[From November 14, 2018: As I look back through everything I’ve written over this 7+ year period and try to figure out which entries represent each time or season, I see the way I was often looking for examples — something akin to an unspoken mentorship, I guess — of how to do this hard […]
[From May 8, 2018: Psychological stress fractures plagued us for months, in ways great and small, but always unexpected.] I had fallen asleep on the couch around midnight, following a quiet evening of “self-care” at the house, just Chelli and Stella and me, trying to catch our breath after an emotionally grueling day. Our Friday […]
[From April 16, 2018: Lessons from one of the humans I have loved most in this world.] During the last years of my paternal grandmother’s life, her mind ravaged by the cruel joke of Alzheimer’s, my grandfather served as her primary caregiver. He would have it no other way, he always made clear, because he’d […]
[From March 12, 2018: The fallout, both physical and psychological, from the “jail weekend,” as it would become known, unfolded slowly at first, then at breakneck speed.] I spend a lot of time relishing my introverted nature, occasionally to the point of unapologetic misanthropy. Ironically, I’m also terrified at the thought of growing old alone, […]
[From February 28, 2018: There’s no way to honestly convey the depths of all we’ve experienced without including the events of a particular weekend in February 2018. Even a number of years later, though, I’m hesitant to pick at its scab, knowing full well that we’ve yet to fully recover from it. As I sit […]
[From January 17, 2018: As I’ve been going back through the various entries I either wrote in my journals and/or posted on social media, I’ve been looking for a handful of representative pieces from each season of our experience. There are some things that now, with the benefit of a little hindsight, I know ended […]
[From October 23, 2017: I am forever thankful for good friends who have seen behind the curtain… and love us anyway. And spoiler alert, yes, we went to that concert in Chicago!] We had a great weekend planned. Our dear friends were coming to visit with their beloved black lab, Maggie, in tow. It was […]
[From August 6, 2017: Yes, at the exact moment when our world was fully upended, we decided to buy a house and move. How hard could that be, right? The move was also an acknowledgment that our lives were going to look different than we might have originally planned, so we needed to dramatically recalibrate. […]
[From April 20, 2017: Oh, how I miss this man.] After Pete & Beth came to visit us last year, I told Beth that my wife had developed a pretty big crush on Pete. “I might even be slightly bothered by it,” I disclosed, “if I didn’t have a pretty serious crush on him, too.” […]
[From December 8, 2016.] She hasn’t really wanted her picture taken, much less posted for all the world (or really, anyone) to see, since she was first diagnosed. This disease and all of its vast indignities — the surgeries, the infections, the disintegrating jawbone, the dramatic weight loss, the isolation — haven’t just decimated her […]
Sometimes I ramble. 