Bonnie appears on the "50-foot billboard" near Baltimore's Penn Station in a memorial tribute on the second anniversary of her death. Her photographs were streamed between commercial ads on the digital display for a week in 2017, and rerun -- along with images of her -- at her husband's request by the advertising company Shanklin Media on March 11, 2023.

 The Final Journey

(This blog entry was the last written by Bonnie J. Schupp before her life was taken by pancreatic cancer on March 11, 2021. It was found in March 2024, as the lone post residing in her other blog where it evidently had been published by Bonnie on Jan. 16, 2021 -- rather than here on her Journeys blog. It is now posted here by Bonnie's husband, David M. Ettlin, who continues to manage her literary and photographic legacy.)

January 16, 2021

 Numb. I seem to be entering the final stage of my life full of numbness. Last night I awoke from a deep sleep, unable to determine how I was feeling. Was I too warm or too cold? Was I bloated or did I just need to roll over to the other side? Was I in pain or feeling empty?

This is the fourth day since I learned that my body has been invaded with cancer. Sitting calmly in the examination room with Dr. Wolf, his PA James and David, it did not hit me like the proverbial  ton of bricks. Instead, it hit me with a flick of a feather.  

I had been in MedStar Harbor Hospital at the end of September, admitted through the ER because of abdominal pain. After a plethora of tests, it was determined that I had gall bladder stones and needed to say goodbye to my gall bladder, which I did in two weeks. After that surgery, for a while I was good again, riding my bike and walking.

Then the symptoms and pain began again. Constipation, lower intestinal pain, fatigue. I saw Dr. Wolf who sent me for more tests. Did I mention that when I was in the hospital in September, besides a bad gall bladder, there was a spot on my pancreas? The doctor compared three scans from the past year. The first showed no spot. The second showed a foreign spot. The third showed that the invasive spot had grown rather quickly. Diagnosis—aggressive pancreatic cancer.

While gastroenterology Dr. Wolf and James told me about the new status of my body, I remained calm.

“What do I need to do next?” Of course I was thinking about how can we fix this but, at the same time, understanding it may not be able to be fixed.

“Well,” I smiled behind my Covid mask. “I can’t complain about my life. We’ve traveled to every state in the country and many other countries including Japan three times, once on a Fulbright. We’ve raised two wonderful daughters. I’ve had a good ride.”

Dr. Wolf said gently, “You have a rough ride ahead of you.” He arranged for me to see an oncologist at the Tate Cancer Center at University of Maryland Baltimore-Washington Medical Center, a short drive from our house.

That first hour of the news, I calmly accepted it. In fact, I knew it was serious when both James and Dc. Wolf were in the room with me. This feeling was fortified when I asked if David could come in the room (which was not allowed during these Covid times), Dr. Wolf immediately volunteered to meet him at the front door and bring him back to the room.

It’s interesting that since I turned 76, I’ve been thinking about death a lot, partly in remembering Mom’s death when she was 76. I was with her when she took her last breath. I thought that if I could make it beyond age 76, I might have a chance to go on more adventures from my bucket list.

And lately, I've felt strange sensations. While in my bedroom, often stretching and meditating, I would feel a clump of my hair move by itself, with no help from wind or me, or the shifting of light and shadow on the wall.  It almost felt like a ghostly presence trying to comfort me. Call it what you will—an altered state or imagination or something beyond my ability to understand—I felt it and thought of my father and his last journey with Parkinson’s Disease.

My life has been full of journeys and I am about to embark on the final chapter of mine!

 

(David's note: About the time Bonnie was working on this post, her desktop computer had a meltdown. Our computer savior, owner of Odyssey Computers in Glen Burnie, Maryland, had a new custom computer assembled in a few days so that Bonnie could finish work on a two-year project that now had the grimmest of deadlines: Her memoir.  She finished writing it just three weeks before leaving us. She included among her last wishes that I edit, select and add photographs, and publish through Amazon what turned out to be a 219-page book, "Curious Possibilities."

Months later, I found in her computer five diary-like notes written in the first days after her diagnosis that included her views on mortality, and what comes after; how she was not ready to die, but at least had a wonderful life without regrets. She said nothing about fear... not in those notes, not ever to me. And we talked a lot over the course of five weeks, about our 42 years together and about her last wishes, before Bonnie's physical strength noticeably diminished. There was nothing left unsaid between us. 

The other wishes were for a party rather than a funeral (held seven months later, attended by some 165 friends and family), and that I continue selling her photographs. One of them was subsequently accepted for a national juried show of women photographers, and others have been exhibited and sold in area art shows. Bonnie's web site  bonnieschupp.com displays many of her photos. Costs for the domain and site are covered by royalty earnings from sales through Getty Images and its iStockphoto subsidiary, where Bonnie has a portfolio of some 2,300 images.

