Category: memories

memories, remembering

visits

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I’m not sure who the visitors have been, always, but over the years, I have received visitors – uninvited – who came to me with a message, and in their own voice.

The first time, I was sitting alone in a tiny cabin along Highway 57 in Baileys Harbor, Wisconsin. I had traveled to Door County to be alone for a few days to heal from some heartbreak. Door County is one of my places on earth, the place I return to as often as possible, even now that I’ve lived in California for most of my life. I travel to Door County to honor a promise I made to myself many years ago – that no matter how far my life would take me, I would return.

I still turn to look up at the cabin each time I pass it, when I visit Door County, in silent recognition of that time. The builder placed the wood frame building just-so on a rise, a few hundred feet in front of the woods. The highway below cannot be seen from the front window, which I faced, sitting alone at the little kitchen table. Across from me was the sky hanging over Green Bay. Except for me and my relentless thoughts, I was alone. “It’s ok, Mary:” a voice spoke in the room. I turned to look over my left shoulder, in the direction of the sound. No one was there. When I turned to face the window again, I was still alone in the room.

*

A few years later, I was awakened in my dorm room at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, where I was studying for a Master of Divinity degree, on my way to being ordained in the United Methodist Church. What had wakened me? I didn’t know, didn’t understand, still don’t understand. What I did understand was that the presence of my maternal grandmother – Frances Markowski – Feodosia Machsuda Srebny – had somehow entered me, come into me, inhabited me. I was afraid, and in my fear, I cried out for Jesus. Then, nothing. No presence, no sound, no light, no other disturbance. Did I fall back to sleep? Mostly a light sleeper, I don’t remember if I was able to sleep again that night.

Over the coming months that turned into years, I was aware – always – of the presence of my maternal grandmother, who had passed when I was in college. Hers was the first funeral I attended; until her death, my parents had gone without me, my sister, or my brother, to funerals. I had not felt attached to my grandmother. She had lost her ability to speak any English in her later years, instead speaking only Ukrainian when Dad picked her up at the nursing home to spend the holidays with us. As soon as she arrived, she began to ask my mother to be taken home again.

She gave me a gift after her return during my seminary years. Jeff speaks about those visitations as a “haunting,” although I didn’t feel haunted. Instead, from time to time I sat and word by word, line by line, I crafted poems that tell the story of her life, of her leavings, of her griefs. I call the poems, “The Feodosia Poems”, and they will be included in my collection of poems, Moments, to be published this year.

Years later, a friend and I would sit on the floor of my home and together, with our intentions, free my grandmother to move on in her life. I watched as she traveled away from me, away into the past. She has not returned.

I asked my friend why she had come to me, why not to others in the family? “Who else would she go to?” my friend answered, simply.

*

In 2001, I was living in Oakland, California, in a rented duplex with Jeff. I had moved my mother to Oakland to live in a wonderful assisted living home, The Matilda Brown Home, not far from where I live now, in 1998, the year I was appointed as Pastor at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church in downtown Oakland. Mom loved her new home, where she made friends and enjoyed the simple activities, the regular meals in the beautiful dining room, her times outside in the garden, where she and I sat together on a swinging bench during our visits. She loved her little room, the smallest at the home, where she returned after breakfast every day to read the newspaper as she sat on her single bed. The one small window overlooked the school yard of Oakland Tech, and she could hear the young people playing sports as she sat in her chair.

The night before she passed, Jeff insisted that I go home to sleep in my own bed. He spent the night in the swivel chair next to her bed. Before I left her room to go home that last evening, I sat in the silence, her breathing the only sound in the room. Then, I noticed a melody, playing itself alone in my head. The words of a melancholy song from the musical “Fiddler on the Roof” came into my head: how can I make you understand, why I do, what I do? Going away to a distant land, far from the home I love.”

As planned, Jeff stayed the night in the chair beside Mom’s bed. In the morning, I awoke alone in our flat, and prepared for the day. I stood at the window in the corner of our bedroom, combing my hair. “Everything is going to happen naturally from here on.” I heard a voice. I turned to look over my shoulder into the room behind our bedroom, with its windows on two sides bright with the morning. “Jesus?” I asked, into the silence.

