Amarillo Author is a Local Treasure

By Danny Mize, Bereavement Coordinator for Hospice Care of the Southwest

When you see Moments in Mourning, the book of poetry by Amarillo author, Marianne McNeil Logan, you may dismiss it because of its small size or title. After all, who wants to read about grief?! Even if it is small enough to tuck into a purse or carry in your pocket.

Give it a chance! The sixty-page book traces her journey with her husband’s illness and decline into the pain of grief upon his death in 1991, after forty-two years of marriage. The reader witnesses her transition from mourning to hope with:

"I’m taking off my wedding rings, to pack them carefully away with other sentimental things."

There’s a message to Grant, her deceased husband: “I stand atop our small white bridge where haunting shadows lie; I promised if my life would change I’d come to tell you why.” Then, she writes about finding her second chance at romance with a lonely widower who came into her life.

In March, 1994, she married that lonely widower, Claude Logan, of Dumas. They spent much time traveling to writing seminars and “cowboy gatherings,” where she was often a scheduled speaker. Her joy turned to grief once again when Claude died in October of 2012, while Marianne was having cancer surgery on her eyelid.

Unable to focus on writing during Claude’s illness and death, Marianne found herself in a two-and-a-half year writer’s dry spell. Recognizing everyone’s need to engage in laughter, late in 2012 she published The Worth of Mirth: Poetry for Those Who Love To Laugh and Those Who Need To. This was a project she had begun and put aside fifteen years earlier. It was as if it “waited” until she needed it to help save her sanity.

Readers will smile through family stories and laugh through sections about each of her husbands. Wait until you see the “Cowboy Lingo” section which wraps up the book!