Although I was the professional writer in the family, having been a newspaper journalist for four decades, when it came to blogging it was Bonnie who was most prolific. Her Journeys blog has hundreds of posts here, preserving many moments in time. And there are her other books, notable among them "Dog Tag Poetry" (2012, Blurb Books) and "365 Gifts on Turning 70" (2016, Amazon).

Contact me at david.ettlin@comcast.net.  I also monitor Bonnie's Facebook page and her email at schupp9@comcast.net )

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friendship

March 25, 2020

Sally dancing to the beat of a different drummer in a cemetery

Sally Hoover, my friend for more than 50 years, was in the hospital. She had fallen again and broken her arm. She also had pneumonia and the doctors suspected Covid-19 but test results take time. Her condition rapidly deteriorated and she was on oxygen. Palliative care aimed to make her comfortable.

How do you say goodbye during these times?

I called a nurse at the hospital so I could request my message be given to Sally. The nurse, however, told me, “Your timing is perfect. I’m in her room and she is awake. Let me put my phone on speaker so you can tell her yourself.”

“Sally, this is Bonnie. We’ve been friends for so long. I want you to know that I love you.”

I heard a cooing sound.

How do you have a phone conversation with someone on oxygen and drugged too much to speak clearly? It was enough though to say goodbye in the best way we could.

She died soon after.

