Water Aerobics

By Mary B Summerlin who keeps a photostream at Flickr

As a retired elementary school teacher, I particularly remember a lesson learned in an early childhood development course. It emphasized the fact that play is the work of the young child. While young children are playing, they are learning. Of course that is true. I had just never thought of it in those words. Well, that lesson has another meaning for me now.

I go to water aerobics – hopefully three times a week. This is a class made up of the senior generation. Most of us are in the 60 to 80 age range, so you can imagine our physiques. Even if we were stunners in our youth (and I’m sure we all were), we are now fat, out of shape, and scars from all sorts of operations decorate our bodies.

We’ve had heart operations, knee replacement, hip replacement, pacemakers and on and on. We come to the pool using canes, walkers, and/or human helpers. We limp, go slow, we drag our feet, we shuffle or we waddle. Some of us are standing tall, some are bent. Some even seem to be untouched by age. We are a diverse and unsightly crew. But we come and we enjoy and help and support each other.

You have no idea how much time, effort, determination and persistence it takes to do this unless you are a senior. But somewhere deep down in each one of us, we know that this play is our work! If we are to keep the old body moving and maybe lose a few pounds, this we have to do. This play is the work of keeping us mentally and physically fit.

I love this scene. One day the leader was giving us directions as she was standing on the side of the pool. One of our group was getting his weights. Oh yes, we have a few men. He is a distinguished looking gentleman but he has scars on his chest - one very long - he shuffles as he walks and his feet and lower legs are turning blue from circulation problems.

As he walks by the leader and is hearing her directions and the music, for a minute becomes the knockout sport he must have been in his younger years. He does a little dance, just enough for us to get a feeling for how light on his feet and graceful a mover he was at one time in his life. He laughs and shuffles on to the steps of the pool.

Ahhh, a glimpse of the memories of a younger more able self still abide in that decrepit body and soul. The courage it takes to keep on moving!

Our life started out with this mantra, “Play is work,” and now it closes with this mantra, “Work is play.” Our work is to play. We work for an hour. The first 10 minutes or so is warm up time – just to get moving and not shock the body too much. Then we have 30 minutes of active and concentrated cardiac workout. We all get to adjust the movements and speed according to our own individual situation.

Some are the jocks and some just sorta swing and sway in the water. The rule is move, move – you gotta keep moving. After the intense workout, we work out with weights for about 15 minutes or so and then we slow down and do stretching exercises before we are finished. Then, everybody is wished a good day and we begin our struggle out of the pool into showers and street clothes (that hide our bodies thank goodness!)

Getting to water aerobics is perhaps the hardest part. Each time it is time to go, there are many, many reasons why I can’t go: something hurts, exercise might make it worse, maybe I should go see the doctor; I didn’t sleep last night so I feel terrible; I really need to go see a sick friend; or company is coming I should go grocery shopping.

I must tell myself over and over – that water aerobics is my work! I must remember that jumping around in the water is my work. It really is and I must get myself there.

Often after our workout, we go to a nearby restaurant and socialize a bit. Of course, we all order salad. Probably we go home and eat something with many more calories. We compare notes about which diet we’re on, does it work or not, our ailments, which doctors we go see and if they are good or not.

We leave with renewed hope that we are on the right track with diet, exercise and doctor. We meet again at the pool on Wednesday. We compliment each other, “I believe you’ve lost a few pounds.” “Oh what a lovely new bathing suit.” “I believe you’re walking better now.”

We seem to understand that we all need this encouragement and we give it freely. As senior citizens, we‘ve come to know that none of us gets to be this old without traumas in our lives. We all need all the help we can get.

And once again we begin our work. The casual observer thinks that we are playing.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

Bethany Center Senior Housing Murals

By Jan Adams of Happening Here

San Francisco's Mission District has a lot of murals. My pick for the most original blend of building with art are the ones on the undistinguished boxy apartment block that is Bethany Center Senior Housing. I don't know anything about this place except what is on the website, but I love it that they say they want to be more than "a reliable landlord." In San Francisco, a reliable landlord is a marvelous thing!

It would be pretty cool to live behind a window with this figure on its outside.

Or this very San Franciscan snapshot of another time.

This fellow could easily be a current resident.

They are having almost too good a time!

At ground level, artist Dan Fontes painted a ticket window in an exit alcove along with his credits. He called this enormous project "¡Salud!"

