Journal entry August 9 2025

James Bowers December 30, 1950 – August 6, 2025.

“Daddy” ❤️

When we met, I was the dancer, you the musician. And we became parents and creative partners. We navigated life chapters as best we could with our two spectacular children. Our homes were always FILLED with music, books, films, art, food (Including your favourite Kalles Kaviar), lots of coffee, family and friends, tears and laughter, toys and joys. We were 4 passionate creatives surrounded by all we loved, growing up together. And you challenged me in ways that left me breathless and shaped me. And I grew. You told me I am an artist and that I MUST honour that. And I have. I shake and ache with gratitude for it all, Jamie.

“You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.” – Franz Kafka

Journal entry August 26,2025

I stood waiting to disembark on the car deck, maintaining balance as the ferry approached the Langdale dock. Waves crashing. The sky bright blue. Folks pushing past me to be able to get off first. I was feeling the weight of my bags, the weight of the memories of coast life, feeling grief-heavy and grief-tired. Until a surge of lightness flowed through me: an instruction to release it all. No, to TRANSFORM it all.

The weighted past became buoyant, filled with white light enclosed in an off-white silk balloon that expanded into the sky, attached to me by a single silken unbreakable thread. The balloon kept expanding upward and outward. And I smiled with a new agreement with the past.

A little lighter in my step, I disembarked with the crowd into the heat. I met Anna ❤️ and we walked up the hill to the house and there they were – Lily, Julian, Emily. ❤️ And there they all came: all those beings from the past connected through Jamie Bowers. ❤️ A beautiful day of celebration of his life and his impact on all of us. A day of music and food, tears and honest stories, awe and gratitude. (And the silken ever-expanding balloon kept me upright.)

[A special thank you to Lily (Leanne Weisbecker), my children’s extraordinary bonus mom]

…

The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews,
Not to be born is the best for man;
The second-best is a formal order,
The dance’s pattern; dance while you can.

Dance, dance for the figure is easy,
The tune is catching and will not stop;
Dance till the stars come down from the rafters;
Dance, dance, dance till you drop.

– W.H. Auden, “Death’s Echo”