Two Memorials

We joined others in remembering two dear friends with love today. Both were important in my life and Sue’s, and Sue was able to sit regularly with both as they made their way through their final months of life.

The main photo is Deborah Einbender, restored to her garden in photographs nestled among the flowers she loved. She was an artist whose medium was leather. She shaped faces, bodies, and beautiful long swathes of drapery from leather (2nd extra). She was Brian’s partner, his children’s stepmother, an adoring aunt and sister. She was a Buddhist who believed fiercely in practicing “off the cushion” by campaigning for immigrant justice, climate justice, racial justice. She joined us in the Portland Buddhist Peace Fellowship and was a good friend and comrade for the past seven years. She was diagnosed with lung cancer about a year ago. 

The first extra is an array of photos of our precious friend Peg Hackenbruck, a psychiatrist who had been coping with multiple myeloma for the past ten years. She had an unerring feel for compatible human qualities and introduced Sue and me. We call her our “benefactor,” and she was also a close friend. Bird-lover, gardener, collector of garden gnomes, hiker—Peg loved to be outdoors. A playful mother and grandmother, she was also a successful Queer activist. She founded support organizations, campaigned for gay rights, and was one of the people who established the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists and depathologized homosexuality. 

Peg and Deborah were gifts to the world and to all of us who knew them. We will miss them.