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

My Life with Chickens

By Lyn Burnstine of The Lynamber Times

My life with the chickens began, strangely enough, in an upstairs apartment on Main Street! When I was a child, one often saw pastel-dyed baby chicks and bunnies for sale at Easter time. I’m sure the custom died out because of inhumane results but while it lasted, it provided a thrill for two little girls - country girls by nature - stuck in the winter in an apartment with only the railroad right-of-way and a library park, a short distance away, for playgrounds.

We kept the chicks in a cardboard box and took them out for runs around the apartment - fondling. They quickly accepted us, my sister and me, as their mothers and would come running excitedly when we called.

In the summer, our horizons widened with the move to our grandparents’ farm seven miles out in the country and that, of course, was the eventual destination of those chicks as they grew to gangly adolescence. Their emerging white feathers left just a tinge of remaining color in their down - just enough that we could still identify them and call them by name. Pinky, Greeny, Bluey, Yellowy (such imagination) - two were mine and two my sister’s.

All ended up in the stew pot: as farm children, we understood that cycle of life and death. The only dispensation was that they were allowed to live longer than the untamed chickens.

When we moved from southern to central Illinois (my father having given up his photographic studio to return to teaching during World War II), we moved to a real house with a real yard. Shortly, the livestock began to accrue: a big-eyed Jersey cow to supply us with milk, cream, butter and cottage cheese, and chickens to provide eggs and meat.

My father, by then a building trades and industrial arts teacher, used his skills to build a “penthouse” for those chickens. It was two-storied, with the bottom floor surrounded by chicken wire so the chicks could be on the grass during the day, with a ramp up to an enclosed top story for nighttime roosting. The peaked roof, or lid, was hinged in the middle so you could prop one-half of it up with a stick. You could then stick your head in and play with the chicks, which I did for hours on end.

One fateful day, however, the stick came loose while my head was poised inside and the roof came crashing down pinning my glasses and my eyes between the upright wall and the roof. My glasses were crushed and glass ground into my eyebrows.

Fortunately, when I stopped shrieking so my parents could remove the blood and glass, my eyes were found to be undamaged but my dignity was severely wounded! Since I couldn’t see a thing without glasses, I had to stay home from school until they were repaired. It didn’t help my dignity one bit to have to explain to friends and teachers that the lid of the chicken coop fell on my head.

Each year as those peeps grew into robust Rhode Island Red hens and roosters, I chose my favorite as a pet. Nicky, a rooster, was so tamed by my constant petting and carrying around that he would “stay” on command - on the back stoop - when I went in to eat my supper. He responded to his name with a resounding crow when I, returning from school, called from the end of the lane – Nick-ee!

When I was thirteen and in the eighth grade, we moved to a farmhouse outside of town and there my gentleman-farmer father could give full rein to his interest in animal husbandry. We acquired sheep and ducks (my 4-H and fund-raising projects), rabbits (my sister’s), pigs, goats, cats, many more cows and lots of chickens. The penthouse gave way to a brooder house large enough to sit in to play with the darling little yellow fluff-balls running around my feet.

Decades later, my daughter, living in the country, began to act out her heritage, surrounding herself with a variety of livestock.

While I was visiting her one day, the chickens (three or four) needed to be rounded up and returned to a pen. I quickly and deftly grabbed them, tucking one under each arm. In amazement, looking at me with new appreciation, she asked, “Mom, how did you learn to do that?”

I could have answered, “Once a chicken-wrangler, always a chicken-wrangler!”

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

Valentine's Day (Forgotten)

By Ellen Younkins

No chocolates, no flowers, no kisses my dear
I guess you forgot Valentine's Day this year.

What we once had, has come and now gone
No more will be share the morning's first dawn.

The last splinter of light when the moon appears
Are the stars that shine down reflecting my tears.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

The Closest I Come to Crazy

By Marcia Mayo who blogs at Well Aged With Some Marbling

My mother said when I was born, my face was wider than it was tall, and I had a shock of red hair sticking up all over my head. My face eventually normalized to a certain extent but my hair never did. Although the color is interesting and used to be memorable, the texture is mostly unmanageable.

Throughout the years, I've done some crazy things to my hair. My friend, Allison, who also happened to be my college roommate, was known for "highlighting" anyone's hair at any time day or night. The fact that Allison went on to become a minister and later, a clinical therapist, must be based in part on the number of people who used the Lord's name in vain and developed annoying tics during her dorm-room beauty-parlor days. I was one of her victims.

