My support system is in place, but no one can protect me from vulnerability. When you read this, cochlear implant surgery will be over and I’ll be home recovering. As I write a few days before surgery,
Read more →Family and Friends
The funeral home owner called me after my mother-in-law’s death on Thursday. I’d prearranged for him to pick up her body and deliver it to the crematorium since this was her wish, but I had to identify
Read more →“Her breath is changing,” a nurse said on the phone. “It’s hard to tell, but I’d come in if I were you.” When I saw my mother-in-law, still and ashen in her bed, I knew she was
Read more →My son David and his wife Liz drove from North Carolina and met my local son Anthony for a beer at Two Goats Brewery on Seneca Lake before they arrived at my house. David and Liz came
Read more →June 2018 was “Friends Matter Month” in my quiet world. Usually, I crave silence and ample sleep and avoid large servings of chocolate cake and beer. I tossed the rules overboard in a friendship love fest. Richard
Read more →In Honor of Our 50th Anniversary May 18, 1968 – 2018 By the time I was twenty, I was used to my mother living in a different country every year, knew what classes to take at Cornell,
Read more →“Only from such a place of loss and longing can we begin remembering ourselves home.” ~Toko-pa Turner, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Back Home,
Read more →Don’t worry when the logger leaves after one day. Be glad he cares about the forest. Be glad he’s upset when his equipment makes ruts in the unfrozen earth beneath the snow. Let the Finger Lakes Land
Read more →My mother-in-law Virginia was present during every conversation the last few weeks. She was alert when the public health nurse evaluated her condition and approved the application for skilled nursing care. She watched her health aide and
Read more →Dear Vic, I can’t take care of your mother anymore. I can’t keep giving her the precious energy I need for my own life. I have to face that she’s almost out of money to pay for
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