In Memoriam: Farewell to Doris

Of course, I never called her Doris. I called her Mom - because she was the epitome of a good mother and I didn't feel the least bit odd about calling her that even though she was my mother-in-law, not my own mother. But once she was in the nursing home for a long time, a lot of the people who cared for her referred to her as Doris so I started to think of her that way too.

We first met in 1983 when my then-boyfriend, now husband, Ed, was admitted to the hospital with appendicitis - a perfect way to meet one's future in-laws without any pressure! I still remember my first sight of her and my future father-in-law in the waiting room at the hospital. It worked out well for me since I am the one who brought Ed to the hospital and made sure they took good care of him. I was in their good graces from Day One.

My mother-in-law was always kind, generous and loving. She never made me feel like an outsider. In fact, later on my father-in-law told me that she always considered me a real daughter, not a daughter-in-law. I feel honored that she felt that way. We were good friends and always found a lot to chat about. Sometimes Ed or his dad had to break in to our conversation in order to get a word in edgewise.

Mom was born in 1928 and grew up in South Amboy, New Jersey, the oldest of five. She went to Catholic school and graduated from St. Mary's High School in 1946, just after the war ended. She then worked as a secretary in a doctor's office for awhile. She met Ed's dad at a local dance - soon after he had returned from serving in the Army during World War II. How could she resist this dashing young man, who was still in uniform when they first met? From the pictures I found in an old photo album, they made quite a handsome couple as they were dating.

They married in 1948. She was 20, he was 22. Mom only worked until their son was born in 1952, and then became a homemaker. Dad, who had become an engineer, was the breadwinner.

During her last illness, Dad said over and over what a wonderful wife and mother she was... but he also revealed they were truly a product of that pre-women's liberation era.

He said when they got married, she had wanted to go to school, and he said she could -- but he told her she would not work afterward. He said he told her she was to stay home and take care of any children they had, take care of the house and have dinner on the table, and he would earn the money. So she did. "You know," he reminisced, "We never had an argument in all those years."

When Ed was older and in college - they only had the one child - she did work briefly as an administrative assistant in a doctor's office and as a secretary in the local high school. Ed said she loved it. But by the time I met them she was home again. As she once told me, "Dad wanted me home." He wanted to know he could call her any time of day and she'd be able to talk to him, or run an errand if need be.

Mom was kept busy with all of her homemaking duties. The house was always spotless; no speck of dust would dare appear on any surface. She was an excellent cook, able to make everything from roasts to fried fish that was light as a feather. She made a pumpkin pie that was everything a pumpkin pie should be. She made fabulous cakes. She was an expert seamstress and made a lot of clothes, including men's jackets, and drapes for the living room. She helped a friend's Girl Scout troop earn their sewing badge by teaching the little girls how to sew. She wrote a weekly social column in the local newspaper. And she was president of the Women's Club, the Garden Club and the PTO.

Every summer the whole family would go on a road trip, including four cross-country journeys where they toured the national parks and other sites of interest. A map still hanging on the wall of the family room marks with red pins the various spots they stopped along the way on each trip. They also took trips with Ed's grandparents, to Florida a few times, and once to the Bahamas.

Right before I met her, Ed had told me his mom had just gotten her real estate license. She later explained to me that Dad was getting close to retirement age and she thought it was something they could kind of do together - she could do the selling and he could help with the paperwork, which would keep him busy in retirement.

But it was not to be. Dad's whole division was laid off when he was 61 and he suddenly found himself retired a year earlier than he had planned. After the first shock wore off - which took only a weekend - he adjusted with lightning speed and immediately started planning all the trips they would take. And Mom never did sell a single house.

Don't feel sorry though... they had a grand time. They went to Hawaii for 4-6 weeks each year (several times with us); they drove up the coast of California repeatedly, and visited the Blue Ridge Mountains multiple times, as well as taking trips with us to Portugal and Italy. They went on a tour of China and walked on the Great Wall. They took a cruise that stopped at various ports of call in Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore. They skied every winter in the French Alps. When they were home they skied locally in the winter and spent time at the town pool each day in the summer.

It sounds as if they were rich, doing all this traveling, but they weren't. They were very frugal and saved their money.

They had moved from Perth Amboy, where they lived when they first married, to Holmdel, New Jersey, in 1958. The house they bought was part of a new development going in where an old apple orchard had once stood. Generous to a fault when giving gifts, they didn't splurge on material things for their home. Instead, they spent it on travel and family.

Dad still lives in the house today; they never "traded up" to something fancier. It's a modest split level home with 3 bedrooms, two of which are quite small. The house still has its original kitchen, and they had the same furniture and carpeting throughout most of their married life until Dad had to spend down some of their money to make Mom eligible for Medicaid in the nursing home, and he installed new carpeting and central air conditioning at that time. I think that was the only improvement that was made to the house, other than painting it, during most of their marriage.

Here are a few pictures of them from their early retirement years. The top left picture is from a cruise they were on, the group picture was taken on Maui, the one below is on the Asia cruise, and the bottom left photo is in our living room at Christmas one year.

Sadly, my mother-in-law's dementia began to gradually become noticeable in the early 2000s, when she was in her mid-to-late 70s. She started to forget things and ask the same questions over and over. Then she began to lose her vocabulary. She still went on trips to Hawaii and California as long as she was able to function, but on the last trip to the California coast, Dad realized she couldn't cope with traveling anymore. She was too confused.

He carried on, taking care of her at home, until he was struck with illness in early 2008. He ended up in the hospital and we ended up caring for Mom for a few days. It was then we realized how bad her condition had become. We were still working at the time, and couldn't keep taking days off to care for her, and Dad was going to be in the hospital for a couple of weeks after a severe intestinal bleed and surgery.

So we researched and found a nursing home, Laurel Bay in Keansburg, about 15 minutes from their home, that was able to take her on a temporary basis until Dad recovered and we figured out what to do. Mom at that time became easily agitated and we were very grateful to the wonderful staff who were able to care for her despite the difficulties. Once Dad was out of the hospital he agreed he couldn't care for Mom properly at home anymore. We looked at a few other nursing homes in the area but none were as cozy and homey as Laurel Bay. So that is where Mom stayed, and we are glad she did.

For almost 8 years, Dad went to Laurel Bay twice a day and helped Mom eat her lunch and supper (she had by this time lost the dexterity to feed herself). He knew everyone there and they knew him. Sometimes he drove them crazy because he always made sure his Doris got the best care of anyone there, and let them know if he felt they hadn't lived up to his expectations. But they all understood he did it out of love for her.