Later on, after I got married, I either had my hair cut short or, every few years, when curly hair was in style, I would get a perm . My latest perm was just a few years ago, when, by the way, curly hair was not in vogue. I have no idea what led to that brilliant idea but I think it had something to do with my then-stylist's BMW payment. Because I was already on up there in years, my head of tousled locks did not give me that sexy bed-head look but did, instead, cause me to look very much like John Calvert, the Third Lord Baltimore.

Before I go any further in trying to explain what my hair has to do with the closest I come to crazy, let me tell you about Whitney, my current hair stylist/psychiatrist. Whitney is wonderful and talented and smart and funny, not to mention handsome. He's great with hair and great with people. Therefore, Whitney can't be blamed for any of what I'm about to tell you, nor can my past stylists be held accountable either, except for maybe that one with the Beamer. In fact, Whitney is often called in to fix what I have wrought.

You see, not only do I have bad hair, I'm also cheap. Whitney, being the fabulous stylist that he is, charges what the market will bear. But that's not all. In addition to his stupendously expensive fee structure, Whitney has also placed his salon twenty miles north of where I live in Atlanta, Georgia. So, not only do I have to pay Whitney's outrageously enormous salary, I also have to cough up an extra dollar (50 cents there and 50 cents back) to drive my happy self up (and down) State Route 400, the Hospitality Highway, which is so hospitable as to be a toll road with more driving jerks per 1000 feet than any highway in the world, including the Autobahn.

I do have to admit that Whitney has offered to hand me four quarters when I leave his salon. He has also offered (on several occasions quite forcefully) to find me another stylist.

So, here we go. The closest I come to crazy is when I am standing in my tiny urban bathroom looking in the mirror with a hank of hair in one hand and scissors in the other. Although this current bout of psychotic behavior has much to do with toll roads and the price of gas, I've always been a closet cutter (of hair). I guess my mama didn't punish me enough after that early childhood rite of passage known as cutting your bangs with the blunt-edged scissors.

This is how it happens. Something feels too long or thick. I ignore it for a while, but my hand keeps finding it. I go and look in the mirror and pull the offending piece out at a right angle. Before long, I've taken out the scissors and cut the loathsome lock, which makes another strand look too long or thick.

The next thing I know I'm calling Whitney for an emergency trip up the Hospitality Highway (50 cents there and 50 cents back). The last time this happened, Whitney said the only thing he could do was to give me a reverse mullet, with business in the back and a party in the front. He then handed me four quarters and offered to help me find a stylist closer to home.

To tell you the truth, my problem these days isn't really my hair. It's the old face under it. Allison and I were talking the other afternoon, when she mentioned someone who'd had one of those digital things done where they take your picture and then attach photographs of various hairstyles to your face. We were laughing about how, no matter what fabulous hair they put on the poor woman, her face was still sitting there right under it.

That led us to talking about how hair just doesn't look the same any more on our poor tired faces. Then I remembered something a friend told me a long time ago, which is the great adage, "no matter where I go, there I am."

I guess the same could be said for my hair and the face right under it. I seem to drag them with me wherever I go, even when it's up (and down) the Hospitality Highway to see my friend Whitney. Fifty cents there and fifty cents back.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

The Enchantment of Books

By Judy Watten

"I don’t want to read it, I want to have read it."

- Garrison Keillor

My mom tried really hard to transform me from a tomboy running freely in our woods into a genteel young lady. She enrolled me in ballet lessons in 1945 when I was seven. We lived several miles from Midland, Michigan, where the classes were taught.

One good thing about ballet class was someone had to take me there on Saturday mornings. When it was Mom, she also took me to the library which was right next door to the dancing classes in the community center.

I clearly recall my very first library visit. I was astounded; never had I seen so many books in one place. The children’s section covered a whole wall, alphabetized by author. I was so stunned by the sheer numbers of books I was unable to choose one so I just started with the A authors and read through the Z ones.

After I’d devoured the children’s books, I advanced to the other sections.

I discovered the Wizard of Oz books and read them all. I also read all the Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy books. For a while I had their dolls too. I read my way through the Laura Ingalls Wilder books starting with Little House on the Prairie, and eventually through all the Mark Tidd books, the Honeybunch books and the Nancy Drew mysteries.