A few minutes later, I arrived in Mom’s room. I saw immediately that her breathing had changed, and that death was not far away. Mom had been asleep now for several days, medication given by her doctor easing her discomfort. As I arrived, I turned to Mom in her bed and said: “I’m here now.” Jeff had left the room, and she and I were alone. And I stood and watched as she took her last breath.

*

I expect life holds many mysteries, many things I will not ever understand. I expect that your life holds many mysteries, too.

memories, reflecting

Cities

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I grew up in the city – Milwaukee, Wisconsin, specifically, the North Side of Milwaukee. I expect my love of cities began there. I have many memories of riding city busses in Milwaukee, beginning when I was little, in the company of my mother. I thought all cities were like Milwaukee, its streets set out on a grid, making it easy to follow house numbers. That made it easy to figure out where friends lived, from the time I was little and walked those three city blocks from my house – we always lived in rented upper flats, a family in the flat below us, a full basement even further down, and a full attic. And I expect my love of that place has shaped my love as an adult, as my world has grown – and grown – and I’ve been privileged to travel, both in the United States and in cities around the world – I expect my love of the place I am from has shaped my love of cities in other places.

“You learn something new every day,” was a maxim my mother lived by, and that she bequeathed to me. Cities are a only one way to learn something new every day, of course, but cities provide strong evidence of cultures beyond the one in which I grew to adulthood.

I prefer large cities. I proved that to myself when, after receiving training as a Claims Representative for Social Security in Minneapolis for three months in early 1973, I was sent to work at the Social Security Office in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I lived in Green Bay for almost three years before I transferred back to Milwaukee in my government position.

As a United Methodist pastor, I was sent as a pastor to places I might not have chosen on my own, but which I came to love. And I was grateful to have spent most of my ministry in large cities. “A city girl in a city church,” Jeff said in his remarks at my retirement from a church in downtown Oakland where I had pastored for 16 years.

My travels outside of Milwaukee had started during my college years. One spring break, my mother gave me the $200.00 for a week trip to New York City. I was in love! And what you can find in New York City! Vicki, who had traveled with me and was my roommate, and I had second row tickets to see “Hair” on Broadway when “Hair” was all the rage. We found our way to out of the way delis for lunch, We walked and we looked at everything with all the joy of young women whose world was opening up – even if we didn’t know it then. We made mistakes; one evening, as dark was coming on, we hailed a cab whose driver told us that “you girls shouldn’t be walking in this neighborhood” as he delivered us safely to the street outside our hotel.

*
Many years later, in 1988, I traveled to the then USSR – during the times of Gorbachev, when the country was beginning to open up. Communism was still in full effect, and our large group of faith leaders from the U.S. who were traveling to honor the 1,000th anniversary of the Orthodox Church, were divided into smaller groups upon arrival in the USSR, for the duration of our journey. Itineraries in each group were different. As often as I could during our stay, I walked with my roommate: in the streets of Leningrad, Moscow, Kiev, and Odessa. I took the subway – the same system as BART in the Bay Area – in Moscow. I looked at the people as I passed them on the streets. In Kiev I carefully looked at the people who passed me as I walked, looking for the eyes, the bearing, the faces of my people. I found them there. I experienced some of the government control of the people when a citizen of the USSR who sat in the seat beside me on a plane, told me that the people were not allowed to travel outside the USSR, and when a small group of fellow travelers and I met to talk about our next outing in the hall of a hotel, we were told to disband our group by an employee of the hotel.

*

Over the years, I’ve traveled to many of the great cities of the world. I have not ever forgotten the privilege my life has been, how I’ve seen places that even my mother could not dream of seeing. Part of my travels is the simple joy of walking and watching, and I’ve done so in Paris, London, Washington, D.C., Seoul, Berlin, Dublin, Minneapolis, Chicago,Istanbul, San Francisco. There are many others. Each city has its particular feel, its own personality. Each city is beautiful, in its own way. Like the stamps on the pages of my passport, each city has left its own mark in my heart. I hope to be a guest in other cities in the next few years.

