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9:30 pm Lately I’m starting to feel as if I’m on the final leg of this long descent into night of Mom’s struggle with dementia. Her vitals and blood sugar levels continue to be good for the mos...

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I’ve been in an upbeat mood this Christmas season, decorating our tree for the first time and buying a lot of Christmas-related items for Mom such as small Christmas bears and singing snowmen, an...

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I’ve debated and struggled with the topic of this entry for several weeks now. I need to write it and yet I can’t seem to start writing it. I’ve written out portions of it in my mind; I’ve t...

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I just had to share these pictures with you that I took recently with my iPhone camera. At both locations, very close to where I live, there are often gorgeous sunsets to behold and photograp...

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As I begin to write this I’m listening to Thad Fiscella’s hauntingly beautiful album, “Vast.” But I’ve been reading compulsively all day about the surreal wildfires in California, which one resi...

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It’s been a little over three weeks but the shock has not worn off. It’s as if there was a time before the headline and then there is now, after the news, when the future seems much less certain...

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October 3, 2018 I feel in myself the future life. I am like a forest which has been more than once cut down. The new shoots are livelier then ever. I am rising toward the sky. The sunshine i...

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Dementia Journal — Storms — Sept. 20, 2018 I’m lying in bed upstairs relaxing tonight, listening to some soothing music. There’s no baby monitor on. I don’t have to listen out for Mom because o...

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One of the garden statues Mom brought here from her garden in New Orleans, 23 years ago. “I feel like I’m in a Heavenly area and I’m taking you with me.” “God, will you please take care of me an...

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“One gerontologist has suggested that as we age we externalize our identity onto things. For example, we buy an inexpensive mug to remind us of a vacation we have enjoyed . Every time we use ...

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“If we if we could see the clouds from the other side where they lie in billowy glory, bathed in the light they intercept, like heaped ranges of Alps, we should of be amazed at their splendid mag...

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Mom’s been so sweet lately. All day she sits on the big sofa in the den and dozes for long stretches , wakes up and starts asking questions or reads either out loud or to herself her favorite Bi...

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This past May 31 marked the one-year anniversary of my retirement after 21 years at my last place of employment. It now feels like I’ve always lived like this, although it took about six months...

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Today is Mother’s Day, and I’ve tried to fill the den with flowers because Mom loves them so much. I woke up late this morning because no caregivers were coming in. One was supposed to come an...

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Dementia brings a severe loss of memory and awareness of one’s surroundings. Mom will often gets some question in her mind she urgently wants answered. She will repeat it over and over and eac...

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There is another kind of silence to be cultivated besides that of the tongue regarding others. I mean silence regarding oneself — restraining the imagination, not permitting it to dwell too much...

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“Mama! Mama! Daddy! Mama!” This is what hear lately on the two-way monitor when I’m upstairs in my room and Mom needs something, usually extra cover or to use the commode by the bed. It might...

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(Note: Here is an entry from November 1, 2006 that I posted at Open Diary. I have re-read it twice now, and also the very thoughtful notes and comments, and I think I have finally decided what...

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There are many things that offer me hope in this life and when I recently thought about some of them and wrote them down on paper, I felt a sense of peace as they stirred such pleasant memories. ...

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I’ll never forget the day last Spring when I had to decide once and for all if I was going to retire from my job of 21 years. I could postpone it or I could do it. That afternoon I was schedule...

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I recently came across a letter in a file box written to my parents in 1979, one of the pivotal, if not most significant years of my life. In the course of that single year I experienced the si...

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I feel there is a new beginning in my life now, the start of something I’ve hoped for, a confidence that my depression will continue to subside and that the intense and terrible anxiety I felt la...

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Who would have imagined — the third heaviest snowfall in our city’s history descended on us Wednesday here in Charleston from a mighty Atlantic storm whipping up the Eastern seaboard. An unrelen...

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Fortunately, the sun came out this week after several days of cold, wintry weather. A gray and wet Thanksgiving passed in a depressing haze. Just me and Mom. Holidays can be very difficult. ...

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Fear not for the future, weep not for the past. Percy Bysshe Shelley It seems an eternity now since I was in the working world. Retirement still seems surreal to me. Five months after I carted...

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