Sometimes he'd take a break and go shopping (usually to buy her something) and I would go down and help her eat her lunch. Even though at this point she could no longer speak much at all, she knew me and always gave me a big smile. She knew me right until the last few months, I think. I would chat with her as if she could answer back and let her know what was going on. I always wondered whether she was just trapped in her mind and couldn't speak but did understand. It must have been so frustrating for her.

She had a wonderful caregiver, Obai, who is originally from Haiti. She and Mom developed a very special relationship. They understood each other and Obai truly loved her. A former hairdresser in her native country, Obai loved to dress Mom up for the "elegant dining" events they had three or four times a year, and she'd always do something special to her hair.

Elegant dining was a really nice event; they had a singer there who would sing a range of songs from the old standards to more modern rock-and-roll from the 50s and early 60s, to accommodate the various age groups at the nursing home. The cooks would make a special dinner, complete with appetizers and desserts, and they served wine. Mom enjoyed these events a lot when she was first there. Later she was less responsive but I still think she liked the music and she always ate all her food.

Here are a few pictures where Mom is dressed up for these events. The black-and-white picture is her with Obai.

Dad did get away for some respite from caring for Mom. We had bought our cabin in the Adirondacks just after she went into the nursing home, so he started to come up for long weekends about once a month or so to relax. While he was away, he called the nursing home, without fail, at noontime, to make sure Doris had eaten her lunch and that she was doing well. For a long time she was.

In the past year or so, though, she began declining. She was having more trouble chewing and swallowing and they put her on thickened liquids and pureed food. I knew, from experience with my own father, who had had dementia in his later years, that this was the beginning of the end. But Ed's dad never looked at it that way. To him, anything that went wrong could be fixed, as long as he tried hard enough. And try he did. He blamed her problems on everything possible except the dementia. I don't think he ever admitted that it was a terminal disease.

Just before she truly could not swallow at all anymore, we had a discussion about whether he would choose to put in a feeding tube if she could no longer swallow her food. At that time he said no. But when the time came, about two weeks later, he couldn't let her go. There was even a piece of paper, in her own handwriting, that had been found among her belongings at home a couple of years ago, that said she did not want to be kept alive by artificial means. "Let me die in peace," she wrote, and signed and dated it, in the mid-1990s. She had seen her own mother die in a nursing home from dementia. She knew what awaited her if she got it too.

Dad didn't agree that a feeding tube was "artificial means." He said he "couldn't let her starve." So she got the feeding tube, and he got three more months with her. He was happy just holding her hand - he said she squeezed his hand so tightly he knew she knew he was there. I hope that was true and not just some reflex she had.

The end finally came despite the feeding tube, or maybe because of it. She got pneumonia, ended up in the hospital for yet another time (she had had pneumonia several times in the last year of her life due to her inability to swallow properly, which causes aspiration pneumonia, even when someone isn't being fed by mouth). She then began vomiting blood. The doctor, who was a very compassionate woman, said it was common for people with feeding tubes to get bleeding ulcers. She gently told Dad that "it is time to let her go." He finally agreed to sign a "do not resuscitate" order. Mom was put into a private room and Dad kept watch over her for three days, going home only to sleep. We were there as well for much of the time. She finally drifted peacefully away on October 20, 2015.

It was Dad that couldn't bear to let her go. And it is heartbreaking to see his grief. But the next morning when I woke up, I felt her presence around me, and a great sense of joy. I am not a big believer in an afterlife or religion, but I do think there is something out there after death. I do know I felt that she is finally free and able to express herself again and is happy, wherever she is. I am not sad for her, I am happy for her. I hope Dad will feel that way someday too. I know she would want him to.

Fighting the Rat of Death

It's been a rough year. First Baxter was sick and we weren't sure if he was going to make it - thankfully, as he explained in the last post, he is doing well.

Then my mother-in-law, who has dementia and has been in a nursing home for nearly 8 years, started declining rapidly, after being relatively stable for a long time. Looking back, we realized she had been declining all along, but so gradually we didn't really notice it until this year. By June she had forgotten how to swallow properly and had started getting recurrent cases of aspiration pneumonia. Finally, she wasn't able to eat at all. DH's father made the decision to have a feeding tube inserted to enable her to continue to eat. "I can't just starve her," he said.

DH and I had looked into this back in 2005 when my own father was in a nursing home with dementia and was no longer able to swallow. All of the literature we read online and elsewhere said that inserting a feeding tube when someone has dementia and has lost the ability to swallow does nothing to prolong life and just results in numerous, constant complications.

Unfortunately, after 67 years of marriage, in the end, DH's dad couldn't let her go. He wanted just a few more months with her. So, the feeding tube was inserted after a few days of angst and tears on all sides. (Except for my mother-in-law, who, thankfully, had no idea of the drama circling around her). She hasn't been able to speak, other than occasional grunts or simple yes or no answers, for years, and at this point she was hardly even doing that, and was sleeping most of the time.

Next came a problem with our 13 or 14-year-old dog Diva. We adopted her 10 years ago, but were never really sure how old she was at that time. Given her arthritis and very grey muzzle, we are thinking she may have been as old as 4 when we adopted her, making her 14 now.

We started to notice changes in her behavior over the summer. She gradually stopped coming upstairs to sleep on our bed, preferring to stay downstairs on her own bed nearby her adoptive "sister," Angel.

Then in September we realized she was getting very deaf, and more and more sensitive to odd noises. She had developed a fear of thunder and fireworks a few years ago, but now she became afraid of acorns falling on the tin roof at our cabin in the Adirondacks, nail guns, hammering, and any other abrupt noises. She started shaking whenever one of these objectionable sounds occurred.

Then we went to Cape Cod for a week and she acted nervous in the car going up, panting and restless; then at the cottage, a new one for us that we hadn't stayed at before, she started acting nervous and pacing around every evening.

We had gotten a prescription for Xanax from the vet for her since we had started noticing this nervousness before we left, and that calmed her down but didn't cure the problem. She decided the bathroom was the only safe place to sleep, so we put her bed in there. Not very convenient when we got up in the middle of the night to use the facilities, but at least Diva was happy. We were afraid she was developing doggie dementia and that it was a sign of age and it would only get worse...

Then, the day after we got home, we finally realized what might be part of the problem - she had a urinary tract infection! She started asking to go out and urinate every half hour and we realized there was blood in her urine. We rushed over to our local emergency veterinarian clinic and had her checked out and the vet gave us antibiotics and painkillers for her. After only a day on the antibiotics and painkillers, her behavior became much more normal. After two weeks she seems back to her old self; but she still won't sleep on our bed.

