Oh, Tannenbaum
A personal Christmas story of joy and grief
In the groundless openness of sorrow, there is a wholeness of presence and a deep natural wisdom. – Lakota wisdom
Grief is the Metal Element’s root emotion. In Chinese Five Element wisdom, its corresponding direction is West. Not until I moved back west did inevitable grief come to visit me, a sadness I didn’t know I still carried following the divorce from my first husband, like a rare-earth metal purified over time, over decades, seemingly eons. I had married a Tannenbaum. And true to his name, he planted the seed of an evergreen in my heart. When you love someone enough to get married to them, you carry them in your body, still, and sometimes even in your dreams. My grief is proof that the love is still there.
Oh, Tannenbaum, Oh, Tannenbaum
your branches green delight me
they’re green when summer days are bright
they’re green when winter’s snows are white
Oh, Tannenbaum, Oh, Tannenbaum
your branches green delight me
After my husband, Chuck, and I finished decorating our freshly cut fir tree for Christmas this year, I stood in front of it alone while he went to work. Oh, Tannenbaum, I silently heard myself say as the grief began to rise through its branches and lights.
Shortly after moving west and into our new home this past July, and four days before my birthday, my first husband, Duane Tannenbaum, passed away. Duane was three and a half years older than me. We married when I was nineteen and too young to know my mind.
A hopeful new bride, I delighted in signing my last name, Tannenbaum, on the Christmas cards I sent to relatives and friends. Duane delighted in his serious hobby turned career of growing green living things. He and my mom bonded through their shared love of exotic and rare tropical plants. Mom, who had also been married for the first time when she was nineteen, reluctantly approved of me marrying a nurseryman. Duane grew orchids, and I grew cacti, where we lived and worked at a plant nursery. Cacti had much to teach me, and I had much to learn from their delicate flowers that bloom among sharp spines, protected from a cruel world. Duane and I remained married for two short years.
For most of my life, I have run on two tracks: music and plant medicine. Duane ran on similar tracks. An excellent musician with long, delicate fingers, he played guitar, piano, and sang. On land I purchased where Duane and I built a home, he started a nursery business that he ran with his second wife for 45 years until he died. Before we finished the house that I helped design, we divorced, and I never lived in it. Even though I ended our marriage and did the leaving, is it still not a grievous thing to lose a home and a marriage?
Duane and I initially met at a music store. Then we met up one night at Casa del Mar, a Mediterranean-style apartment villa in Coral Gables, where the music store owner’s son threw marvelous parties, and everyone got high on something. Duane appeared shy, the nervous type, and he waited until the end of the party to open his guitar case and take out his guitar.
“You play a Yamaha? I do, too!” I blurted out, moving in close enough to smell patchouli beneath the smoke.
“You do?” he said, with soft doe eyes. “Cool. How do you like yours?”
“Oh, I really like it, but it’s a cheap guitar, you know,” I said, blushing and gathering my courage. “I brought it. It’s down in the car.”
“Well, go get it!” he said with a warm smile and sensual draw on his Marlboro cigarette. In those days, no one thought twice about smoking indoors, especially at a party.
I excused myself and headed down the apartment stairs to get my guitar, praying that I wouldn’t make a fool out of myself. When I returned, Duane played and sang with such skill that I wanted to follow him home that night. When my turn came to play a song, he listened intently. I didn’t play well, but he was encouraging and complimented my sense of rhythm.
Duane, the eldest of three brothers, had an Italian Catholic mother and a German Jewish father. In a blend of culture and history, his ancestry richly endowed him with dark olive skin, golden-brown eyes, full sensual lips, and thick, curly black hair that he wore in a loose afro. I found his sensuality and slightly effeminate sensitivity attractive.
While building the house I never lived in, Duane and I stayed with his little Italian grandmother, Ada, whose kitchen was too tiny for two people to work in. So, she refused my help and cooked dinner for us most nights, bent over the stove in her apron, her knowledgeable hands cooking the Italian food she enjoyed sitting down with us to share. Ada’s meals were a treat but always featured meat, and I wanted to be a vegetarian. Conflicts arose. I wanted a kitchen of my own.
Duane loved to cook, as did his parents and grandparents, and he shared their love of food. I could always count on the smell of Cuban espresso brewing first thing in the morning while he cooked an honest breakfast involving French toast, fresh fruit, and bacon. At least that is the way it was until I found a guru and started meditating, stopped smoking, and stopped eating meat. After Duane wrecked his car while under the influence after partying with friends, for which he received a D.U.I., he became depressed and even more anxious. We drifted apart.
Duane’s parents divorced when he was a teenager, and his mother raised three young boys alone. I surmise that may have caused or added to Duane’s nervous anxiety. Before I met him, he began smoking cigarettes, shooting speed, and smoking pot. But Duane had an Italian grandmother, a Norantonio, standing behind him. Ada, a kind and generous woman, stepped in to help his mother, as she would later do to support us. I met Duane when he was twenty-one, and he had begun to pull through.
