would in turn do something to promote me.
And I probably made a mistake posting so much of my grief writing here on this blog where anyone can read it without having to do anything in return. Which is okay. My mission, ever since Jeff died, is to untangle the many threads that go to make up the knotty — and so very agonizing — problem we call grief.
Still, there is something you can do, which is probably more important than anything I can do.
If you have read and liked any of my books, if any of my grief books have helped you, you can leave a review for me on Amazon. You don’t even have to have purchased the book from Amazon — after all, none of the professional reviewers buy the books they review.
I realize that some people are intimidated by the expert reviews that have been posted, thinking they could never write as well. Or they simply do not know what to do.
But it’s easy. Truly.
You don’t have to write a synopsis of the book — there are already synopses posted, both by the publisher and a few of the reviewers. Nor do you have to agonize over what to write.
First, say what you liked about the book. You might like a specific character or the interplay between a couple of characters. You might like the setting. You might like the plot, the style of writing, the way the author kept you interested. Just say something, anything, that you liked.
Then, say how the book affected you. Maybe it made you laugh, or think, or offer comfort, or take you away from your problems for a few hours.
Finally, star your review. (A five-star review is nice — hint, hint — but not necessary.)
A simple review is fine. A short review — a couple of sentences — is fine. A misspelled review is fine. (You can always edit it later if you wish.) The important thing is to leave a review.
You can find my author page on Amazon here, with a listing of all my books: Pat Bertram Books
Thank you for your help!
***
“I am Bob, the Right Hand of God. As part of the galactic renewal program, God has accepted an offer from a development company on the planet Xerxes to turn Earth into a theme park. Not even God can stop progress, but to tell the truth, He’s glad of the change. He’s never been satisfied with Earth. For one thing, there are too many humans on it. He’s decided to eliminate anyone who isn’t nice, and because He’s God, He knows who you are; you can’t talk your way out of it as you humans normally do.”
Before the election, I talked with a friend one day about all the lies and cheats and deceptions. Like most people, she knew knew these tactics existed, but since she believed the lies told by the alphabet newscasters, she wasn’t aware there was another side.
I don’t often monopolize the conversation, but every once in a while, someone finds my “on” button, and I hold forth. Much of the truth of this past election was hard to find, but if one read more than an article or two, and if one read articles that went against what one happens to think at any given moment, it was a lot easier to piece things together. Also, I’ve studied such things most of my life — people often downplay the unpalatable truth with a contemptuous sneer of “conspiracy theory,” but the truth is, a conspiracy is merely something people in power do behind your back. And politics is full of back door, back room, back stabbing deals that we are not privy to, and if we do happen to stumble on the truth, well, then, they dismiss it by saying it’s just another conspiracy theory or fake news or whatever damning name they want to call it.
That particular day, however, I’d watched the news with her, watched the newscaster show a clip of an interview, then listened to her turn the person’s words upside down to prove a completely different point, then asked a second interviewee a question that would again make a mockery of the truth. The two of them talked about the horror of the event as if it had actually happened, rather than being a total fabrication.
Since I don’t watch the news, this took me aback. That they didn’t even pretend to hide their reprehensible behavior was too much for me. Did they really think we were such fools as to not hear what we originally heard?
Apparently so. Anyway, that got me started.
The friend listened agog as I explained not what we had just seen but also some of the subtle — and not so subtle — lies we’ve been told, explained how they vilified some players while beatifying others, and even explained some of the historical background leading up to this particular political mess. When I realized what I was doing, I apologized.
She said, “I like listening to you talk.” She asked me how I knew everything I did, including all the pieces that went together to make up my books. Then she said, “You must have gone to school for a long time.”
The truth is, I didn’t go to school for a long time. In fact, I have far less formal education than just about anyone I know, but I’ve spent a lifetime reading and researching, listening and thinking to make up for the lack. Even more, I almost never watch television. I didn’t grow up watching like most people of my generation did because my father wouldn’t get one. He wanted us to be independent thinkers, which kind of backfired on him. He wanted us to independently come to the same conclusions he did, and he was appalled to discover that we all turned out to think independently of him.
But that’s beside the issue. The real issue is that a lot of knowledge is hidden in books. Not school books or text books, but . . . books. All kinds of books, fiction and non-fiction. If one never reads, one never learns anything but what they are fed.
The first time I realized that tales hid truth was in grade school. For an English assignment, we had to create a newspaper. I thought it would be fun to make the news stories about various fairy tales and nursery rhymes, and in trying to find things to say about these bits of folklore, I happened to come across a book that gave the origins and meanings. And wow! What an eyeopener!
And so began my quest for the truth hidden in books.
If I have ever had a life-long passion, it’s with the truth, reading, seeing that which is hidden that we’re not supposed to know. So far, not all the truth is suppressed, and I’m not sure it can be, but it’s a lot harder to find than on a lighted screen.
