The Star has received word that Nicholas R. Grimshaw, who practiced psychotherapy and hypnotherapy at his home office on Pleasant Lane in East Hampton, died on Feb. 16 of inoperable Stage 4 lung cancer at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. He was 65 and had lived with the condition for almost two years.
His paternal ancestors, the Grimshaws and the Filers, were early settlers of East Hampton. They bought and subdivided the land that is now called Pleasant Lane, and he inherited No. 10, his wife, Kara Kristin Westerman-Grimshaw, said.
Mr. Grimshaw was born Jennifer Grimshaw in Newark on March 8, 1954, the only child of James Roland Grimshaw Jr. and Judith Smith Grimshaw. In 1993, Jennifer legally changed her name to Gwynhwyfar Grimshaw before deciding in 1995 to begin gender transformation therapy, at which point she changed her name to Nicholas Roland Grimshaw.
He grew up in New Jersey, where his mother's family was from, and also spent some time in Vermont when his father moved the family there for his work as an engineer. He spent every summer in East Hampton, however.
He attended the Lewis-Wadhams School in Westport, N.Y., for two years and graduated from East Hampton High School. He had wanted to be a psychologist since his teenage years, his wife said, but before taking it on in a methodical way, he did several other things, including leather work, farming, bookkeeping, and hairdressing.
After a few years in Boston and, in the early 1980s, Manhattan, Mr. Grimshaw moved back here permanently. A first marriage, to Tracy Harris-Grimshaw, an East Hampton painter who survives him, ended in divorce.
Mr. Grimshaw finally was able to pursue his education by earning a bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from Southampton College in 2003, a master’s degree in social work from New York University in 2008, and a license to be a social worker from the State University at Albany in 2012. He studied at the New York Milton H. Erickson Society for Psychotherapy and Hypnosis, earning an advanced training degree in Ericksonian hypnotherapy in 2013, and was a member of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis.
Mr. Grimshaw was involved for 37 years with Alcoholics Anonymous. "It was an extremely important part of his life," Mrs. Westerman-Grimshaw said, and he was "an integral member" of the organization.
In addition to his wife, three cousins in East Hampton and seven in North Carolina survive.
He was, his wife said, a gifted poet and artist, and "a passionate gardener, lover of all wildlife, avid reader, and all-around genius." She added, "I guess Nicholas spent his life evolving into ever-truer versions of himself, and he may still be evolving now."
Mr. Grimshaw donated his body to Stony Brook University's department of anatomical science.
A memorial service is being planned for as soon as it is practicable given the pandemic. Anyone wishing to attend can email Mrs. Westerman-Grimshaw at [email protected]. It will be held under his favorite tree at 10 Pleasant Lane in East Hampton Village.
A Poem by Nicholas Roland Grimshaw:
New Year
Radiators hiss in the parish church
Empty, save January’s austere brilliance
Reflected from morning snow.
Stark pews and the smells of hymnals
Fill the long nave and dim side aisles
Where motes of holy dust
Turn in Columns of clear light.
Even here, reckless
Matter, anti-matter dash
Swirl and flash. Effect
And cause permute; time
Scatters in all directions.
Upon Nothing the Word is written;
In this reeling void that buoys
The lepton and the quark, we are
Upheld by Nothing.
Jostling worlds continually
Crystallize seething latency,
Dissolve back into it.
On the graceful rise
And fall
Of this breathing silence, then
Let us now magnify sublime Nothing,
Whisper to our fingertips
In praise of It.
The choir rehearses in a far-off room,
Music drifting over transoms
Down a perplexity of corridors.
The west door closes mightily
Echoing. Crows shout,
Steam pipes clank.
Welcome fear
And hope pour in
Relieving too-exquisite emptiness,
And we hearken again for angel voices
From the heaven of our predilection.
