Posts Tagged ‘dementia’
The Illusion of Control
Even during her dementia years, one of my mom’s favorite expressions was, “I think everything’s under control.” Indeed, she spend most of her life making a valiant effort to control the future by planning for it. An inveterate list-maker who reveled in calendar scheduling, she was the only person I knew who had her holiday…
Read MoreMissing My Mom on Mother’s Day
This is the first Mother’s Day when I haven’t gotten to shop for gifts and a card to send to my mom, and when I haven’t been able to talk to her. She died on December 9. After years of dementia, the quality of her life had deteriorated so much that it was a blessing…
Read MoreWhen an Elderly Parent Dies
My husband and I are at that age where if parents of our contemporaries haven’t yet passed away, they’re dying now. This past year, our sister-in-law’s parents both died, as did a dear friend’s mother. Saturday night, it was our turn. At age 93, my mother-in-law passed away. It wasn’t entirely unexpected. She’d been in…
Read MoreReflections on My College Experience and Beyond
With a big college reunion coming up, we alums were asked to write an essay reflecting on our lives and college experience– really made me think about who I was as a college student and the directions my life took. Here’s what I wrote: Other than my summers teaching at Interlochen, I don’t think I’ve…
Read MoreFeeling Thankful
I’ve been having one of those weeks where I felt like yelling out, “Bah, Humbug!” every five minutes. I’d broken out in some horrible itchy rash that hadn’t responded to the steroid meds the doctor assured me would kick in immediately. Not only do I look like crap, but I feel like total crap! Meantime,…
Read MoreLife:Beginnings and Endings
Wishing all of you a beautiful Thanksgiving! Holidays invariably put me in a reflective mood. Here’s what was on my mind during my travels yesterday: The train ride between New York and Boston is a mere four hours long, but the distance I travel between my son’s Manhattan household to my mom’s Cambridge apartment seems…
Read MoreThings Could Be Worse
In many ways, this has been a wonderful year for me. I’m so excited about my new YA novel coming out in January, IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN YOU, and I continue to be crazy
Read MoreLAST STOP: THE MEMORY CARE UNIT
As my mother grew older, she regularly scoffed at the suggestion that she should consider purchasing nursing home insurance. Indeed, the thought of my powerhouse mom shut away in a long care facility seemed preposterous.
Read MoreDealing with my Own “Stuff”
This past week, I took a professional development workshop on first aid for mental health, a program that originated in Australia and is now gaining widespread adoption in the states. It’s designed to teach skills in recognizing and responding to folks who may be in the early-stages of a mental health crisis
Read MoreThe Stuff We Don’t Put in Our Holiday Letters
When a dear friend called me this week from Arizona, she rasped out “Merry Christmas” and promptly went into a coughing fit. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
Read More