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Peters Township artist offers comfort through her creations

By Harry Funk staff Writer hfunk@thealmanac.Net 4 min read
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The comfort cups bear the initials of Adam Charles Tarbert.

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Adam Tarbert was a member of the Peters Township Fire Department.

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Courtesy of Megan Ruffing, Wylie Images

Rebekah Tarbert and with children, Kaylee, Audra, Oaklee and Elijah

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Adam Tarbert's fire helmet sits atop comfort cups.

Comfort can be a cup of tea.

It was for Adam Tarbert.

“He and I were kind of tea snobs,” his wife, Rebekah, admitted. “We’d love a nice cup of tea, and not just your typical Lipton. That’s what would always calm him, and I would know if he had a cup of tea in his hands, usually out of a mug that I made him, that something was going on in his head.”

In September the Peters Township resident lost her husband and father of four when Adam took his own life. His was a battle against post-traumatic stress disorder, brought on by what he experienced through his job in law enforcement and his service as an emergency responder.

With her husband in mind during the disruptions to everyone’s lives caused by COVID-19, Rebekah decided to share what she calls comfort cups, which she creates on her potter’s wheel with some help from her four children.

“I know what Adam would be like right now. He would be riddled with anxiety and stress,” Rebekah said, with him probably sipping his tea to help calm his nerves.

“So we just really wanted to spread that comfort to other people,” she explained. “And what better way of bringing beauty out of ashes than serving a community who served us and who are still serving us, with my husband’s death.”

She is paying the outpouring of support forward by setting batches of comfort cups on a wall in front of her house, announcing through social media when they will be available and inviting those who are interested to take one.

“You guys can stay and talk, or you can just roll out. That’s perfectly fine,” she said. “There’s no need to stand there, donate, thank me or anything. Just grab it and run. Go home and make yourself a cup of tea. And take care of yourself.”

Rebekah also wants to raise awareness about the toll that PTSD can take, and on the bottom of each comfort cup is the inscription of her husband’s initials, ACT, followed by a semicolon.

The punctuation mark represents the unfinished story of a person such as Adam and is the symbol of Project Semicolon, an organization dedicated to the prevention of suicide.

The feedback Rebekah has received indicates that others have gone through experiences similar to hers.

“I get messages quite often saying, ‘My husband is a police officer. He attempted one month ago.’ ‘My father was a police officer. He committed suicide when I was 8 years old. I know how your son feels,'” she said.

The undersides of the comfort cups also feature the logo for the Velveteen Artisan, Rebekah’s home pottery business.

“It’s something I’ve always loved,” she said, but her time to work on the craft became limited by pursuits such as earning her master’s degree and starting to raise a family.

Her interest never waned, though.

“I would tell my husband, ‘I miss pottery,'” she recalled. “We have a set of twins and once they grew up” – that’s relatively speaking, as they’re just about to turn 4 – “I finally looked at Adam and said, ‘I need a potter’s wheel.’ So he helped me find one and went out got one, and so I truly felt like God was leading me back to pottery.”

When she found a market for her creations, the Velveteen Artisan was born.

“My studio is in my basement, so once the kids go to bed, I go downstairs and I make as much stuff as I can for an hour and a half, and that’s my job now,” Rebekah said. “I’m a potter.”

Foremost, she’s a mother, and she has made sure to include Elijah, Kaylee, Oaklee and Audra in her efforts to help provide comfort to others.

“That’s kind of the whole basis around it,” she said, “teaching my kids how to give back to a community that has given so much to us, and also what to do with our grief, because, man, grief can get really ugly.”

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