Blog
Humans of New York
This you tube video of 100-year-old Shirley reminiscing about her beloved husband, Moe, will make you cry, smile, and laugh. But, most of all, it will leave you with poignant words to cherish. Pass the tissue, please. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8TjO2FGnao
read moreMy Mother’s Keepers
Startling statistics from the Alzheimer’s Association: Impact on Caregivers In 2013, 15.5 million family and friends provided 17.7 billion hours of unpaid care to those with Alzheimer’s and other dementias – care valued at $220.2 billion, which is nearly eight times the total revenue of McDonald’s in 2012. More than 60 percent of Alzheimer’s and dementia caregivers are women. All caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s – both women and men – face a devastating toll. Due to the physical and emotional burden...
read moreNew Memoir Explores Struggle Involved with Early-Onset Alzheimer’s
Vermont resident, Mary Ann Fuller Young recently published her first book! Here’s the press release from Champlain College of Burlington, VT: Local author Mary Ann Fuller Young has written her first book, a memoir entitled Plainly and Simply, chronicling her journey through some of life’s most challenging hardships. Derived largely from her personal journals, the book details the difficulties Young faced when her beloved Francis was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Young does not shy from the reality of the disease, but rather...
read moreStill A Bloomer Girl
In her book, No Daughter of Mine is Going to Be a Dancer, Ms. Underwood shares her story of how she persevered to fulfill her dream to perform on stage. What makes her unique is that she published her book at the age of ninety-one, proving that aging does not necessarily mean it’s time to sit back and passively watch others leap and twirl across the stage. To read more about Ms. Underwood’s courageous, and inspirational story go to The Other Paper...
read moreRestless Sleep
Is there a magic formula, like the square-root-of–I-don’t-know that will make you feel good about the decision you make? Wouldn’t it be much easier if decision-making were objective, like trigonometry, or physics? But someone, or something, will not let us get off that easily. The decision I’m talking about has to do with our aging parents. You’re father has dementia and can no longer make simple decisions, like when to take a shower, or what to eat for breakfast (though sometimes I don’t even know). Your father’s brain has slowed to the...
read moreDreams
If you are among the aged (in your eighth or ninth decade of life), and felt you had it in you to last another ten years, what ultimate, far reaching dream would you hope to fulfill? What middle of the road dream would you like to fulfill. Finally, what immediate, arm’s length dream do you yearn to realize?
read moreA Tribute to Pete Seeger
As he does every morning before leaving for work, yesterday my husband, John, kissed me and said, “Have a nice morning. Love you.” But what he does not say every morning is, “Call me when you wake up.” I nodded, smiled, and said, “Love you too.” I rolled over, and as I started to doze, thought about why he wanted me to call: Maybe he’s going to surprise me and tell me he’s taking the afternoon off. Maybe he wants to have lunch together. At 9:30, before I even crawled out of bed, I called John. “Did you hear?” he asked. My breath quickened. My...
read morePast Prime
The other day, as I walked out of my condominium into the hallway, my 91-year old neighbor, Shirley, was pushing her walker along the carpet faster than she usually does. At least her daughter was with her in case she fell. But the way Shirley looked ahead, not smiling, worried me. “Is there something wrong,” I asked. “My mom cut her shin,” Shirley’s daughter said. “It looks infected.” Shirley, all bundled up in her puffy coat, wool hat, and gloves shuffled forward. “We should get going,” she urged her daughter. Later that day, I visited...
read moreGrowing Old
http://blr.med.nyu.edu/content/archive/2007/spring The above link is to Bellevue Literary Review’s Fall 2007 issue about aging. You can read some pieces to get an idea of the kind of work they publish. Other selections you can read by purchasing the journal ($20 for 2 issues) They also have FREE study guides related to each piece that might be useful in navigating through the aging process, whether it’s your own issues with growing older or that of a loved one. Here’s the link to the study guides: http://blr.med.nyu.edu/study_guides/aging...
read more‘Patrimony’ by Philip Roth: A Brief Book Review
I’ve been reading Patrimony by Philip Roth – a true story about his 86-year-old father, Herman, who is suffering from a brain tumor. But it reaches far beyond illness – the story is also about identity and the body as it relates to aging. It’s about a son’s growing understanding of a father who, as Roth says, possesses “stubborn discipline, the source of all my frustration.” It’s about the difficult decisions Roth must make concerning his father’s care, which lends universality, as most of us will face similar decisions on the behalf of our...
read more
Recent Comments