We were up at the cabin this past week while she was still getting better, and we were still worrying about her, as well as DH's mom, who was back in the hospital with yet another bout of pneumonia. She had also developed a C. difficile intestinal infection from the antibiotics she was being given for the pneumonia, and was not doing well at all. Based on my experience with my own mother, this infection could very well be what swept her away.

One night while we were at the cabin, DH had a terrible nightmare. I woke to find him pawing my shoulder and making odd noises. I finally shook him awake and said, "What's wrong?" He said, "A rat. A huge rat."

The next day he remembered the dream: He had been dreaming there was this huge, snarling rat attacking Diva, and he was trying to beat it with some kind of a stick and get it away from her. He had been calling for our other dog Angel to come kill it but she was nowhere around in the dream. He said it was one of those dreams where you can't do anything -- you can't hit the rat, you can't move fast enough, nothing works.

I told him it must have been that he was fighting the Rat of Death and trying to keep it from Diva, and that Diva might be representative of his mother as well, since he was so worried about both of them.

The next day one of the doctors taking care of his mother in the hospital in New Jersey called to tell us that his mom had taken a turn for the worse and it was really time to let her go; he said it was unfair to keep having her go back to the hospital for treatment over and over, and make her suffer further (which of course we did agree with).

We left the cabin earlier than we'd planned and returned home, arriving late in the evening The next day we received a morning call from the doctor overseeing my mother-in-law's care to tell us she'd had to entubate her after she had stopped breathing earlier that morning, because DH's dad had not made a decision to put her on palliative care. She said Mom had been moved to intensive care.

We met at the hospital along with DH's dad, and told them we would like her taken off the respirator, expecting her to pass away an hour or so later.

As it turned out, after the respirator was removed, she stabilized and has been holding her own ever since. She is being given morphine and is no longer receiving any curative measures. But she continues to fight against the Rat of Death a little longer.

My father-in-law asks, "Why? Why am I going through all this at this stage of my life?" I can't give him an answer.

A sad farewell...

Sorry for my long absence. My Aunt Frances, who was 91, just passed away over the weekend after having fallen and broken her hip in early February.

Despite the fact she recovered quite well physically from the surgery to fix her hip and was able to walk again with help, she never really recovered from the shock to her body at that age. She had little appetite before the fall, which probably led to her being weak in the first place; afterward she hardly ate at all. She was in rehab for about 3 weeks in a nursing home and then had to be moved to another nursing home after the rehab ended, because she had declined cognitively and would not have been able to take care of herself or be alone at all. She basically stopped eating or drinking about a week ago and just faded away early Sunday morning. I think she just didn't want to live in a nursing home and be dependent for the rest of her days.

While looking through her photo albums to pick some pictures for the funeral service, I enjoyed seeing all the pictures of her smiling and happy during her lifetime; laughing with friends, sitting on the beach at Cape Cod, standing in front of forsythia and cherry blossoms in Branch Brook Park or foliage in Vermont, enjoying outings with family in Massachusetts, posing in front of numerous Christmas trees, holding me as a baby in her arms while my parents looked on... smiling in front of palm trees in Florida, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Hawaii.

My aunt did a lot of traveling when she was younger; and when I was young I thought of her as kind of like Mary Tyler Moore's character on TV.  She was an independent working woman who traveled, hung out with her friends, and seemed quite cosmopolitan to me. My mother worked before I was born, but stayed home after that. My aunt was my example of working womanhood!

When I was little, she would get down on the floor and play with me. Since she was so young at heart, I remember telling her once back then that I thought she was a teenager. She was pretty tickled about that, considering she was in her late 30s at the time.

She remained single all her life, but did have a few romances. One of the longest relationships was with a man named Arthur, which lasted three years. He had wanted to marry her but she felt he was too unreliable, as he did not have a steady job. My aunt was always very practical.

Born in a tiny town in Massachusetts, she lived there until she was in her late 20s, when she moved to New Jersey, where my mother had already settled and found a career in medical writing. Their parents, my grandparents, also moved to New Jersey a year or two later. Eventually my aunt bought a house in Nutley and her parents lived with her and she cared for them in their old age while still working full-time. She learned to drive at age 42 and bravely traversed the highways on trips to New England.

Although my aunt never went to a 4-year college, she tried on a number of careers before finally entering the field of spectroscopy. At first she went to school for occupational therapy and found work at a mental hospital; but after having a patient turn violent and break her glasses, she decided it was not for her. She worked in a cookie factory for a short period of time as well. She joined the Waves during World War II but was discharged due to medical reasons shortly thereafter; she had had some kind of seizure, which was never really explained. She never had another one after that. She was always disappointed that she had not completed her stint in the Waves.

Once she moved to New Jersey she took some technical courses and got a job at Englehard Industries in Newark, NJ. She worked there for about 20 years in the spectroscopy lab, analyzing precious metals. She was the acting supervisor of the lab and had many friends from her working years there.

She retired at 62 in 1982, and continued to live in her house in Nutley until four years ago, when she moved to the senior citizens apartment building where my mother had moved, down the street from me. She lived independently up until she broke her hip.

I fondly remember all the Sunday dinners our family shared together, during my grandparents' lifetime and afterward. Even during the last few months my aunt was still inviting my husband and me over for a meal at her apartment. I always had an impression of my aunt as rather a gourmet cook; she liked to try new recipes and in our plain-food New England-based family, she was the first to put garlic cloves on the outside of the lamb at Easter!

I'll also always remember the ample drinks before dinner on the patio in nice weather and the drinks being shaken-up in an old screw-top jar. My aunt also loved picnics; when we were all younger we would take a picnic up to one of New Jersey's little lakes and have a picnic on the beach - always with a hidden thermos of wine!

An ardent Boston Red Sox fan to the end, my aunt paid extra for the MLB channel on Comcast just to be able to see the Sox play on a regular basis.  She was also a subscriber to the Red Sox Die Hard magazine when it was still being published in hard copy. And she was always ready to discuss the merits of the the Red Sox versus the Yankees with her nephew-in-law! She was lucky enough to see the Red Sox win two championships in her lifetime, a feat many Sox fans did not achieve.

My Aunt Frances was a very generous person, not only to me, but to many charities. She was always giving money to causes that she believed in:  the World Wildlife Fund, the Humane Society, veterans organizations, and charities benefiting Native Americans, to name only a few. She was a faithful churchgoer and did a lot of volunteer work for the church. She was especially proud of her work in the church's Memorial Garden, where the ashes of some of the congregants were scattered instead of being buried elsewhere.