I’m grateful for the privilege that has brought me to this place, and to this reflection, to this time of easy days and remembering. And to the ancestors who traveled from their own places to bring me to this life, to this place.

From the kitchen window of our home in Oakland, I can see through the trees in our yard, I can see across the Bay, the sky and the skyline of San Francisco, as if it is framed by the trees. Each evening at sunset, the colors over the City are different. Sometimes the City sits beneath a pink sky, sometimes it is invisible through the fog that falls over San Francisco Bay, sometimes white clouds float over a blue and gray sky. From my own city – Oakland – I see that other great City. This place suits me. The sky, the sunset, the view through the trees, they all seem to agree.

Coming into Oakland from San Francisco on the Bay Ferry, photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 1/2026


memories, nostalgia, remembering

Magic

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I suppose that what I miss most during the holiday season – besides all of those before me who have passed – is the magic. And I suppose the magic has been gone now, for a long, long – long – time.

There was a certain magic to bringing Christmas to the people of a congregation when I was an active Pastor. I loved the liturgical seasons, and I loved to hold onto Advent for as long as I could – a feat that was impossible to the folks who came to church: they wanted Christmas season to begin – they wanted to sing all the old carols we all know by heart – as soon as the Thanksgiving dishes had been cleared away.

“But there’s Advent” – I’d try to win them over – “a liturgical season of its own, and a season that is longer than the Christmas season itself” – to no avail. But I did love the music, the old, old music we love so well. I tried to hold off on the congregation singing the Christmas carols until the four Sundays of Advent had been honored. But no. It didn’t work – not even once.

To me, even the season of waiting – of the Coming of the Child – is as rich as Christmas – call it the Arrival of the Child – itself. The Coming is filled with something: hope, expectation, longing – all tangible, all filled in themselves with a reality that we have all lived at some time in our lives.

The magic captivated – captivates me.

I have a memory of my childhood that is still a mystery to me. It was Christmas Eve, and I was in bed, in the narrow room I shared with my little sister, Suzie. Maybe she was already asleep. My bed was pushed up against the wall with the window. I could hear Mom and Dad in the living room, only a few feet away, shuffling around, making things happen. Like tradition in the Old Country, they were decorating the Christmas tree which Suzie and I would only see in all its glory for the first time on Christmas morning. There was always a layer of ice on the second story window, the cold of Milwaukee’s winter coming through the storm window Daddy had carefully hung in autumn. And on that Christmas Eve, I heard the bells – outside my window. I heard the bells of Christmas! I raised my head from the pillow, looked out into the cold, dark winter night. The only sound I heard then was the rustling of my parents in the next room.

The magic was gone. As quickly as it had arrived – gone.

And I fell asleep then in anticipation of Christmas morning, when, in the old European way, we would open our gifts around the decorated tree, the gifts that had arrived – mysteriously – sometime in the night.

Magic! photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 12/2025, View Place

memories, remembering, Uncategorized

Something’s always missing

Mary Elyn Bahlert

One of the most poignant emotions, to me, is the feeling that something is missing. I expect the feeling is one of loss, or maybe nostalgia. It’s hard to put a finger – a word! – on it, but it’s there, a feeling that sticks to my insides, that doesn’t go away. Something is not quite right.

I think it’s the temperatures in the 50’s and 60’s that betray this time of year, the precious days between Thanksgiving and the end of the year. In Milwaukee, dark blue skies hanging over colorful trees of autumn give way to a bleak gray that marks the coming of the end of the year, of the beginning of months of cold, cloud-covered skies, of cozy homes, of night coming on early.

