Solitude

May 11, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I came across an interesting quote this morning by the French writer known simply as Colette: “There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.”

What’s interesting to me about this quote is that, although solitude was an issue with her, it isn’t for me. She died almost 75 years ago, so obviously, the times were different. Today I’m not sure there is such a thing as a poisonous solitude that makes one want to beat one’s head against the wall. We are all just fingertips away from connecting with the world, and if not that, then we’re just minutes away from a store where for the price of a loaf of bread, we can talk to a checkout clerk for a few minutes.

Admittedly, I am minimizing her pain, but I don’t feel that solitude is a big issue — not for me, anyway. I have people I can call or go visit, I can take a walk or work in my garden where people tend to find me. So solitude by itself isn’t a bitter tonic or a poison. Nor is it the heady wine she speaks of. It just is the way I’ve ordered my life (or perhaps the way life ordered me).

Loneliness, on the other hand, can be a bitter tonic if not poisonous, since it doesn’t have an easy fix. I mean, just by going out among people you can cure solitude, because even if you don’t know the people, you’re not solitary anymore. But loneliness isn’t as easy as being around people because one can be lonely in a crowd. One can also be lonely for a particular person, and if that person isn’t around, then the loneliness can be agonizing for sure.

Solitary and lonely — that’s not a good combination, though I tend to think it’s the loneliness that’s the problem, not the aloneness, but then, what do I know. I don’t often get lonely anymore since I am used to Jeff being gone. I am also solitary by nature, though if I am visiting with someone, I can be as garrulous and as sociable as those who prefer to wrap a peopled world around themselves.

I know some of you are lonely, though perhaps not solitary. Others are both lonely and solitary. Life can be bitter for those who have lost the one person that made their life a more loving and friendly place to be, so I don’t want you to think I’m diminishing your pain.

I’m just . . . thinking.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Nix on the Happy Face

April 28, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What are your favorite emojis?
View all responses

I have never liked any emoji even before they became emojis. Especially the idiotic happy face that began it all.

I wasn’t aware of the smiley face in its infancy because it was an inhouse graphic created for State Mutual Life Assurance Company in 1963 to make their employees happier about a corporate merger. The face quickly moved beyond those bounds, and in Denver, in the late sixties, a jewelry store passed out happy-face stickers for a promotion, so that sappy yellow face was everywhere. I don’t know why — perhaps because it was everywhere — I couldn’t bring myself to like the insipid thing.

Even worse was after Hallmark took over the design in 1971, added “Have a happy day,” and then expected people to . . . I don’t know . . . give Hallmark happy days by buying happy faces, I guess.

I disliked “Have a happy day,” even more when it replaced “thank you,” as a farewell to shoppers who’d completed a purchase. I was depressed a lot back then, which made that whole “have a happy day” thing seem like a slap in the face, but more than that, it was so utterly phony, it depressed me further. Ironically, I’d give anything to have people go back to “Have a happy day” if they’d only get rid of today’s version, “Have a good one.” That sure makes me cringe! “Have a good one what?” I ask when I’m feeling particularly curmudgeonly. I can’t help but think of caregivers asking their elderly constipated patients if they’d had a “good one” that day.

In my life, almost always things I like disappear, most recently the most useful sprinkler I’ve ever found, with several water patterns as well as an ability to convert it to a hand-held sprinkler. But that sappy face? Nope. Now that it’s a global necessity, embedded in almost all computer programs, it will hound me forever.

Admittedly, I’ve used various emojis when trying to elucidate what I thought a witty comment, but that didn’t always work well.

Many years ago, I signed up for a dating site at the instigation of a married friend who wanted the vicarious experience. I eventually ended up communicating with one fellow who mentioned that he loved laughing and humor, and I don’t remember the comment I made, but it was supposed to be a humorous response to his humorous comment, and to emphasize the point, I added a happy face emoji. He took the comment at face value, and got nasty with me. I explained that the emoji was an indicator of it being a joke, and he got even more angry and said he didn’t want to have anything to do with anyone who had to use happy faces to explain what she was saying. Apparently, the only one who was supposed to funny was him. I tried a different site, and there he was again. So, to my friend’s disappointment, that was the end of my efforts.

But not, alas, the end of emojis. If I do grit my teeth and use any emoji to end a text conversation, it’s something simple like a heart or a tree, but mostly, I stick with (gasp!) words. It’s so much better for my peace of mind.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Being Silly

April 11, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
Describe something you learned in high school.
View all responses

In high school, specifically the first couple of years, I learned to be silly. I’d always been serious, spending whatever time I could manage with a book, but then things changed. I changed.