After she retired, she volunteered as a tutor, helping immigrants learning English as a second language become fluent by conversing with them and helping them read English. She also took up bowling in her late 70s, bowling with my mother on a league until as recently as three years ago. She had a 140 average at her best; not too shabby for someone who barely weighed 90 pounds.

No mention of my aunt is complete without talking about her cats. I still remember each cat she had; there was Tiga, who she got as a kitten from a man she worked with named Joe; Tiga had the biggest ears I'd ever seen on a kitten. He never quite grew into them. She had Smokey, a gray cat that died young due to a gastroenteritis virus; and Thumper, a black-and-white cat that used to belong to an old boss of mine whose kids became allergic (we took his mother, Sheba).

There were a number of others, ending with Amanda and her son, Geoffrey, her last two cats. Amanda, a tiger cat, lived a good long life but developed cancer and had to be put to sleep not long before my aunt moved to her apartment. My aunt moved in to the apartment with Geoffrey, a black-and-white cat, who lived to the ripe old age of 18 and died only last year. I've often felt that my aunt went downhill from the moment Geoffrey died. In retrospect, I wish I'd convinced her to get another cat.

While I will always miss her, I think she went on her own terms and did not want to live any longer. She was at peace and ready to go, and I am glad of that. I think that is all anyone can hope for.

This, That and The Other Thing

Hello, Blog World. Sorry for the long silence.

First of all, let me thank everyone from the bottom of my heart for all of your notes of sympathy about my mom. I really appreciated it, and it definitely helped me through this difficult time.

During the last couple of weeks I have been lost in the Facebook world playing interminable games of Bouncing Balls and my latest addiction, Pool Practice. Yes, pool, as in billiards. It's a great FB game that actually allows you to practice all your best shots. And it must work well, because I am lousy at the exact same shots online as I am in the real world. Those corner pockets get me every time; but I'm a whiz on the side ones!

I guess playing these online games is a way to procrastinate and avoid cleaning out my mother's apartment. I have done very little so far, and as a result had to pay the rent for the month of July, since June is now over without progress being made. I really must get it cleaned out this month. I did manage to wash some laundry and throw out some food and other stuff but there is still a lot to do.

I seem to be lost in the doldrums. I'm not sure if it's the heat that is now upon us, or the aftermath of my mother's death, but I am lacking in motivation these days.

Then today I learned some more sad news: Marie from The Attentive Aphorist passed away over the weekend. She was a wonderful person and her voice will be sorely missed. Marie had been having health issues since last year but she had been doing better so I was shocked to hear the news. My deepest sympathies go out to her family and friends.

We're up at our cabin for a whole week, which is heaven compared to the 100 degree heat back home in New Jersey. Our place is at 1000 feet of elevation and there is a nice breeze here at the top of the hill, wafting through the quaking Aspens, Hemlocks, and oak trees that tower above the cabin. Before leaving New Jersey, we did go to the annual fireworks at our local county park on Friday night, so we got our dose of 4th of July before coming up here. We heard the fireworks going off last night in Ticonderoga but were too lazy to drive up and see them there. We did have a hot dog for lunch on the 4th, so that counts for something.

When I logged on today I realized that this is my 500th post since I started blogging in late 2006. I realize some people manage 500 posts in their first year, so I take no great pride in this achievement, but thought it was worth noting. I am sorry I am not coming up with something more brilliant for such a milestone, but it is what it is.

Now that we're up here, I'm hoping to take more time to visit everyone else's blogs, as the 3G MiFi connection here is not ideal for playing online games, which will leave me much more free time to actually read blogs, which is a much more constructive pursuit.

In my recent obsession with Facebook games, I haven't been paying that much attention to the news. Of course, Robert Byrd passed away at 92, the BP oil spill continues, and Congress grilled Kagan. But it all seems to be happening at a distance. I'm hoping when we get home Baxter will be able to catch me up with what's been going on as I'm sure he's been keeping track.

Speaking of Baxter, he is not very happy with the new addition to the family: my mother's cat, Zoe. We brought her over to our house a couple of weeks ago and settled her into the spare bedroom. Baxter is very jealous and anytime the door to that room is open he comes in and tries to eat her food and poke around. They have met up with each other a few times, which resulted in loud hissing on both sides. Also, she eats wet food and until now, Baxter had no interest in it. But all of a sudden he wants wet food too, since Zoe gets it!

So when we came up to the cabin on Saturday we decided to bring Zoe with us and leave Baxter home. He will be happier at home anyway, and we didn't want to leave her home locked up in the spare room. Please don't feel sorry for him. If he were here he'd be spending the whole week hiding under a bed anyway, as he did when we first brought him home.

As it turned out, bringing Zoe up here was the best decision we could have made. She was the perfect traveler and it turns out she loves it up here at the cabin. She has no fear whatsoever, and wanders at will throughout the place, jumping up on windowsills and looking outside. We brought a cage with us that used to belong to our previous dog, Alice, and Zoe is happily sitting out on the deck in the cage surveying the landscape as I write this. I wouldn't dare let her loose on the deck as she could easily jump over the edge and be lost in the woods instantly.

Unlike Baxter, Zoe was able to put the dog in her place immediately. Diva came over to sniff at her while she was in my lap and Zoe immediately let rip a mighty hiss, and smacked her on the left eyebrow. Diva now is afraid to walk anywhere near her, and the cat is now in charge. The ironic thing is that she weighs about 5 lbs. - about a quarter the size of Baxter - but she isn't afraid of anything. Baxter runs out of the room if the dog looks at him.

I'll try to post some pictures of her soon. In the meantime, I hope everyone is enjoying the long weekend.

In Memory of My Mother

In the end, my mother got an infection that weakened her beyond the point of no return. After she was able to get off the ventilator successfully, I had hope that she might surprise everyone one more time and recover enough to at least go to a nursing home and continue to enjoy a few more days and weeks. But c. difficile, brought on by the strong antibiotics they were giving her to ward off pneumonia, did her in. She became weaker and less responsive, and was unable to get off the bi-pap mask that kept her breathing. Like a very old cat who had used up the last of her nine lives, my mother was finally giving up, little by little.

The last night before she died, I had gone to see her in the hospital and could see how weak and unhappy she was.