And I’ve lived in this temperate climate for most of my life, but the longing in me still comes on strong in late fall. After Thanksgiving Day, Jeff and I go out together to a Christmas tree lot to pick out a newly picked tree, take it home and begin the decorating as soon as the tree arrives. We love the lights that light up the early darkness each evening, and I move myself from my study into the living room, as often as possible. The pleasure of this season lasts for such a short time: the intense longing that accompanies the season will give way to the closing of the year. As a pastor, I loved bringing the Christmas story and the Christmas songs to the gathered community, often to a community of folks I did not know well, on Christmas Eve; now, I enjoy the lights and the early dark of the season alone, with Jeff. We seem to bring nostalgia into the house with the Christmas tree we’ve carefully picked out from a local business, always remembering the cold evening of a long ago December when my Dad would take a long time to pick out the best tree in the lot to take home to our cozy flat, carrying the tree up the narrow staircase to the second floor where Mom’s holiday baking filled the air with sweet smells.

All of these memories come to mind, as I sit near the tree. I like to play Christmas music on my iPad – quietly – as background to the moments we cherish now.

Before the end of the year, we’ll sit together in the room with the tree and remember moments of the past year that are highlighted in our memories. Jeff will write a list of what he intends to accomplish in the year ahead. I’ll remember those who are gone now, most for many, many years. It’s that time of year.

Our tree, waiting to be dressed for the holiday!

photo, Mary Elyn Bahlert, 12/1/2025

memories, reflecting

Walking Through Covid

Mary Elyn Bahlert

It’s hard to remember what we thought about COVID-19 when we first heard about the virus in early 2020, and even when we ourselves were subject to a “sheltering in place” order, an order that changed our lives dramatically and for a long time.

How did we do it? A vivid memory of mine is listening to the new on NPR Radio at 3 pm, day after day. And I listened as each Friday, after recounting the news of the day, Judy Woodruff spent a few moments remembering in a few sentences the lives of five people who had lost their lives early in the pandemic, which swept across New York City before it reached across the rest of the country. We listened carefully to the wisdom and knowledge of Anthony Fauci as he gave us simple but extreme guidelines that would shape our lives for many months.

Jeff and I live in the Bay Area, which has a Mediterranean climate, and for that, we could be very grateful. We took to walking together early in the morning after rising and drinking our first cups of coffee even earlier – 5:30 am – in one of the two cemeteries that stretch for acres into the hills of the East Bay, just a block away from our house. We made new friends from the neighborhood as we saw some folks each day and others once or twice a week. We hosted gatherings with our friends as we sat huddled together in a circle in our yard in our down jackets. We ate our meals with friends on paper plates. For several months, I had our groceries delivered to our door by the brave and kind folks who did that work on our behalf, until I began to shop at the local supermarket early in the morning; I still like to shop early in the day, a habit formed during that time. Jeff was serving a church in downtown Oakland as interim pastor, and he preached each week as he sat in our yard and as I taped his sermon on his phone to be sent to the church secretary who put worship together for everyone in the parish.

Even so, the days and weeks and then months stretched on and on before us. Ugh. How did we do it?

Early in the evenings, Jeff and I would get into one of our cars and drive along Broadway in Oakland, through downtown, and to the Bay, where the ferries to Alameda and San Francisco left the dock, still on schedule, during the day. We would park along the narrow streets at Brooklyn Basin, a new development in Oakland, and walk along the shore of the Bay. Young people roller-skated on the pavement along the shore and loud music formed the background for all of us.

These memories came to mind – I’m certain there will be other memories – when Jeff and I drove into San Francisco – the City – on Saturday to attend a fall gathering at California College of the Arts. We parked our car a few blocks away and walked up some steep hills before we attended a luncheon on the campus. We remembered how we hiked in many places in the Bay Area, on Mount Diablo, at Martinez – and how we walked in San Francisco before the months of sheltering gave way to our getting vaccines. We sat outside on folding chairs carefully spaced safely apart at Kaiser in San Francisco as we waited to receive our first shot. We haven’t counted, but we’re sure we walked up and down those hills in at least 15 neighborhoods in the City over the months that stretched into years. Early on, traffic was light; as the months went on and as each one of us stretched our limits, tested our limits – traffic increased. Things were returning to normal.

Mary greets us each morning as we walk – up hills and down – in St. Mary’s cemetery, Oakland, 2020.