Stories of caring for elderly parents at the end of their lives while trying to maintain a life of your own.
GalleryThe Precious Circle
As my mother told me the same story for the third time in two hours, I found myself sighing in frustration. What’s wrong with her? my forty-year-old mind hissed. It wasn’t like she had dementia. In fact, right up until her death, her brilliant mind was clear. So why was she being so damn exasperating?
The answer was simple: she was getting old.
Let’s face it, the aging process sucks—for everyone. For the person going through it, the body starts to fail, the skin begins to […]
GalleryLost and Found
Sitting at my table at a book convention in Burbank, CA, I had a weird sensation of being in the wrong place. There I was with my creations, The Promise I Kept and My Life in a Tutu—sweet stories of a woman’s journey through life—surrounded by other tables with book covers sporting bare-chested men, bulging muscles, long Fabio-like hair, and sexy women swooning as their melon-sized busts fell out of their low-cut dresses.
As an author, whether you’ve published with a traditional publisher, self-publisher, or […]
GalleryMiracles Happen
As I walked the hospice doctor to the front door, a question burned inside. Dad was entering the final phase of his life, and he’d recently announced he planned to walk again. Since he hadn’t moved his legs in over seven years, I suffered over the impossibility of it.
“Doctor, I worry about my father,” I began. “He’s so overly optimistic all the time. I feel he lives in a constant state of denial.”
Studying me carefully, the kind man smiled. “No, you obviously don’t understand. […]
GalleryMy World of Imagination
On a recent trip to the Stanford mall, I found myself in a terrible traffic jam. No, not the frustrating kind on today’s freeways where we grit our teeth to hold back building road rage, but unnerving just the same. I was hungry and on a mission to get some Pinkberry frozen yogurt before perusing the stores when I found myself stuck behind a crowd of people moving at a snail’s pace.
“What is going on?” I grumbled, wondering if there was a demonstration of […]
GalleryThe Good Mother
With her frail, pencil-thin body lying on the living room couch, I held my mother’s eighty-five-year-old hand as she asked the same question, again, “Honey, was I a good mother?”
Bending over the shriveled frame that once held the sophistication of Coco Channel and the unconditional love of the Blessed Mother, I kissed her cheek feeling impatient. Then, looking into her pleading eyes, I reassured, “I don’t know why you keep asking this. You’re the best mother a girl could have.”
When I was a child, […]
GalleryYou’ll Be Just Fine
Staring at the senseless symbols cluttering my already cloudy understanding, I lowered my face onto the hardbound book and did what any highly hormonal, PMS-ing 16-year-old would do: I wailed hysterically.
“When in the hell will I ever use this stuff?” I blubbered, chucking the algebra book across the room.
Hearing his daughter fall apart down the hall, my dad came to the rescue with his math genius know-how.
“Honey, would you like some help?” he asked, tapping lightly on the door before entering my room.
With Maybelline […]