I had sent my husband up to Cape Cod that day because that week was the week we had originally booked to take my mother up for one last trip to the Cape, and the cottages were paid for. His dad was going to join us on Monday so I told him to go anyway and at least he and Dad could enjoy a week up there. So I was alone that night after I left my mother in the hospital, and I didn’t feel like cooking for myself.

So where else would I go but Star Tavern, where all the waitresses know me and I could sit at the bar and have a pizza and some wine, and think? I arrived and found myself a seat at the bar. The woman behind the bar asked me what I’d like and I ordered a glass of wine and a mushroom pizza. There was a man sitting next to me who turned out to be her husband, and I started talking to him, telling him about my mother’s situation.

They say angels come in all forms and perhaps he was one of them. He had gone through the same thing with his mother in 1994, and told me that I couldn’t ask my mother to make the decision to end her lifesaving care. He said I had to make the decision for her. He said he did it for his mother and it was the best decision he ever made, that it gave him control over the situation and he was able to be sure to be there with her when she died. “You have to make the decision, not her,” he emphasized.

When I left that night and went home I knew what I had to do.

The next morning I called the hospital and told them that when I got there I wanted my mother taken off the bi-pap machine and that I wanted to let her go peacefully.
My aunt and I arrived at the hospital at around 11:30 and sat with my mother for about an hour, talking and reminiscing about happy times in our lives together. My mother was alert and was listening to us. Then finally the doctor’s orders to take off the mask were finalized and the nurse came in and removed it. I looked at Mom and said, “I’m here, Mom,” and she smiled at me. My aunt later told me my mother had squeezed her hand at the same time.

A few minutes later she had trouble breathing so I told the nurse and she came in and administered morphine to calm her…she must have been close to the end because within five minutes she gently stopped breathing and was gone.

Naturally I am sad, and of course I still keep reliving that scene in my mind, and thinking about all the decisions I’d made or events that had happened that had led up to that moment. Should I have stayed home that last weekend she got so sick instead of going to the cabin? If she’d gone to the hospital sooner, would she still be OK? Should I have let her go when she choked on the milk five days earlier, so she wouldn’t have suffered with the infection? Should I have said something to the doctor when he ordered the additional diuretic two weeks earlier, when I knew my mother could easily become dehydrated as she had once before?

But when it all came down to it, I knew I was quibbling about details, about days or weeks, not months of life. My mother was 91 and she had lived a good long life – and was never ill until the last few months of it. My mother hated being sick; she considered it some kind of moral failing. I knew she hated being an invalid and wouldn’t have wanted to keep going in the condition she was in.

Rather than have a viewing, I decided to have her cremated and have a memorial service later, in June. I rode up to Cape Cod that Monday with my father-in-law and we enjoyed a peaceful week at the Cape, reminiscing about my mother and remembering all the good times she had there with us. We had the funeral home divide her ashes so I could bring some of them up to the Cape and scatter them there later this summer; the rest are buried next to my father in the cemetery.

So now I’m left with the other tasks that fall on those who are left when a loved one passes. I worked with the funeral home to finalize her obituary – how do you sum up someone’s life in a few paragraphs? Next comes the planning of the memorial service, which will have a bagpiper play at it as my mother once said she wanted at her funeral. And finally, the mundane things: canceling the cable TV, the telephone service, the newspaper subscription; cleaning out the apartment.

Once all that is done, perhaps I can start thinking about something else. But right now I am still trying to think of a way to honor my mother’s life with something longer than the brief paragraph in the newspaper: “active for many years in the Community Church, sang in the choir, medical writer, avid bowler, Girl Scout leader for over 25 years…” Yes, all those things were important, but don’t sum up who my mother was.

To begin with, she grew up in Massachusetts but once she graduated from Simmons College in Boston with a journalism degree, she took the big step of leaving home and coming to live in New York City, working at a small publication in her first job. I always thought that was pretty brave and rather glamorous.

She then moved to New Jersey and worked for Hoffman LaRoche, writing for their in-house magazine, the Roche Review, for a number of years, before getting a job at a medical advertising agency, Paul Klempner Agency, where she met my father. After they married in 1951, they were very active in the Nutley Little Theater, taking part in a number of plays. When I was born, my mother stopped working, because back then, that's what you did. I don't think she ever really minded, though. She once told me that raising a child is the most important thing she could have done.

In 1962 when we moved up to Penfield, New York, she and my dad were founding members of their little theater group, the Penfield Players. I grew up hanging out at rehearsals and helping my parents learn their lines. Both of them were in the old classic, Arsenic and Old Lace, once in Nutley, once in Penfield. My mother played Aunt Martha in Nutley and Aunt Abby in Penfield; my father Dr. Einstein in both productions. Lines from that play became family jokes for years thereafter..."I've completely lost track of Mr. Spenalzo," for instance, was a line we used whenever we had trouble finding something at home.

My mother also was active in the neighborhood up there, putting her journalism skills to work writing a neighborhood newsletter for the neighborhood association, as well as continuing to be a Girl Scout leader, which she had begun when I was in the Brownies back in Nutley.

We moved back to New Jersey in 1967 as my father got a job in New York at another medical advertising agency, and my parents didn't move again after that. After my father died, my mother moved into the senior citizens apartment down the street from me and enjoyed her time there for four years.

My mother enjoyed telling stories about her time in college, and always remembered the Hurricane of 1938, the unnamed hurricane that unexpectedly slammed into New England one fall. She was trying to make her way home from college in the middle of the storm and had to spend the night at a gas station because the roads were blocked by fallen trees.

She also reminisced about her days as an air raid warden during World War II, which was after she had moved down to New Jersey. She had to go around and knock on people's doors to tell them to turn off their lights during air raid warnings.

My mother's life was not without its tragedies. When I was about two years old, she had another baby, my sister Jessica. Sadly, Jessica was born with a heart defect and back then they couldn't operate on a tiny baby the way they can now. She only lived to be four months old. My mother didn't have another child after that, as by then she was 37, which in those days was considered "too old."

Also, in his later years, my father had bouts of intractable depression and twice had to be hospitalized after attempted suicides; then in his last years he had dementia and eventually had to be in a nursing home before he passed away in 2005. But my mother took it all in stride. She was the kind of person who did what she had to do, didn't complain and didn't bemoan her fate.

I think the best way to describe her personality is just plain nice. It sounds trite to say someone is “nice,” but niceness is woefully underrated in this world. With the exception of Republicans, my mother never said a bad word about anyone, and was unfailingly polite until the very end. Even in the hospital during her last stay, whenever a nurse or aide came in and did anything for her, she always said “thank you.” Her home aides loved her because she was patient and sweet and never complained.

