Another way to look at loss, grief and life | Whale’s Tales

Published 1:15 pm Friday, February 20, 2026

Scene: late summer 1974. Olympic Peninsula, Lake Sutherland campground.

Under an oil lamp gently swaying in the night breeze, two brothers are locked in a game of chess. Actually, not one game but many because, as the younger sibling keeps winning, his frustrated brother slams his hand on the picnic table at each loss, growling:

“Again! … Again!”

And so into the late hours, with little brother, Matt, who is winning, happy to oblige his big brother, Jim, who is losing.

One of my treasured memories.

Jim died the following spring, but the recent loss of a friend brought the long ago scene back to me. Brought it back, because, as occurs too frequently these days, I had been thinking about time and loss. This often happens when I’m on the road, and a Climax Blues, Wishbone Ash, or a Uriah Heep tune called “Easy Living” comes on the radio, prompting me to turn mentally to the empty passenger seat, ready to say “do you hear that?”

But of course, no one’s there.

If we live long enough, we will certainly mourn the loss of others. That, unfortunately, is life.

Loss is part of the human condition. Sometimes I am able to accept that with a dry, weary, patient pain. But I will never get used to it.

I met Debbie McGuire when the Whale family band, Hired Help, was playing at Zola’s Café. Debbie, whom I did not know at the time, took a fancy to the music and to us, especially to my niece April and her powerful voice, and introduced herself.

And when April died in a single-car accident in Idaho in 2021, Debbie grieved with us. And when Debbie passed unexpectedly last month, my family grieved, and so did all of her friends.

Debbie was a gentle soul, always ready with a kind word, an idea, an inquiry. We shared a love of the music of Dan Fogelberg. She grafted herself onto our hearts.

When a loved one or a friend dies, not only do we lose them, we lose forever the part in others that they brought out: that horse-like guffaw that burst from John only when David told a silly joke; Bea’s “sidelong, pickerel smile” that said without a word, “I get what you’re saying, but the time has come for you to shut your gob.”

The American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay described loss more elegantly than I ever could have in her poem, “Dirge Without Music.”

“The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—

They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled

Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.

More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.”

The Auburn community will miss Debbie McGuire, a sweet soul gone too soon.

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Robert Whale can be reached at robert.whale@soundpublishing.com.