I can’t say knowing the truth — at least as much of it as I do — has made me happy. It’s made me more of an outcast than anything (except during my years with Jeff — he was the only other seeker I had ever met, and together we learned a lot). But still, I’d rather know the truth — and if I don’t, I prefer searching for it — even if people don’t agree with me. Sometimes, their disagreement leads me to other paths. So far, none of these paths have set me on a totally different course, though a lot of the paths augmented the ones I was already on.
Searching for truth is like this find the hidden objects game I’ve been playing — it’s about learning patterns, seeing the truth as deviation from the pattern as well as seeing the truth in the pattern.
See what I mean about my “on” button? I had no intention of going into all that, but once I got started, I just kept going.
Luckily for you, I also have an off button.
***
My latest novel Bob, The Right Hand of God is now published!
What if God decided to re-create the world and turn it into a galactic theme park for galactic tourists? What then?
I received a couple of excellent reviews for my novel Bob, The Right Hand of God, which was recently published by Stairway Press. Not that I was worried — I know the book is good (though I’m sure all authors think that about their books) but both reviewers are people whose opinion I value, so I was hoping for good words.
Luckily, both of them liked the book.
Malcolm Campbell, author of Fate’s Arrow wrote: “The book is many things: highly readable, realistic and believable in portraying how the characters react and interact, dystopian in that everything we know is gone and the replacement plan isn’t providing anything better, and (yes) playful. Should the reader laugh or cry? Hard to say. While the ending was predictable, this well-written novel is highly recommended.” Click here to read the full review: https://malcolmsroundtable.com/2020/11/04/review-bob-the-right-hand-of-god/
Sam Sattler of the book blog “Book Chase,” wrote: “Bob: The Right Hand of God is funny and it’s clever, but deep down, it has a message about the important things in life. Pat Bertram has written several books on grief and grieving and she brings that kind of emotional sensitivity even to a farcical tale like this one. If you are looking for something fun to read, this is one you should consider.” Click here to read the full review: https://bookchase.blogspot.com/2020/11/bob-right-hand-of-god-pat-bertram.html
If you, too, enjoyed the book, please leave a review on Amazon. It doesn’t have to be a full review such as the above two reviewers wrote. It can be as simple as single sentence saying you enjoyed the book, or that it’s the perfect book for these time, or that you’d like to see it made in a movie, or anything. (If you hated it, then never mind.) I would like to see this book find a wide audience. I think people would like it, even those who don’t read much.
Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One debunks many established beliefs about what grief is, explains how it affects those left behind, and shows how to adjust to a world that no longer contains the loved one. “It is exactly what folk need to read who are grieving.”(Leesa Heely Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator ).
“I am Bob, the Right Hand of God. As part of the galactic renewal program, God has accepted an offer from a development company on the planet Xerxes to turn Earth into a theme park. Not even God can stop progress, but to tell the truth, He’s glad of the change. He’s never been satisfied with Earth. For one thing, there are too many humans on it. He’s decided to eliminate anyone who isn’t nice, and because He’s God, He knows who you are; you can’t talk your way out of it as you humans normally do.”
While sorting through her deceased husband’s effects, Amanda is shocked to discover a gun and the photo of an unknown girl who resembles their daughter. After dedicating her life to David and his vocation as a pastor, the evidence that her devout husband kept secrets devastates Amanda. But Amanda has secrets of her own. . .
When Pat’s adult dance classmates discover she is a published author, the women suggest she write a mystery featuring the studio and its aging students. One sweet older lady laughingly volunteers to be the victim, and the others offer suggestions to jazz up the story. Pat starts writing, and then . . . the murders begin.
Thirty-seven years after being abandoned on the doorstep of a remote cabin in Colorado, Becka Johnson returns to try to discover her identity, but she only finds more questions. Who has been looking for her all those years? And why are those same people interested in fellow newcomer Philip Hansen?
When twenty-five-year-old Mary Stuart learns she inherited a farm from her recently murdered grandparents -- grandparents her father claimed had died before she was born -- she becomes obsessed with finding out who they were and why someone wanted them dead.
In quarantined Colorado, where hundreds of thousands of people are dying from an unstoppable, bio-engineered disease, investigative reporter Greg Pullman risks everything to discover the truth: Who unleashed the deadly organism? And why?
Bob Stark returns to Denver after 18 years in SE Asia to discover that the mother he buried before he left is dead again. At her new funeral, he sees . . . himself. Is his other self a hoaxer, or is something more sinister going on?
Grief: The Great Yearning is not a how-to but a how-done, a compilation of letters, blog posts, and journal entries Pat Bertram wrote while struggling to survive her first year of grief. This is an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.
Bertram's Blog 