But of course she was more than just nice; she had plenty of personality, and certainly wasn’t without a temper from time to time. And back when I was growing up, of course there were plenty of times we got into arguments, as is natural. But as we got older we got along better and better and truly were in synch.

My mother always loved to read, and it was sad when her macular degeneration got too bad and she was no longer able to read on her own. So during the last two months I took to reading to her; we went through a couple of her beloved Dorothy Sayers short stories about Lord Peter Wimsey, and I would read the comics in the paper to her every day. I hope it gave her back a little of the joy she got from reading.

Of course her love of reading was passed on to me – when I was a child she’d read me Winnie the Pooh and other stories, and I soon loved to read as much as she did. I read all her old favorites as well as many new books I discovered on my own, and still love to read to this day.

When I think back, many of the interests I have today were passed on to me by my mother.

It is from her that I get my love of nature – many a time we walked in the woods with our binoculars, bird watching together. She loved wildflowers, too, and was always pointing out the special ones, the Lady Slippers or the Jack-in-the-Pulpit or the Solomon’s Seal.

As my Girl Scout leader, she took me and the troops on many a campout, where we learned to build fires, tie knots, cook on our tin-can stoves with our Buddy Burners, and hike in the woods. I remember one night we kids were all in a tent telling ghost stories and she came around the outside of the tent and went “Woooooh!” and scared the bejeesus out of us. My mother later told me she never realized a bunch of 10 and 11 –year-olds could make such a loud screeching noise!

After I got older, Mom continued to be a Girl Scout leader – the Junior age group was her favorite (the 5th and 6th graders) and those troops are the ones that she led for the remainder of the time she was active in Girl Scouts, right into her 70s.

I think they finally kind of “retired” her by telling her there were fewer troops that last year and there wasn’t one for her anymore. They gave her a plaque thanking her for all her contributions, but I think they had decided they needed some new blood. Mom still liked teaching the campfires and the knots, while the Girl Scouts had moved on to trying to instill “self-esteem” and other modernistic ideas. I felt bad for her, but as with everything else, she took it in stride and didn’t let it get her down.

A few years later she received a letter from a woman in Florida who had once been one of her Girl Scouts. She had decided to write to my mother and tell her how much she had appreciated the things she learned from her in Girl Scouts.

A friend of mine, another one of her former Girl Scouts, also wrote to her later on telling her that she was now a Girl Scout leader herself. I think my mother felt good to know that her efforts were appreciated. And I’m sure there were many others who felt that way but never wrote to tell her.

Undaunted by the end of her Girl Scout career, my mom went back to watercolor painting, a talent she had been developing back in the old days.  For the rest of her life, she painted idyllic scenes in Scotland and other locations; she painted her own Christmas cards each year until the last year of her life.

The other thing I get from my mother is her love of politics. She and my father were both dyed-in-the-wool , liberal Democrats. They worshipped FDR and JFK, were pro-civil rights, and pro-gay rights even back then. My mother had two good friends who were lesbians and they were part of our inner family circle – I loved going on our frequent visits to Jay and Claire, who treated me as if I were their niece.

My mother woke me up about midnight on Election Night in 1960 to let me listen to the returns coming in on my dad’s transistor radio, since she knew it would be the first presidential election I’d remember. I still remember hearing the announcer saying Kennedy was winning by 100,000 votes. Later, in 1968, she and I went around distributing campaign literature for Hubert Humphrey (since Bobby Kennedy didn’t live to be the nominee). My parents hated Nixon and we were very disappointed when that cliffhanger election was finally won by Nixon by a fraction of the vote.

Politics has always been a big part of my mother’s life, and right until the end she had CNN and MSNBC on all day and was still up on things. I remember when she got out of rehab at the nursing home in March she said she was thrilled to find out that the healthcare bill had passed (her roommate in the nursing home didn’t watch CNN, she watched soap operas, so Mom hadn’t been able to keep up with current events).

My mother had a little trouble with dates toward the end; when asked what year it was, she kept saying 1992. But if asked who the President was, she was able to correctly answer “Barack Obama.” I asked her once why she kept thinking it was 1992. She said “I guess because that was the last time someone I liked was President.” I’m glad that she was able to live to see another Democrat in the White House.

My mother was always a Boston Red Sox fan, having grown up in Massachusetts. She was born in 1918, the year they had last won the World Series – shortly before she was born. I too was a Red Sox fan for much of my life, until I met my husband, a Yankees fan. But I still have a soft spot in my heart for the Red Sox. I was glad my mother lived to see the Sox win not just one more championship, but two, before she died. My mother never gave up hope, and in the end, her optimism paid off.

Of course, another trait I get from Mom is my love of animals. My father had never had a pet when he was young, so it was Mom who brought in our first one, a beautiful tortoiseshell/tiger cat named Boots. She quickly became “his” cat but of course I loved her too. I was only about 3 when we got her so I grew up with her. Later we got another cat named Silly (I named him Silver Gray for his color, not very original – but we called him Silly). Still later, when I was 9, came our Pekingese dog, Suki, and then Mittens, a kitten I got on a sleepover at someone’s farm with my Girl Scout troop. Since my childhood, I’ve never been able to think of a house being a home without a pet, thanks to my mother.

Until the end of her life my mother always had a cat – the last one is Zoe, a tiny little 15-year-old orange tiger cat who has outlived her and will be coming to stay with us now. I know when my mother was in the hospital and nursing home for her rehab she missed Zoe a lot, as she kept looking for her and wondering where she was. I was happy to be able to see her sitting in her chair with Zoe in her lap those last couple of months. At least she got home to see her again.

Both of my parents gave me my love of writing and all things medical. Since both of them were medical writers, medical subjects were always discussed in our house, and medical books were around constantly.

My mother may have stopped working when I was born, but her love of writing continued to influence her life and was passed on to me. It is because of her I know the difference between “lay” and “lie,” “might” and “may,” and many other grammatical rules. One of her pet peeves was the use of “of” when it wasn’t needed – as in, “it’s not that big of a deal.” To the last, she corrected me on that. Another usage she deplored was the use of “anymore” without a negative. For instance, “He’s really tired anymore.” Correctly it should be used only with a negative, such as “He doesn’t have any energy anymore.” A few years ago I even encouraged her to write some blog posts which I posted on a blog I opened for her – it is still on Blogspot, here: Marge's Words to the Wise.