I went to a high school where I knew only a couple of people, and we were in different classes, so I no longer carried the burden of eight years of being a social outcast. It was freeing, to say the least.

One friend I made seemed to bring out the silly in me. Our high school had a long, straight hand rail on the steps leading to the building, and one day we decided to slide down the banister. Unfortunately, it wasn’t slick enough. So the next day we brought some wax paper, which brings me to another thing I learned in high school — wax paper is a good polisher. After we polished that railing, we went sailing! I don’t remember if we got in trouble or not, but I vaguely remember a disapproving frown or two.

When Christmas came around, we got our photos taken with a department store Santa. I remember giggling about that, and even today, it brings a smile to my face.

She and I often talked about what we would do when we were grown up, and we thought that it would be fun to open a restaurant in Georgetown and sell things like Alferd Packer pancakes and Democratic sausages. That, too, makes me smile.

I managed to be silly on my own for a while after high school. One of my first jobs was at a fabric store. We got in a collection of appliques, and one of a smiling frog tickled me, so I bought it and pinned it on my dress. I wore that frog every day until I stuck myself with the pin. When people asked why I stopped wearing it, I told them that it bit me. I thought it was funny, but my boss didn’t. She thought I was crazy as in certifiably insane, but luckily, I managed to keep my job when I finally convinced her I was just playing and that I didn’t think the silly frog was real.

Like most lessons I learned in high school, I eventually forgot what I learned. Or maybe too many people like that boss helped quash the impulse, and I again became the serious person I was as a child. Occasionally I consider doing something silly, but it just seems too . . . silly. And anyway, being silly by oneself is no fun, to say nothing of the energy it takes.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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What My Life Is Like Today

March 27, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What’s something most people don’t understand?
View all responses

Today is the sixteenth anniversary of Jeff’s death. I’m sitting here mindlessly playing a game and scrolling through a few articles, trying to decide if I want to write about this anniversary. I will remember him, of course, and think of him and all he brought to my life, but I’m not sure it’s something I should still be talking about it. After all, his death belonged to him, not me. Still, I suppose I should at least mention the anniversary — for years I wrote about my grief, laid it all on the line (laid it online?), so it’s only fair that I talk about what my life is like today.

Life, that’s what it’s like.

Too many people bury their grief, letting others tell them how long they should grieve, how long it’s acceptable to talk about their feelings, how long they’re allowed to feel whatever it is they feel. But that is a disservice to grievers. I truly believe it’s important to feel all the myriad emotions, physical sensations, and mental fogs so that the body and mind can work its way through the changes to end up . . . renewed. Or if not renewed, then at least able to go through life without holding in the stress of grief like a too-tight girdle.

Despite the importance of that message, I still wavered about doing another grief post until I happened to notice today’s blog prompt: What’s something most people don’t understand? Such a blatant sign shouldn’t be ignored, especially since there is something I know about that most people don’t understand — Grief, especially grief at the death of child, a spouse, a soul mate.

Everyone thinks they understand grief because most people have felt sadness and despair and even shed tears at the loss of an acquaintance or a job or something else important to them. But not all grief is the same. Not all losses are the same.

The reality is, the most stressful event in a person’s life by far is the death of a life mate or a child. The reality is, such a death is so devastating that the survivor’s death rate increases by a minimum of 25% percent. The reality is, such grief brings about brain chemistry changes and lowers the capacity to function. Someone who hasn’t gone through the trauma of dealing with all the losses those deaths bring about — not just the body and mind changes, but the loss of identity, one’s way of life, sometimes income, and a thousand other changes — cannot understand and so has no business telling anyone how long to grieve or how to grieve. Grief belongs to the griever, not to the onlookers to people’s grief. Admittedly, no one likes to see others in pain, but that pain is often made worse by having to hide it to keep from bothering others.

People who are allowed and who allow themselves to go through the process of grief — because, at its most basic, grief is a process, a way of moving a person back into a semblance of life — end up able to simply live.

For years, I felt as if I were living as a reaction to Jeff’s death or in spite of it, felt as if grief bound me to him and to a way of life that had died with him, but now — I feel as if I am simply living. Maybe I’m just used to that deep undercurrent of sadness, but even so, it doesn’t change the fact that after sixteen years, what my life is like today is . . . life.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Life, Fate, and Conundrums

February 25, 2026 — Pat Bertram

On Chinese New Year, a friend of Chinese descent who was born and raised in Malaysia, and I, a German/Polish hybrid, who was born in raised in Colorado, had lunch at a Chinese restaurant owned by a man originally from Vietnam, who chatted with us while we waited for our food. Mind boggling, right? I can’t even imagine how many tens of thousands of decisions we each made, how many unexpected changes in our lives, and how much time had to pass for all of us to end up in that exact place at that exact moment.

