Goodbye, Dr Hammer

A year has passed since our dear teacher Dr Leon Hammer departed from the land of the living. Since then, whenever the experiences that I shared with Dr Hammer have come to my mind, I feel a mixture of grief and gratitude. My feelings arise not only at the passing of a man whose life work as a Psychoanalyst and Chinese medicine practitioner has immeasurably informed my own work in similar realms, but also at the loss of a dear mentor, and a long-distance friend. He was so much more than a mere pulse diagnosis master.

This blurry picture was taken in 2011, when I first met Dr Hammer

I haven’t had many public words to share around what continues to feel like as much a personal loss as a professional one, but I do want to share this: when he invited me to visit him at his home in Indian Lake, we realized that we were both enormous fans of this Bach piece (interesting that its German title means something like “sleepers, awake!” and both of our work centered around engendering awareness). Whenever I hear it, I always recall how we hummed and sang this melody together in his little pickup truck on the way to the small-town train station where he dropped me off when I began my travels back home to Portland. 

I felt that we’d spent many sweet moments together during my stay at his home in Indian Lake, NY, and I know he remembered these moments fondly, too: In the last correspondence we shared, he remarked on how I’d be the one “seeing him off at the train station now,” as he set off for his own way back to his final home.

Here’s to you, Leon Irving Hammer. You were a good man, a great teacher, and a faithful friend. 

Written by Stephen Higgins