I can also credit my mother with my choice of a college – her own Simmons College. Originally I hadn’t intended to go to the same school my mother did; but once she took me up to Boston I fell in love with the area and I liked the campus and the people I met there. It is also a women’s college, and I am very grateful for having gone there, since I think the supportive atmosphere of a woman’s college is what I needed to come out of my shell and give me the confidence I sorely lacked during high school. Although originally a Biology major, I soon fell back to a more natural talent – writing – and majored in Journalism. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, even though my career was in market research. Good writing is important in any job.

My love of travel I can also trace to my mother. I think if my father had been on his own he probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere outside the metro area. My mother first introduced him, and then me, to her beloved Cape Cod, where she’d been vacationing since she was a child. But then she branched out and we made two trips to England and Scotland, as she had always loved all things Scottish, which she traced to the small amount of Wallace blood she had in her ancestry. Then when I was older, she and my dad went on to travel to various places in Europe, including a trip to Paris and Amsterdam that she always remembered fondly. I think her favorite trip was to Israel in 1990. She was proud that she swam in the Dead Sea and saw all the historic sites in Jerusalem.

Once I met DH and we started traveling together, we took my parents to Scotland twice for visits to my mother’s favorite country. She loved seeing all the old places she remembered and her beautiful “green velvet mountains,” as she called them.

Last, I’d have to say that any optimistic attitudes I have about life come from my mother. She always saw the bright side of every dark cloud, and truly seemed to believe that bad things would never happen. Even to the end I don’t think she really believed her smoking had anything to do with her lung problems. You can call it denial or you can call it optimism – I’ll choose to call it optimism.

My mother was always disappointed I never had children. Although she has grandchildren through my half-sister Joy, they are of course only related to our father and not by blood to her. She sometimes bemoaned the fact that I will have no one to pass on our few family heirlooms to, and that her family line would die out with me. She said that my having children would have been her “immortality.”

I disagree. Whether or not there is an afterlife – and let’s face it, no one knows for sure – anyone’s immortality is probably best expressed by how their lives affected others who came in contact with them when they were here on earth. Each of us is like a pebble thrown in a pond – the concentric ripples that come out from the center reach far beyond the one pebble, and roll toward distant shores.

I like to think of all the girls my mother came in contact with during her years as a Girl Scout leader, and how they are now passing her love of nature down to their own children – or their own Girl Scout troops – and beyond. I like to think that even my humble efforts at blogging, which would have never happened without the interest in writing that was passed on to me, may influence someone somewhere about some subject that I’ve written about. We never know what we do that will affect someone else, and that is the beauty of the kind of immortality I’m talking about.

I remember once a long time ago I asked my mother if she was afraid of dying, or did she ever think about death, and she said no, she didn’t worry about that; she felt there would “always be a little more time.” I think she thought that to the very end too, which is why I told her I’d take her to the Cape later in the summer just as she was breathing her last. I wanted her to go out thinking she still had that little bit more time.

I hope somewhere, she is having a lot more time. But I won’t know until my own time comes.

Below is the sunset over the pond at Cape Cod, which my husband took the night my mother died. She would be happy to know there was a beautiful sunset in her honor, as she always loved a good sunset.

She's Not Dead Yet!

Monty Python's classic "Bring Out Your Dead" clip pretty much describes how my day at the hospital nearly went.

My mother had a bad setback two days ago. As many of you know, she was rehospitalized a week ago with dehydration and high potassium but she had been making progress, was eating about as well as she usually does, and was doing OK using a Bi-Pap machine to help her breathe except when she was eating, since it involves a mask over her face.

So I had gone to the hospital around suppertime since that was when I could talk to her without her wearing the mask, plus I could help her eat. So there I was, trying to be the ever-helpful daughter, and coaxing her to eat and drink more. She was having a little trouble with choking a bit on her food and said she didn't want anymore, so I encouraged her to have a sip of milk. She sipped it and at first she seemed fine but then started to cough. Not a big deal for anyone who has something go down the wrong way, but because of her weak lungs she was having trouble getting it out. I asked someone to get the nurse, thinking perhaps she needed some suction or something to help her, when suddenly she just flopped over.

After I tried to wake her up I went and got the nurse, who came in and checked her pulse and found there was none. In a split second I had to decide whether to have her revived or not, and since I felt responsible for the whole thing, decided to have her receive a full "code." I was kind of crowded into the back of the room so I just sat there calmly while all this went on around me, as if I were an extra in an "ER" episode playing the part of the concerned family member. (No, they didn't need to use the paddles or yell "Clear!" so apparently it wasn't that hard to bring her back with some CPR and epinephrine.)

Naturally she was entubated to be able to keep oxygen going to her brain during all of this, so they took her back to the ICU and put her on a ventilator. She woke up and was aware of her surroundings, and the next day, although not able to talk due to the ventilator, she was perfectly cognizant and able to nod yes or no and express things with her eyes and hands.

But immediately the resident doctors who are in the ICU began asking me what the next step would be if she couldn't get off the ventilator. I had decided I didn't want her resuscitated a second time, and signed a paper stating that. I also knew I didn't want her to have a tracheostomy, where they would put a hole in her throat to assiste her breathing so that at least she could talk again. But she would have to have it for the rest of her life and it sounded like a very uncomfortable procedure with a limited outcome, given her age and condition.

She did well overnight but when they tried to wean her off the ventilator yesterday they said she couldn't come off it yet. The resident again asked me what my next step would be. She said they didn't usually keep them on a ventilator more than 3 days if there isn't an ability to take them off. Her recommendation was the tracheostomy which I had decided not to do.

We waited till today and went to see her and another resident asked me bluntly if we had made a decision yet on the ventilator. My mother, you have to understand, at this point is doing fine on the ventilator - oxygen levels, heart rate, blood pressure all good. The only problem is they don't think she can go off of it. My aunt and I came back later on and told this resident that yes, we would try taking her off it and that we understood she might not survive. I did say I'd like to talk to the attending physician first.

Lo and behold, the pulmonologist came in to the room and said Mom is doing OK - that she is 91 years old and will naturally take longer to come back and be able to get off the vent. He said he certainly saw no reason to rush into anything without giving it a few more days. They had started giving her liquid nourishment (since she can't eat with the vent in her throat) and he said this may give her more strength and she'll better withstand the removal of the vent.

Thank goodness he came in and told me this. I had made up my mind to be resolute and get this done for my mother's own good, thinking there would be no other choice. I know she hates the thing being down her throat and she did say yes (nodding and even writing it on a piece of paper) when I asked her if she wanted it off "no matter what" and gave her a pretty good idea that if it didn't work, that would be it.