It almost makes me believe in fate, but perhaps that’s what fate is: everything that has to occur so that a certain event can happen. In some cases, those events and decisions are simply living and going where the day takes you. Other times, it’s a significant event, such as the death of a loved one. In my case, Jeff’s death untethered me so that I ended up in California taking care of my father. My father’s death broke whatever strings I had left, which sent me all over the country in an effort to run away from my life as well as run towards it. It’s mere happenstance — an unasked-for email from a real estate site — that I ended up here.

I’ve been thinking about this definition of fate as it applies to the Walk for Peace. On October 26, 2025, the monks set out from Fort Worth with barely a wave good-bye. Almost no one noticed them as they walked, though they did get some heckling and a few people who stopped to talk. Truckers and Texas residents shared sightings on Tik Tok, which got them some online followers, but mostly, they walked alone along empty roads.

Then, on November 19, a pick-up struck the escort vehicle so hard that it pushed the escort vehicle into the walking monks. Several were injured. One seriously. (He lost a leg but was doing well enough to attend the ending ceremonies in Washington.) After seeing that their fellow monk was taken care of, they continued their walk with the Harris County sheriff’s department riding alongside to keep them safe. The sheriff notified the sheriff’s department in the next county, and those law enforcement officers continued the protection, and so it went, all across the country.

That accident and the law enforcement notifications catapulted the walk into the public’s eye. No longer just a few bystanders on the open road — suddenly there were miles and miles of people lining their pathway. Thousands of people — hundreds of thousands — endured the cold and wind and rain and snow to wait to see the monks walk by. Millions followed the monks online. Lives were changed. People vowed to find peace within. And the effects of that walk are still rippling.

So, what would have happened without that accident? Was it a necessary part of their journey? Was it fate that it happened? Did the monk who lost his leg think it was a fair payment for the good the walk did? Was it a further example of their belief in breathing, in peace, in accepting the physical aspect of suffering while letting go of the resulting mental suffering? (One of the lessons they taught was that 10% of suffering was physical, the other 90% mental.)

Conundrums like this keep me wondering about life, about all the dots that need to be connected for anything to happen. Depending on what source you check out, there is between a one in seventy trillion chance and a one in four hundred trillion chance of any one of us being born.

So many changes and connections. Events and decisions. And time, lots of time. And all to get us here, to this very moment.

A moment that was eons in the making, a moment that will never be repeated.

During this rare and precious moment, may you be well, happy, and at peace.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Reflections

March 11, 2023 — Pat Bertram

I’m continuing with my daily tarot readings, though I have reverted to a single card reading. I’ve also started to use the same deck all the time rather than switching to a different one each month. The Crowley Thoth deck is not one I particularly like, but I do have a great handbook that goes with the deck: Tarot Mirror of the Soul.

As the title suggests, this particular guidebook, more than any other, uses the tarot as a mirror to reflect inner realities without judgment and to offer new perspectives. Ideally, anyway. Admittedly, the tarot itself it a tool for self-exploration, though I have not often found it to be so. This book, though, gives me something to reflect on each day. Often the focus doesn’t seem to reflect my life except in a general way, but other times it accurately reflects what I am thinking.

For example, I’ve been trying to decide if I want to continue with the sole remaining group/club I belong to. At the beginning, it was fun; there were only a few members and I liked them all. A couple of them even became good friends. Because of the busyness of life, this is about the only time I see these people, which is a good reason to keep up with the group. Another good reason is that since it’s the only group I belong to, it’s the only time, other than my job, where I routinely see people.

But, as with all things, over the past couple of years, the group changed. There are a lot more people now, more than I am comfortable being around. Also, with more people come more issues, such as cliques and undercurrents and those who want to make it all about themselves. I get the feeling I’m the only one who senses these things because all the other members seem to have embraced the new people without realizing — or caring — how much things have changed, which make me feel like an outsider.

Unfortunately, the good and the bad seem equally balanced, making the decision of whether to stay with the group impossible.

This inner conflict was in the back of my mind when I picked yesterday’s card — the eight of swords. The Mirror of the Soul cautions, “You will not be able to come to a decision analytically. Your doubt, or fears of making the wrong choice, constantly destroys your inner clarity. No matter where you turn, no satisfactory solution seems to exist. The more you try to untangle the ball of yarn, the tighter the knots become.” The Mirror of the Soul goes on to offer this solution to the conundrum: “Relax and let things develop on their own. The problem which seems unsolvable now will find its own solution in its own way.”

