You think you know how you’ll feel, but you don’t. When someone close to you dies, sometimes you react differently than expected. When my father passed last Sunday, I was ready to feel one way. But surprisingly, five unexpected emotions tugged at me. Happiness for him – My 82 year-old father was released from an […]
Anyone who reads this blog knows I write about my Dad… a lot. He’s always on my mind since he suffers from late-stage Parkinson’s disease. And yet there’s another person I’m always thinking of, who keeps the machinery of my father’s world moving like clockwork, who’s as necessary, irreplaceable and vital as the sun is to the earth. And that’s […]
I pick up the electric shaver. “I don’t want to hurt you,” I say to my Dad. I’ve never shaved a man before. My 82 year-old father sits in yet another hospital room, one of many he’s stayed in lately for symptoms of late-stage Parkinson’s disease. He’s unable to use his hands except for the […]
I’ve never been good with hospitals. I shiver when I walk their corridors, reading scary signs on doors—Blood Drawing, X-ray, and Pathology. I feel vulnerable, small, and human. And yet over the past month, as I’ve come to visit my father in this vast Veteran’s Hospital outside New Haven, CT, something strange is happening. […]
On a bright, cloudless day in September 1983 I stood on the deck of the Queen Elizabeth 2, waving goodbye to no one in particular. I was 26-years-old and all around people threw streamers and shouted farewell to loved ones on the Manhattan pier below. Since this was a business trip, I assumed nobody would be […]
My parents just celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. I wondered what it’s like going through life with the same person for so long. The other day I asked their secret. The answer surprised me. But first, let’s back up. This story began in 1954 when my 24 year-old father stopped to help a middle-aged woman change a […]
I read off today’s headlines as my father sits in a hospital hallway. Other patients are around us, mostly weary old men and depressed-looking young ones. Many use walkers. In some rooms, guys perch on the edge of their beds as if they can’t decide whether to rise or not. Nurses and doctors bustle by […]
My memories of Provincetown are like a series of snapshots that begin when I’m five. Its 1961. I’m walking on the wharf with my father. The water looks black and deep and oily. I’m afraid, wondering what it would be like to fall in. But he holds my hand tightly and I feel safe. That […]