In these days of Covid-19, how do you deal with her departure in a way that she deserves? How do family and friends get together for a memorial service, a celebration of who she was and your connection with her? How do you deal with such an important transition?

~~~

I met Sally (officially Sarah Avirett) at Frostburg where we were students in the 60’s. She wasn’t in any of my classes but she literally wandered into my life while I was working in the yearbook office where I was yearbook photography editor. I should say she “danced” into my life because my impression of our first encounter was of someone constantly moving.

We came from different backgrounds. Her Cumberland family lived in a huge house called Rose Hill, a place where the Cumberland Historical Society often gave tours. I grew up in a modest Baltimore City row house. There were some similarities though. We both had two siblings. Both of our mothers were stay-at-home moms. Her father was an attorney, a college graduate. My father was in banking after his service in the Navy but did not finish college because (he told me) “I didn’t want to miss my children growing up.”  Like our contemporaries at Frostburg, Sally and I were both struggling to discover who we were but I think her struggles may have been more challenging than mine.

We did not room together or share any classes but we continued to do things together. We walked about and explored, me with my camera. She introduced me to yummy rice pudding at the Princess Restaurant on Main Street. Although I did not have permission (female students needed parent signature in those days), I stayed several times at her family’s home. One of those times, in my quest to learn who I was, she fixed some alcoholic drinks for me and I spent most of the night hanging my head over a toilet. Her mother, unaware of the cause, was sympathetic and wondered where I picked up the bug.

I attended Frostburg tuition free. I signed a contract promising to teach after graduation for two years in Maryland because the state was experiencing a teacher shortage. I worked several jobs in college: typing dittos for professors and reading to a blind student who also became my friend and who passed away many years ago. Pay for these jobs was 75 cents to a dollar an hour.  I helped pay for my room and board also by working as a teller in Baltimore every summer and with $2,000 from my uncle. I think during some of Sally’s time in college she lived at home and another time she boarded in the old Gunter Hotel in town  that had reserved a floor for boarding college students.

Over the years, Sally was a model for some of my photos—with and without clothing. About a year ago, I gave her the nude photos I’d taken of her which made her chuckle. I told her, “It’s up to you what you do with them…throw them away or frame them." One of my favorite photos of her was taken in my film days of her spirited dancing in a cemetery.

Sally was generous. On one of my birthdays, she bought a flying lesson for me—extravagant by my standards. She gave me two volumes of H. L. Mencken’s The History of the English Language, an art book on family and The Art of Andrew Wyeth. The painting on the cover captured an ethereal ambiance I always felt about Sally. We both loved art and reading. In her last years in Baltimore, she liked to celebrate her birthday by buying symphony tickets for a group of her friends or taking them out to eat. 

The painting on this cover captures an ethereal
ambiance  I've always associated with Sally.

After I graduated from Frostburg (she dropped out), Sally temporarily lived in several places out of state. She sent postcards, letters and copies of poems she thought I’d like. (I recently returned her old post cards and letters.) For some time, she lived with my first husband Scott and me in our Charles Village apartment. (My current husband David was a downstairs neighbor and had met Sally briefly.) During that time, she met a man in the musical group we hung out with and wound up marrying Chester Hoover. He was low key and she was vivacious. I remember their wedding in her family’s home. After the ceremony, she took off her wedding gown, put on her swim suit and jumped exuberantly into the in-ground pool.

As often happens with friends, circumstances interrupt connections. I divorced, remarried and became a mother twice. I was teaching and going to school at night and didn’t have much time for socializing. When I wanted to reach out to her, I couldn’t find her contact information. She was a tech luddite and had no presence online.

In 2007, while my father was in his declining years with Parkinson’s and I was making frequent trips to Parkville, David saw a death notice for an Avirett. It was her brother. Before visiting my father, I went to the funeral where I saw Sally greeting people afterward. I recognized her even though it had been years.

I went up to hug her and said, “It’s Bonnie.”

“Yes, I know.” She was surprised to see me.

What do you say?

She said to me, “Thank you for coming. We’ll have to get together sometime.” I agreed but felt it wasn’t the right time to exchange contact information. So I left.

After some time passed, David found her address and one day when we were in the neighborhood, we knocked on her door unannounced. Through the glass, I watched her move to the door. It was obvious she was no longer capable of dancing. But her mind was good as we talked about books and politics.  She worked on NYT crossword puzzles. She was surrounded by photos of her family as we caught up that afternoon. She told us her husband had left her and remarried.

After that, we continued to visit her in her home near Wyman Park, in the hospital and in her new assisted living home. And we talked on the phone. She was always sympathetic to the physical problems David and I were experiencing too in our senior years

I’ll always remember the vivacious young woman I met in college—a free spirit dancing to the beat of a different drum. But I’ll also remember the recent conversations of the slower, quieter, older woman I just said goodbye to on the nurse’s speaker phone. By that time, I think she knew and liked the person she was. I do too.

Sarah Hoover 1944-2020 and Bonnie Schupp

Day 359 Hidden Narrative

December 3, 2015

(If we live with an open and grateful attitude, every day will bring a gift. This is one of 365 gifts during the year I turned 70.)

It’s funny how I can walk the same path for many days and on my 50^th trip, I find something I hadn’t noticed before. Today as I walked in Downs Park, I went along the path from the regular beach toward the dog beach. There is a sign for the dog beach with an arrow that is located on step seats overlooking the Chesapeake Bay. I’ve walked by here hundreds of times but I must not have sat on the steps recently because all I needed was about 12 more inches in height in order to notice something special. It was only by stepping up on the bottom step that I could see a group of painted stones with words and numbers written on them.

I was intrigued. At first, I thought maybe these stones were a memorial to deceased pets but the names were not typical pet names. Those having dates on them had only one date. Was it a birth date or a death date? 

Curious about the story behind these stones, I asked a park ranger in the main office. There was a story. I learned that a group of families who had lost babies in birth or shortly after birth had asked the park for permission to put this handmade memorial in the park in a perfect location overlooking the Bay. They were probably looking for closure and something tangible in a natural setting. Now that I know the narrative, the stones have become something more beautiful, a spot for me to stop each day. I learned that just one step can make a difference.

My gift today is one step up.

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> Day 360: Connecting the Dots


You can find links to my other posts on this project here:
http://bjschupp.blogspot.com/2014/12/365-gifts.html

              

Day 358 Passing

December 2, 2015

(If we live with an open and grateful attitude, every day will bring a gift. This is one of 365 gifts during the year I turned 70.)

In the past couple of years, we have lost family and friends—my aunt, two of David’s aunts and his brother, and too many friends. A year ago on this day, my father passed away after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease. I take this day to remember him and all those who have left us. Each one brings the pain of loss but also memories of how our lives connected and how each one has left something special with us. 

Recently, David and I visited the cemetery where his family is buried. In the Jewish tradition, visitors leave stones on top of the headstones, a reminder that the buried are not forgotten. David stood by his namesake, his grandfather’s grave, David Kaplan who died at the young age of 66. 

I tell David stories of my grandparents and my uncle he never knew and they become part of our narrative. Sadly, I only knew my father-in-law for a short while because he died in the 80’s but I’m glad I had a chance to get to know my mother-in-law and was able to make her smile shortly before her life ended. She lay in a hospital bed. Like my Aunt Leona just before she died, Rose had a beautiful glow and I told her sincerely how beautiful she looked at that moment. She smiled and held my hand. 

I remember her words to my father at one of our family gatherings. “Alvin,” she said, “do the best you can with what you have.”  With most of her hearing and sight gone, she did.

My gift today is memories.

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> Day 359: Hidden Narrative

You can find links to my other posts on this project here:
http://bjschupp.blogspot.com/2014/12/365-gifts.html