The Music We Listened To
Ruth: Yesterday, my husband and I loaded up Daddy, his clothes and his folded-up wheelchair to move him from a small town 45 miles away to a home closer to us. He doesn’t seem to be aware of where he...
View ArticleFor Better, For a Lot Worse
If you want to know anything about old age, long marriages and the ravages of Alzheimer’s, read the news story about Sandra Day O’Connor and her husband. But maybe you don’t want to know about it till...
View ArticleTaking the Glove Off
Our son got back the other night after playing softball with some friends and their parents. “Why didn’t you let me play much baseball when I was a kid?” he wanted to know. Well, you know, we said, we...
View ArticleLooking for Someone Else’s Passport
There’s nothing more depressing to me than going through what’s left of my father’s possessions. He’s now lived for eight years in an Alzheimer’s residence and I have files of his financial papers,...
View ArticleThe Kindness of Strangers
Thank you to the sixty-something man in the parking lot. He came to help me when I was so crazed and desperate I would have called out to Dick Cheney or Adolf Hitler and asked them to help had either...
View ArticleMistaken Images
My father is virtually toothless, so he eats soft foods now. Like so much about his care facility — the patients gathered around tables, their oddly childlike behavior, their falling asleep and tuning...
View ArticleWhat Remains
Who did these people used to be? I used to wonder about that when my father first went to an assisted-living center for Alzheimer’s nine years ago. There was one tiny elderly woman who used to be a...
View ArticleWe Live to Serve You!
Oh, sure. I know everybody hates his medical insurance company. But I like to think I hate mine — or my father’s, to be more precise — more than you hate yours. I’m staring at a great big envelope we...
View ArticleAsk Me No Questions
Everywhere I look, people are pushing Baby Boomers like me to challenge ourselves to stay sharp. Work crossword puzzles! Do math! Exercise! Blah, blah, blah. Normally, I blow off most advice and...
View ArticleThe Day After Father’s Day
I didn’t go to see my father on Father’s Day. I went the day after. For years, every day has been the same to him. There’s no Christmas, no New Year’s, no anniversaries or birthdays. Time passes...
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