A Blog to Honor Barbara

Eighty-one days after his wife lost a battle with cancer at 65, Houston journalist Mike Snyder wrote his first reflection on his experience of the loss at sagamorebridge, a blog that exists, the tagline states, for “honoring Barbara”.

Barbara Karkabi was also a well-loved, civic-minded journalist in the couple’s home of Texas. When she passed, she left behind a slew of relationships, from fellow journalists who looked up to her, to the patrons of a homeless shelter she’d volunteered at, to her husband, who was baffled by how much he continued to learn every day about his late wife. In that first blog post last Spring, Snyder wrote:

“Any deep personal relationship that lasts a long time — with a spouse, a friend, a mother or father or brother or sister — is a learning experience. Barbara, whose defining characteristic was curiosity, would be thrilled to know that death, in all its capricious cruelty,  is powerless to stop the information from flowing.”

Named for one of two bridges that spans from the mainland of Massachusetts to Cape Cod, Snyder’s sagamorebridge is filled with eloquently told stories of Barbara, whom the Houston Chronicle described as “a bon vivant, journalist, world traveler,  and collector of madcap experiences and dear friends.”

In the most recent post, Snyder draws a comparison between his and his wife’s personalities through the music they each enjoyed, spurred by a discovery of old vinyl albums on a bookshelf:

“Barbara, born in 1946, came of age in the ’60s.  Eight years younger, I spent that interesting decade as a kid and a clueless adolescent. I missed the Vietnam draft; Barbara knew guys who died in the muck of Southeast Asia. She was at Syracuse in the days of the SDS and the Black Panthers; things had settled town by the time I made it to the University of Houston in 1974.  This gap in time and experience is evident, to some extent, in our musical choices.”

Eloquent and at moments even poetic, sagamorebridge is a touching tribute from one journalist to another, from a grieving husband to his beloved late wife, from one adept writer to a well-loved and sorely missed figure of the community.

Explore the experience with Snyder, through these milestone posts:

• Six Months
• Imagining Mother’s Day without Her Mom
• Ghosts of Christmas Past

Read related posts from SevenPonds:

• Bloggers Exploring the End-of-Life through Poetry, Art, and Prose
• Memorial Poems for Mother’s Day

Images and quotes by sagamorebridge.