Good advice, for sure, and I planned to follow it, though I was so taken with the tarot reading and the way it reflected what I was feeling, that I’d been thinking about how to present both the problem and the tarot’s solution in a blog post. Apparently, the tarot doesn’t think this is good enough because today’s card was the same as yesterday’s, with the same admonition to relax and let things develop on their own.

Something to reflect on, that’s for sure!

***

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.

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Secrets

February 4, 2023 — Pat Bertram

The fiction world is fueled by secrets. If no character had a secret, there would be no story to tell — at least, not many — because most often stories revolve around uncovering secrets, what people will do to keep those secrets from being uncovered, what the consequences are for letting the secret out both for the one holding the secret and the one discovering it, and how those secrets determine the lives of those affected by the secrets.

Some secrets the characters keep from themselves. Romance is a good example of this, especially in the pointless type of romance where the characters fight all the time to keep from letting themselves know the truth — that they’ve fallen in love.

Some secrets are silly. Again, romance is a good example, especially in the Hallmark Christmas movie kind of romance where the ultra-successful heroine goes back home to find that her first love has also returned. The secret they are protecting turns out not to be a secret at all but a misunderstanding stemming from their inability to communicate. An Affair to Remember is one such example and although it’s not a Hallmark movie, it’s just as silly — to me, anyway.

Other secrets are more serious — murders, hit-and-run accidents, hidden pregnancies, babies given up for adoption, false or forgotten identities, abuse that’s hidden by both the abused and the abuser, teen peer pressure that gets out of hand resulting in a tragedy that ripples for decades.

And some secrets are multigenerational — something one’s grandparents did, for example, that influences the current generation. Janeane Garofalo’s movie The Matchmaker is a good example of this, where a politician looks for his Irish roots in the wrong place.

(I am amused by my mention of movies since books are what I’m thinking of, but the sad truth is that I remember titles from movies I saw years ago and not the title of the book I just finished reading. It’s not a memory issue; it’s that I don’t really pay attention to book titles.)

All of these secrets make me wonder if everyone is hiding a secret, or if that’s just a fictional conceit. I can’t really think of any secrets in my life that would be enough to motivate a story of any genre. There are things I don’t talk about, of course — there’s no reason to bare my total past, especially the things I did as a child that I am ashamed of — but what small secrets I have are not enough to drive a story. I suppose there are things in my heritage that could be considered a secret since no one really knows the truth. For example, the story goes that my great-grandfather, an inventor and peer of Edison and Tesla, had two wives. One he locked in an insane asylum, the other he threw down the stairs, but no one knows which of those women is our great-grandmother. Not that it matters — we obviously get whatever instability we have from the paternal side.

It does give me a different perspective of the world, though, this idea of everyone hiding a secret. Because those secrets generally don’t devolve into murder and mayhem, I can continue to take people at face value.

But still, I wonder what all of you are hiding.

***

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.

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Leisure Time

January 27, 2023 — Pat Bertram

Today’s blog prompt is: what do you enjoy doing most in your leisure time? At first glance this looks like yesterday’s prompt about what you do for fun, but as I got to thinking about it, there are differences — although “enjoyment” is an aspect of fun, “fun” isn’t necessarily an aspect of enjoyment.

For example, yesterday was an enjoyable day. I walked to the grocery store to pick up a couple of things that I needed, and I saw a friend there. She offered me a ride, so we visited as we meandered the store and then continued chatting as she drove me home. Such surprise meetings with friends are always enjoyable. Later, friends brought dinner over here and we just sat and visited. It was too low key to be “fun,” but it was certainly enjoyable. (Though after a while, we had to make a concerted effort not to talk about homeowner’s insurance. Theirs went up as much as mine, and we were all still reeling from the shock of it. It got to be too depressing — and not at all enjoyable — to discuss the idiocies and unfairness of the insurance racket.)

Though perhaps that doesn’t answer the question. One definition of leisure time (I Googled it, of course!) is free time spent away from such activities as work, chores, errands, eating, and sleeping. If that’s the case, then yesterday’s enjoyable activities weren’t done in leisure time, since in the first instance, the enjoyment revolved around errands and in the second instance the enjoyment revolved around eating. Come to think of it, all of my visits with friends involve those activities. If I’m not hitching a ride with friends to go shopping, then we’re sitting around and eating. Still, by my simple definition (awake time not spent working), that’s still leisure time since all my awake time is free time except for the few hours a week I spend working. After all, I don’t have to do chores or errands at any given time; I can wait until they are not a burden but are rather enjoyable.

On days like yesterday, what I most enjoyed doing in my leisure time was visiting with friends, on other days, such as today, what I most enjoy doing is being by myself, not having to deal with problems, and not talking to anyone, not even cherished friends.

