‘Traveling with Virtual Beth’: After wife died, grief-stricken husband … – Omaha World

Tim Guthrie is standing on a sunny beach in Uruguay. As the surf pounds behind him, he holds up a small sphere, kisses it gently and says, his voice trembling with emotion:

May you be free from suffering. May you dwell in safety. May you be at peace. May you feel my gratitude and love.

He then drops it into a deep hole dug in the sand and quietly buries it. The sphere, only slightly larger than a marble, features an image of his wife, Beth Broderick, a hauntingly beautiful woman with masses of dark, curly hair and an enigmatic smile.

It also contains a small amount of her ashes. 

Beth passed away unexpectedly Sept. 24, 2015, from complications of Parkinson’s disease and dystonia. She was 49.

The grief hit Tim like a tsunami, engulfing and drowning him, threatening to rend him in two. Tim and Beth had been together for 25 years and were married for 21. They had no children. Beth’s diseases had been progressive, excruciating and debilitating, and in recent years, Tim had become her constant caretaker, giving up whatever he could to be by her side.

He did it all gladly. Willingly. And when Beth died, Tim was so bereft and full of grief, it seemed as crippling as the diseases that had taken her from him.

He turned for some modicum of comfort to a place that surprised him. Facebook.

He had never really used it to share personal information – the social media platform was merely a tool for keeping abreast of what was happening in the community. Because Beth’s illnesses had taken so much of his time, Tim had also extricated himself from many of his social circles. Now, posting online provided a way to connect with both old friends and new.

“After Beth died, Facebook became a cathartic experience, because I didn’t have anybody to turn to, really,” Tim said. “I just started turning to friends online, so it became this helpful, useful thing.”

His posts laid bare his anguish and provided a means to express the unpredictable rollercoaster of his grief. In one post last fall he wrote:

I feel bad posting something depressing … but I just have to be honest. It’s hard. It’s crippling. It’s impossible to describe the thoroughly disabling and crushing emotional devastation that keeps me from wanting to do anything productive, let alone get out of bed or put pants on and get out of the house.

Sometimes, he even wrote to Beth. Remembering that they began dating in autumn, he posted:

You loved to wear all the colors of fall … and your hair, eyes and complexion contained the same colors. Especially your hair. Especially back then. And now it is October. The month I always enjoyed the most with you because we had such history tied to this time of the year. And now you’re not here to enjoy it with me. My heart breaks every single day, and it’s hard to see an end to this. If you knew how much I would miss you.

Tim’s heart ached so much, at times he felt like he might have a heart attack. He poignantly observed:

I used to think “died of a broken heart” was just some corny romantic saying. Now I get that it’s real.

The response was overwhelming. “Share, Share, Share!” exhorted one friend who had only met Beth a few times. “I cannot even begin to imagine your grief. Your community of friends all love you so much. I hope we can all be there for you now.” Another offered: “Tim, there are no words, only love. We are sending what we can your way and keeping you in our hearts.”

They did, and for the next several months, Tim relied on them and shared more, bared more. When he discovered a birthday card Beth had given him, one that said, “I love you, Timmy Boy!” he posted:

I keep stumbling on things that punch me in the gut and squeeze the life out of my heart.

Those things included the quotidian moments we all take for granted. Tim shared one of Beth’s texts asking him to pick up some Little Debbie Peanut Butter Crunch Bars from the grocery store. He posted a selfie she took someplace he couldn’t identify. The latter particularly anguished him.

I don’t know where she was. I don’t know where she took it. I can’t tell what she was wearing. I can’t clearly see her face. She is just out of reach. Everything is fading … and I can’t call her back to me.

Every day was a challenge, every night a long, lonely nightmare. Throughout the fall and into winter, Tim posted numerous photos of Beth smiling, her eyes creased into little crescent moons. There were images of Beth humoring Tim behind the camera or playing with their ridiculously goofy dog, Gozer. Beth with family. Beth with friends. Beth with him.

A soft-focused, black-and-white photo of Beth on a beach elicited a heartfelt reflection on the photos as a whole:

They feel tenuous and delicate and I feel I’m quickly struggling to picture her face as clearly as I desire. I want to SEE her, not remember what she looked like. I want to HOLD her, not grasp for a memory.

But memories were all Tim could grasp, and he began doing so in 3-D, making miniature portrait busts and small spheres he lovingly called BBs for his wife’s initials. He filled them with her ashes – infinitesimal amounts, for the majority were, per her wishes, scattered in her mother’s hometown of of North Bend, Nebraska.

Tim says he used to be a practicing artist. A professor of video and graphic design at Creighton University in Omaha, Tim is still widely known in the local arts community for his paintings, sculptures and videos.

He gave it all up to take care of Beth. 

After she died, friends encouraged him to get back into the studio to heal. He tried, but the attempt only intensified the immediacy of his grief.

“Every time I tried to do something, it was an absolutely miserable  experience,” he explained. “I left the studio to take care of Beth. Art wasn’t necessary. Spending time with Beth was. I had already made that choice. It was a choice for Beth. Giving up art to do that was a no-brainer.”

