Tag: aging
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Well Being
2019 was supposed to be the year I rose like a phoenix from the ashes. I was coming off almost a decade of nearly continual stress as my parents’ health failed, and four years of frequent, often abrupt travel between Atascadero and Los Angeles that left me the Marriott Gold Elite member I never wanted…
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Falling into Fall
Unlike San Luis Obispo, which is sometimes jokingly described as having two seasons: “day” and “night,” Atascadero – over the Cuesta Grade and out of reach of coastal temperance – can boast of at least three and a half. Every decade or so it is even graced with a peek at four, when an extreme…
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The Inevitables
When I was younger (how did I get old enough to use that phrase?) virtually nothing felt inevitable. Not bad things like doctor’s appointments or my parents getting into yet another shouting match, and not good things like the beginning of summer vacation and Christmas. Reality might twist into some hitherto unknown shape and accommodate my will…
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Last Days
My mother’s end begins, as most bad things have these past six years, with a phone call. A series of them, actually. On Friday, May 25th, her private caregiver S. calls to tell me that she is mostly incoherent and largely unresponsive. On Saturday Anna, my mother’s favorite nurse at the skilled nursing facility, calls…
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Egon
The first time I met Egon a tree had fallen across the dirt road leading to our house. My then-coworker-and-eventual-husband and I had taken the financially daring plunge of renting a place on a couple of acres in semi-rural Atascadero – me because I was tired of neighbors, him because he wanted a dog. The…
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Eighty Six Christmases
I suppose I feel as if it’s my job, along with taking care of my mother’s financial and medical affairs, to try to convince her that as long as she’s alive there is joy to be found, at least occasionally, somewhere, from something. In pistachio ice cream or lights on a Christmas tree or a…
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