But as it turned out, once again, "reports of her death were exaggerated." It is my belief that residents, no matter how skillful and and well-intentioned, should not be the doctors discussing end-of-life decisions with the family. They don't have enough experience to know what may or may not happen in specific circumstances. They only know the protocols and procedures they have been taught and only have limited experience in real life situations.

This is another example of the failure of our health care system and another reason "end-of-life" discussions should be covered in our healthcare as a matter of course, so that we get a better opportunity to talk about all of the pros and cons of a situation with a team of knowledgable professionals.

I am not blaming only the resident; I experienced a similar situation last time she was hospitalized with the pulmonologist who is the partner of the one I spoke to today (I like to call him "Dr. Death.") He practically convinced me my mother was not long for the world when she was in the hospital last time. She came home and lived two months at home after that, enjoying her day-to-day life; she had Easter dinner and Mother's Day celebrations over at our house, as well as enjoying a lovely lobster dinner sitting outside on our deck, with us, her stepdaughter (my half-sister) and her husband, who came up to see her from South Carolina earlier this month.

I sometimes wonder whether doctors realize how influential their attitudes can be on these types of decisions. In the case of Dr. Death, I got the distinct impression he disapproved when I told him I had not signed a DNR on my mother at that time. Guess he thought at 91 she wasn't worth saving, or knew that even if she recovered this time, she'd be back again soon - and of course, she was.

But what these doctors don't realize is that even a couple of months can be worthwhile for a person that age - another enjoyable family get-together, another chance to smell flowers and feel the breeze on her face. It isn't the quantity of the time, but the quality.

I second-guessed myself somewhat after I had them resuscitate my mother the other day. It had been very peaceful and I wondered if I'd done the right thing by having them revive her. But she did come out of it with her brain intact and as a result, at least my aunt, her sister, was able to come in and visit her and talk to her again. These things are important, both for the ill person and for the family.

I'm not saying anything against anyone who has made the choice, with or without a discussion with their loved one, not to pursue aggressive treatment. Each choice should be individual and based on the feelings of both the patient and their family.

But the doctors' influence should be kept to a minimum. The doctor should tell the family and the patient what the pros and cons are, what the prognosis is, what they might expect depending on what course of action they take, and then let the patient and the family decide. The family should not be rushed in this decision and should be given as much time as is needed, as long as the patient is not suffering.

Just thought I should share this experience in case anyone else has been struggling with this type of situation. There are no easy answers, but be aware that you need to get plenty of second opinions before making a decision. You don't want your loved one to be put in the position of yelling, "But I'm not dead yet!"

Keith Olbermann on "Life Panels" and Health Care

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I didn't catch this last night but saw it posted on Momocrats.

Olbermann speaks of a very personal situation - his own father's illness and the choices that he has had to make - and relates it to the current debate on health care, pointing out the claim by members of the GOP that there would be "death panels" to be absurd, and also showing how lack of insurance can taint decisions that should only be between the patient, his or her health care proxy and the doctors.

It is very moving; you'll need about 10 minutes of free time to watch it if you haven't already seen it, but it's worth the time spent. Naturally this seemed very pertinent to me given my recent (and ongoing) situation with my mother.

I didn't get to see much of today's health care summit, but did catch the last part when President Obama wrapped it up. From what he said it sounded as if the GOP did not yielded on any major points, which certainly didn't surprise me. They also all looked very sulky as the President talked.

I hope he and the Democrats in Congress will go forward without them and use reconciliation to pass as much of the health care bill that they can. Something has to change because our health care system is broken.

Death Never Takes a Holiday

In fact, lately Death seems to have become a work-a-holic. It seems as if everyone is dying left and right this summer.

As everyone has already noted, we lost Walter Cronkite over the weekend, who was the voice of the news for so many of us in my generation. The NY Times had a fitting tribute to him in today's paper.

"Some deaths end only a life. Some end a generation. Walter Cronkite’s death ends something larger and more profound. He stood for a world, a century, that no longer exists. His death is like losing the last veteran of a world-changing war, one of those men who saw too much but was never embittered by it. Walter Cronkite’s gift was to talk to us about what he saw, and we are very lucky to have been able to listen."

Then it was Frank McCourt, cut down at 78 by melanoma. Another sad loss; I'm sure he had many more stories to tell and more teaching to do.

I also read of the death of the world's oldest man, Henry Allingham of Great Britain. He lived to be 113, but should be remembered for much more than that, as he was Britain's last WW I veteran of the RAF, and on top of that he made it his mission that no one should forget those lost in the Great War, as it was called back when he served.

"He was the last survivor of the Battle of Jutland in 1916, a survivor of the Battle of Ypres in 1917, and the sole survivor of the original RAF.

Henry's astonishing stamina, determination and loyalty to lost comrades saw him work constantly to ensure his memories - and their sacrifices - were not forgotten.

Blind, almost deaf and gnarled with arthritis, he made scores of personal visits each year to tell his stories to young people and spread a message of peace."

And at the personal level, the mother of one of my closest childhood friends, whom I've known since I was only 14, passed away over the weekend. She had been ill for quite awhile with cancer, and was in her late 80s, so it was not a shock, certainly not for her children who had been watching her decline. But she was their only remaining parent and now both of them are gone. It must be a strange feeling to suddenly stop being someone's child, no matter how old you are. I lost my dad in 2005 but still have my mother. I know that could change at any time, since she is 90, and I try not to think how that will feel.

To quote John Donne,

"No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

I am feeling very diminished today.

To a Friend Who Died Too Young

I recently lost a friend, too young. We had been out of touch for awhile, had a falling out - a long story - and had never really dealt with it. And now it's too late.

Things like this make you realize how important it is not to let things fester. If there is a problem, talk it out; if there is anger, try to understand. If there is silence, speak. Otherwise you may find, like me, that you missed your chance.

I wanted to post a poem in memory of my friend, but nothing seemed quite suitable to make the point that I wanted to make. So I wrote my own. I'm no poet and this is probably a monumentally bad poem, but I thought I'd post it anyway since it expressed what I feel.

Many times I thought of you
And almost picked up the phone
I composed letters in my mind
But they were never sent.

I often wondered how you were
But never dared to ask.
Afraid of your rejection,
It was so easy not to try.

After all, we weren’t that old,
There was always time.
Another day, another month,
Perhaps sometime next year.

But suddenly it’s all too late;
The days, the months, the years
Slipped by without a trace
Leaving all the words unsaid.

No time left to start anew
No time left to make amends
Only time to feel the pain
Of wishing you were here again.