The BBs and portrait busts, though beautiful and artful, are for that reason not art for Tim. They are loving memorials commemorating his love for Beth and their life together.

“I’m doing it to honor her,” he said. “It’s not about me. It’s about her.” 

In February, a friend in South America invited Tim, then on sabbatical, to visit and put distance behind his mourning. Tim jumped on a plane and headed to Uruguay for five weeks, taking his precious BBs and portrait busts with him. He planned on leaving them in places Beth had never been able to visit because of her illnesses.

Like Iguazú Falls.

I didn’t see it (BB) hit the water… I have no idea if it’ll be taken far downriver, trapped in a crevice, or broken apart, which would scatter the ashes inside. Either way, I know she loved waterfalls.

At the same time, he started the blog “Traveling With Virtual Beth. She’s Gone, But She’s Always With Me.” It provided a way to keep in touch with friends and family who weren’t on Facebook. When he visited places like Machu Picchu, he was able to share those moments and say goodbye again. “It’s more ceremonial and symbolic,” explained Tim. “Obviously, I’m getting something out of this by going to the places and doing something. It’s a process I’m going through.”

The act of distributing the busts and BBs resonated online. People who followed his journey were struck by their simplicity and their meaning. “Tiny Taj Mahals” is how one of Tim’s online friends described them – each sphere, a world unto itself, each one a delicate memorial of a husband’s deep and abiding love for his wife.

The trip, while an escape, didn’t heal Tim’s pain. 

I have no words of wisdom to share from the experience. I didn’t grow. I didn’t transform. I wasn’t healed. I didn’t become a new person. I had no epiphanies. I simply moved forward, little by little, day by day, as distracted as I could allow myself to be.

Tim moved forward a little bit more with another project. Prompted by Beth’s parents’ decision to sell their home, he began photographing old photos of her in the house, holding them up against backgrounds in various rooms. It was a way to hold onto the fleeting memories that were becoming fainter with each passing day. The process was exacting and involved fastidiously aligning the photos to their exact spots as if to place Beth in the present again.

Seized with a desire to capture – or recapture – Beth in the moments they had shared, Tim began taking photos of other locations. He called the photos “Missing Pieces.”

The process helped Tim grapple with his loss and honor Beth. Most photos were accompanied with poignant reflections. Of a blurry black-and-white wedding photo he wrote:

I’m amazed how this image guts me as it simultaneously fills my heart with love. The stronger the memory, the more challenging the image is [to handle]… like fading memories I’m trying so hard to hold on to.

The project became an emotional priority. He wrote in April:

Anyone who might think I’m spending too much time still thinking about her (a comment I heard recently) has to remember I thought about her every day for decades.

This past summer, Tim invited his younger brother Max to accompany him on a trip to Europe. He visited places he had never been before, like Iceland, where he left his small memorials to Beth. He also retraced their honeymoon from more than 20 years earlier.

He took “Missing Pieces” photos in as many places as he could. Beth at Conwy Castle in Wales. Beth on a street in the Netherlands. Beth visiting Notre Dame in Paris. Beth with Tower Bridge behind her.

When he struggled to identify a location, he asked friends online to help. Some places had changed substantially or were under construction. He didn’t always get the image he wanted, but when he did it was a triumph.

A particular image in Paris stumped him. He thought it had been taken from a bridge. Instead it was captured on the roof of the Musée d’Orsay. By the time he realized his mistake, it was late in the afternoon, and he was scheduled to leave the city in the morning. Tim arrived at the museum near closing time only to be turned away by a guard who refused his pleas to join the last group of visitors.

Tim returned the next day with a scant 59 minutes to get his photo and catch his train. A crowd was already waiting for the museum to open. He listened for American accents. He begged to cut in line. Once inside, he sprinted past famous artworks and up five flights of stairs — to a rooftop balcony that was locked and wouldn’t open for another 90 minutes. He begged and pleaded with museum staff to open the door. He showed them his photo. “It’s my wife. She recently passed away … Please, it will only take a second. I have to catch a train.”

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Today, Tim is back in the classroom at Creighton. He wouldn’t say he’s happy. He wouldn’t even say he has approached a new normal. He just tries to get through every day as best he can. For the time being, he’s continuing with the blog and creating his loving tributes.

Of a recent Missing Piece, he noted: 

It used to be I missed this face so much when I traveled. It doesn’t take traveling to miss this face, anymore. I miss her every day. Every. Single. Day.

Still, the ongoing projects bring Tim some comfort. 

“I wasn’t trying to get to a place where I was magically healed,” he said. “I was just trying to get to a place where I wasn’t so devastated. Distributing her ashes, and taking the photos, I can’t say they make me happy, but maybe a little less miserable.”

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Tim Guthrie never intended for his emotional journey and his loving tributes to his late wife, Beth, to be public. Not, at least, in a significant way. His Facebook and blog posts were meant for family and friends. But journalists began contacting him for interviews, and repeatedly, he turned them down. “It’s been exhausting,” he said of the media requests. As the first anniversary of Beth’s passing approaches, he finally shares his journey here.

Learn about Tim’s process for filling his busts and BB’s with Beth’s ashes here.

Read more about Tim’s journey at virtualbeth.wordpress.com