The way I figure it, my days are enjoyable either way.

***

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.

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Not Happy Ever After

January 25, 2023 — Pat Bertram

I don’t often read romances, but I will in a book emergency, such as if I need something simple to read while waiting, if I’m not feeling well enough to focus on a more complicated book, or if I know I’ll be frequently interrupted. But I might be rethinking this policy and go back to my “no romance” stance of previous years. I just finished reading a particularly silly romance, where the woman owns a major hotel chain, is super rich, contented with her life, has good friends and a beloved godchild or two. What she doesn’t have is a man, though she’s not the one who feels the lack — it’s her friends who think she needs more in her life.

It turns out there is a man in her life — an employee who’s been in love with her for years. Frustrated that she doesn’t even know he’s alive (except as a valuable part of the organization), he gives his notice, then starts treating her badly. He doesn’t tell her what’s going on but expects her to intuit it. Knows she’s naïve when it comes to relationships (because when would she ever have had time for a relationship?) yet doesn’t make allowances for her naivete and expects her to be as knowledgeable as he is. He introduces her to his family, and when she gives an expensive gift to his sister who is getting married, he throws it at her and yells that his family is not for sale. He grabs her for a kiss and then pushes her away. All this is typical “grooming” behavior for a predator who wants to control another person.

By the end of the book, they are married and living in his house, he is running her company, and she is reduced to working part time. This is supposed to be a good thing because it allows her to do the things other wives “love” to do, like cook and clean and play around with hobbies. Yeah, right.

Since most of what I read are mysteries or thrillers (with a sprinkling of horror and science fiction), all I can think of is that this is the prelude to the real story, where he continues to distance her from her friends and ultimately “disappears” her.

In fact, Jeff once taped a movie for us that was similar to this extended story. The first half of the movie was all sweetness and light. The lonely young woman found someone who loved her and treated her well (unlike the fellow in the above book). She happily married him, moved to his gorgeous home in another state, and . . .

That’s where Jeff ended the movie. He cut out the part where the loving husband terrorized her before trying to kill her and so what was left was a nice, sweet short film of a misfit girl who finds her perfect fit.

Perhaps, in the end, that’s what this romance writer did — cut out the real story, got rid of the violence and terror, and left us with a short romance that was anything but sweet, and definitely not happy ever after!

***

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.

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Real Life Beach Read

October 29, 2022 — Pat Bertram

The term “beach read” started out as an advertising gimmick for books published in the summer for the beach-going crowd. They were non-challenging books, a bit frothy and fun, and could be almost any genre as long as the story was good enough to keep one’s attention but not so serious it would spoil one’s vacation. Nowadays “beach read” seems to be an actual genre, generally a romance or woman’s story that takes place at the beach. In a typical beach story, three sisters who are all at a crossroad in their lives end up at the family’s beach house, often to figure out what to do with house they jointly inherited in the hope that a sale will help solve their various issues. The book ends up with all their problems being resolved as well as the three disparate and far-flung sisters reconnecting and reestablishing their sisterhood.

My sisters recently came to visit, and I couldn’t help thinking I was living in a real life “beach read.” They weren’t here to help resolve the issue of our parents’ house because that had been taken care of eight years before. (Oddly, they just happened to be here on the eighth anniversary of our father’s death, but it was our mother we toasted with her favorite Bailey’s Irish Cream.) And anyway, this house is a done deal — it’s mine and mine alone.

We had no serious issues to resolve, and no true crossroads, though both sisters are dealing with a change in their circumstances, and the visit allowed them a respite from their respective issues. We had reconnected as sisters during our first “three sisters” weekend, but we haven’t all been together in the intervening four-and-a-half years. And rather surprisingly, this was the first time ever the three of us spent the night alone under the same roof.

To be honest, I was a bit nervous about hosting this gathering (three women and one bathroom seemed an untenable equation), and I didn’t know how generous I’d be about sharing my house. But it all worked out well, perhaps because they didn’t stay long, just a couple of nights. It was fun being with people who had known me most of my life (I say “most” because one sister is eight years younger and one is twelve years younger). And it was especially nice solidifying our sisterhood.

Even though I live in a town way out on the prairie, we even managed to spend some time at a beach!

The body of water — a reservoir — is huge, 30 square miles, and is adjacent to a 13,100-acre state park. Obviously, there wasn’t a whole lot of the place we could explore in one afternoon, but we managed to see several beautiful areas and take some stunning photos.

Unlike the characters in a beach read, I don’t suppose any of our lives were changed by the visit, but it definitely was a special time for all of us.

***

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.

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