Recent Entries

• Dementia Journal — November 13, 2018 — Unnatural disasters

  November 13, 2018

    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 resident who escaped the Camp Fire with her life called, “apocalyptic. “ That’s just one part of the...

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• The scariest headline I’ve ever read

  November 5, 2018

    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 and life as we know it, even just a couple of decades ahead, is emphatically…

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• Worlds to come

  October 5, 2018

  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 is on my head. The earth gives me its generous sap, but Heaven lights me with its…

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• Dementia Journal — Storms — Sept. 20, 2018

  September 21, 2018

  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 our new caregiver is here until 9 pm. She’s so good with Mom I wish she could work every night, but…

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• Dementia Journal — August 8, 2018

  August 10, 2018

  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 and let me be normal.” “I’m thanking God that my memory is coming back and…

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• Losing a part of your past

  July 24, 2018

  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 it we remember fondly the vacation and the people we were with.  Over time with the fading of our brain...

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• Summer clouds

  July 12, 2018

  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 magnificence. We look at their underside, but who shall describe the bright light that bathes their summit...

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• Dementia Journal, June 26, 2018

  June 26, 2018

  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 Bible readings and devotions. I’m so thankful she can still read but it’s getting more difficult and&hel...

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• Retirement is real

  June 8, 2018

  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 to completely adjust. I have to say I love it. It makes caregiving for my 94-year-old mother who has de...

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