After fine art photographer Ellen Davidson Cantor’s husband died of cancer three years ago, she felt disconnected from her camera and her emotions.
Without a creative outlet, she struggled to process her grief.
But unexpectedly, she began to compose words instead of pictures. Cantor started writing poetry almost every day from her home in Rolling Hills Estates.
“I feel like I took to it right away,” Cantor, 83, said. “I had all these pent-up feelings. I say now I don’t know where those words came from. I don’t know that I could write those words today.”
Last fall, she self-published a book of 31 poems, with encouragement from her grief counselor at the Simms/Mann UCLA Center for Integrative Oncology. While she’s donated many copies, a portion of proceeds from the book benefit the Simms/Mann Center.
The center was established in 1994 to provide whole-person care to cancer patients and their families. Services include counseling, support groups, nutrition consultations, integrative medicine and spiritual support.
Plunged into grief
illness overtakes the body with tiny spots
growing into massive cancers
the earth swallows up our loved ones
allowing only visitations in our minds
everywhere there is breakage
life cradles us, cracks, departs without warning
– Excerpted from “Memory Fades”
In May 2022, Cantor’s husband, Norman Cantor, MD, died of metastatic bladder cancer at age 81. The couple had been married 57 years and raised two daughters.
“He was a very easy person to live with,” Cantor said. “He was a good husband, a good dad. I miss his companionship. I miss him.”
After her husband's death, Cantor longed for an artistic pursuit other than photography. On a whim, she enrolled in an online poetry class. She also began individual counseling over Zoom with Chaplain Mark Buchanan at the Simms/Mann Center.
“When I told him I was writing poetry he was very enthusiastic,” she said. “He felt the poetry was expressing things I couldn’t express in other ways.”
When she completed a new poem, she would read it to him during their session.
“Many of the poems are very personal,” Cantor said. “I’m talking to my husband or about him, but they have a general appeal.”
She found she enjoyed the revision process and deliberating over a word until she felt satisfied with the poem.
“Until this, I was a visual person,” she said. “I had no idea where they were going. They were just a path.”
Poetry also allowed her to access her deepest fears.
“I was always afraid I would lose the memory, I would lose who he was, that I wouldn’t remember,” she said. “Several of them talk about making sure that I remember.”
Grieving tasks
loneliness surrounds me
like a soap bubble
encasing my body
getting in my eyes
causing tears
keeping me enclosed
in my own little world
– Excerpted from “It Will Never Be the Same”
About a year after she’d started writing, Cantor watched a webinar on psychologist William Worden’s four tasks of grieving.
They are: accepting the reality of the loss; processing the pain of grief; adjusting to a world without the deceased; and finding an enduring connection with the deceased while embarking on a new life.
That’s when Cantor realized that her poems naturally fit within that framework, something Buchanan also had noticed.
“As I explored with Ellen the connection between her feelings and her poems, I came to recognize that she was not just documenting her progress, but she was composing a guide for the grieving written from the inside out,” Buchanan said. “Poetic images that expressed her own emotions have become opportunities for the grieving to put words to their own sorrow.”
Buchanan had told Cantor that he really wanted to share her work with his colleagues and people receiving services at the Simms/Mann Center. She decided that the four tasks of grieving provided the framework for her to put together her collection.
“We talked about different ways to do it,” she said. “I realized I could go to Staples and print them up and staple them together. (But) I wanted a finished product.”
She designed the book and included some of her “Deconstruction” series photos that were made from torn prints. Cantor had ripped up the photos because she was unhappy with them, but they too became a metaphor for rebuilding out of brokenness.
She titled the book “Unfolding Time: Poems for the Grieving” and ordered 100 copies to give away. Buchanan wrote the book’s foreword, praising her beautiful prose and imagery.
“Ellen’s poetry gently provides readers knowledge about the inevitable process of sorrowing what cannot be changed and, in time, learning how to hold sorrow and joy together,” he wrote. “In poem after poem, Ellen has provided her readers a road map which can comfort and companion them on their way.”
Cantor gave 30 copies to the Simm/Mann Center, as well as to widowed friends and her rabbi.
“The poetry book helped me move through the bereavement process and I’m happy to share it with other people,” she said. “I got some beautiful notes from people who were very grateful.”
A new path
a year has passed
the road has widened
only I know where you are lurking
in the garden
with hummingbirds and butterflies
at the dinner table sharing a meal
sitting beside me watching Jeopardy
holding hands as we stroll the beach
appearing to be alone
knowing we are one
– Excerpted from “Merging as One”
Cantor said she is proud of her book and believes that her husband would be too. She recalled the way he always came to her gallery show openings to support her photography.
“I don’t think I would have ever taken up poetry if he hadn’t died,” she said.
These days, she’s venturing out with her camera again. She’s still writing poems.
“I’m not as prolific,” she said. “I’m writing about aging and I’m writing about nature.”
As for her grief journey, Cantor said she’s in a good place, although she still experiences sadness and loneliness. She’s also extremely grateful to Buchanan and the support he gave her.
“I feel like I’m living my life,” she said. “It’s not the life I planned. I have moved forward. I think the book really helped me express my feelings.”