In our later years, Duane and I became friends on Facebook. In a strange synchronicity, when I saw on his profile that he had died from a brief, yet aggressive illness, I happened to be wearing a replica of a delicate gold necklace he had purchased in an antique store and given me before we were married. He wore a similar one that bore an antique charm studded with a tiny diamond and pearl. My charm had two pearls and a small ruby, my birthstone. I purposely found and purchased the replacement in yet another antique store to connect with Duane’s energy when I began to write about him in my memoir all these years later.
The original necklace, which I never took off, became tragically lost after my parents put me in a drug rehab, and not solely because of drugs. I was a high school dropout who had moved in with my then-boyfriend, Duane, and my parents strongly disapproved of our lifestyle. They had set me up to be committed through the legal system, forcing me into a drug rehab program called The Seed, which catered to the troubled teen industry.
The Seed cult masqueraded as a rehab where Seedlings were not allowed to have things that reminded them of their “druggie” past. When a staff member came to take my necklace with its protective charm, I voluntarily surrendered it, hoping my compliance would set me free sooner. The staff could be hostile and abusive, many of them ex-cons and felons who chose to go to The Seed instead of prison. Within days of losing the necklace and starting my program, I miscarried and hemorrhaged. When I developed a fever, they offered no medical help, not even an aspirin. No one cared about my predicament, yet they took pains to remind me that I deserved it and had better get straight. For days, I laid there delirious, grieving the separation and part of Duane I had lost. Finally, they brought in a visiting nurse, who gave me some pills. Within days, my body began to mend, but the psychological torture had only just begun. In some ways, The Seed was a worse-than-prison-like environment because I was cut off entirely from the outside world. Duane wouldn’t learn about the miscarriage or trauma until much later. The Seed held me for nine months until I escaped with Duane’s help, but that is another story.
After my release from The Seed, I attempted to regain what I had lost with Duane by marrying him as soon as possible. We weren’t ready. And when I learned that he had passed away, I removed the necklace. I wore it symbolically to bring back the things that I had lost. It is a pattern for me, this unraveling and reweaving. There is joy to be found in grieving.
The joy I found in loving Duane came through our shared love of music and plants, which he lived until the end of his days, and I imagine I will do the same. He was born in the Earth sign of Capricorn, and I in the Water sign of Cancer. We were opposites and complimentary. When Duane died, I felt sad, but not like how the grief hit me while standing in front the Christmas tree this past week and singing, Oh, Tannenbaum.
Standing there, I contemplated growing older and the elders becoming ancestors. I am a shapeshifter with white thinning hair and grandmother jowls. I am beginning to crack and wrinkle like tree bark. The thought has occurred to me that I could become a tree by sending my consciousness into a majestic pine when I pass from this world. I have always loved things made from wood. Born a water sign on an Atlantic shore surrounded by coral reefs and dolphins, I have past life memories from Atlantis, where I remember shapeshifting into a dolphin to survive its destruction. Our world is again destructing. Only this time, I imagine shape-shifting into a Piñon or Bristlecone pine, a Tannenbaum.
A healthy Wood Element withstands the penetration of Metal’s blade and the cut of grief. Water resists nothing and overcomes everything. Joy corresponds to the Fire Element, as grief corresponds to Metal. Fire tempers Metal. Joy tempers grief. Perhaps it is my passion for the green living world and wood made into instruments that give rise to music that has helped me embody my joy and grief. Embodied grief allows us to let the pain go and to know joy. How else can we let go of something if we do not first fully hold it? I’m not sure why it had to take so long. Fifty years is a long time. But everything happens in its own time. I have learned that it takes as long as it takes. I have also known that when I fully embody my passion, that love and joy increase. And may it be so for you in this holy season of joy and grief.
Dedicated to the memory of Duane Tannenbaum, January 14, 1952 - July 11, 2023
Of special note: Perry Cromwell did a podcast documentary series called The Sunshine Place about the first heroin rehab that devolved into a violent cult. He is now working on a follow up to that project for which I have been interviewed, sharing my story about The Seed. Subscribers will be notified when it is released.
Enjoy my gifts to you…
Light the Way
A Winter Solstice-Christmas song by Thea, with daughter, Lauren Loiacono, on backing vocal.
Italian Ricotta Cheese Cookies
Traditionally made at Christmas and handed down through the Italian side of my children’s family, this recipe has been adjusted through the years, resulting in the ultimate ricotta cheese cookie.
Wellness Tip!
Stay well this winter with Astragalus (Huang Qi), which builds our Wei Chi (protective Qi) and will strengthen the Metal Element and support it during times of grief. Visit Wisdom of the Plant Devas blog to learn more: Astragalus for Myocarditis, Long COVID, & Immune Support
Aloha Dear Thea~ Thank you (& Lauren!) for the gift of Song.. I felt warmed being in your home while you sang. The cookie recipe looks divine😋 (though I may cut back on the sugar + try it with almond flour instead of wheat: i'll report on the results) Your earlier mention of the mining near Silver City has heightened my awareness of the many ways Earths metals touch my life every day. I am grateful to connect them with an emotion~ What a Blessing it is to connect with you in this way. 🙏🎄🕊 Big Love, Joyous mostly Allover