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, Bambi by Felix Salten and Robin Hood by Howard Pyle became favorites which I read more than once. When I was older, I became a devotee of science fiction.

The following event intensified my love of books.

Our home in the woods in Michigan was located near a dangerous curve on old U.S. 10. We could hear squealing brakes and collisions out there all year. In late fall of 1947 when the roads were icy, we heard an accident around six in the evening. Shortly afterwards there was a knock on the door.

A man, followed by his wife, came in carrying an unconscious baby. Suspecting a concussion, Dad looked in his Merck Manual for advice, then he held the little one gently under the tap and ran cool water over her head, lamenting that the pump was not working well and the water flow was inadequate.

I was crying in my bedroom and afraid to watch, but my little brother Jimmy went to the kitchen and reported back to me every few minutes. When the baby finally came to, Dad took the family in our car to the doctor and home.

That Christmas, Jimmy and I got a present from this family. It was a hard cover book, elegantly illustrated, The Arabian Nights. We had never seen such a book.We were in awe of the illustrations, which were sumptuous Persian paintings accented with metallic gold. The book arrived with a letter saying they could think of no other way to thank us.

In the 1940s, I had a dozen or so little picture books showing Shirley Temple in costumes from her movies. Her golden ringlets were much admired and for a couple of years my hair was forced into similar ringlets, though by second grade my hair color had changed from platinum to brown. I don’t know when mom gave all my books away; they are probably valuable collectors’ items now.

The most wonderful library I ever visited was in 1996, the county archive of Wiltshire, England, which also held old maps, wills and school newsletters as well as county history books.

At that time they had six miles of shelves. They have since moved to a larger building in another town. I wonder how many miles of shelves they have now. The oldest records were on rolls of vellum; they were scanning and digitizing them to protect the ancient material from handling. I was allowed to examine wills from my family from the 1500s and 1600s. The old English writing had to be deciphered for me.

Imagine my surprise when I learned that my dad’s mother had written and published two books. The first, dated 1893, was called The Home of the Dragon, A Tonquinese Idyll. Her brother was a French colonial businessman in Tonkin, now called Vietnam.

She visited her brother and stayed with him for two years, from 1886 to 1888, and later published a little book of essays in English, some fiction and some nonfiction. It’s a tiny book, just seven inches by three-and-three-quarters inches and is meant to fit into a pocket. A few years ago I was thrilled to find it through bookfinder.com in a small shop in Australia for about $6. Though grandmother’s name was Lili d’Abbadie Rebbeck, she called herself Anna Catharina.

When researching Lili’s family history, I learned that English was her third language. Born in France to a French father and a German mother, her father died before she was two. Her mother took her and her older siblings home to Hamburg. But, how did Grandmother learn English well enough to write books in it? I found her teaching French in an English girls’ school in 1881 in Suffolk, England.

I still don’t know how she got such a job at age 18 or whether she learned English there or before she left Germany. I also don’t know when she learned French.

Her second book was The Stragglers, published in 1910. It’s a story of an emigrant family’s adjustment to life in pioneer Canada after leaving the sophistication of Europe. When asked why she didn’t write another book, her answer was because she was too busy raising three children. My dad was the youngest.

There are bookshelves in most rooms of our home. I used to be able to say that I had read every book I own but that is no longer the case. I seem to have become a collector of books on every topic that interests me and am usually reading three or four at once.

As Groucho Marx said, and I’m sure he didn’t mean to exclude women:

”Outside of a dog
A book is a man’s best friend
Inside of a dog
It’s too dark to read anyway.”

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

Crows in February

By Norma Shore

Are there many things quite as dramatic as black crows on white snow?

I was treated to the drama on this cold winter day on my afternoon walk in the sunshine. I could hear the cacophony from a distance and was watching for them. I was greeted as I rounded a bend in the road and the unmistakable sound became louder.

They were clustered together, forming a black blanket on the white sheet of snow that covered the grassy area in front of the house. The many windows, empty of any watchful eyes, looked out and down at the busy convention of wildlife.

I was sad for the inhabitants that they were missing these sights and sounds in their absence from home. Yet I felt fortunate to be the only observer to be treated to the spectacle - for spectacular it was, especially as I approached more closely.

At what seemed a pre-arranged signal, the "cawing" became louder and the sea of birds lifted themselves into the air in what seemed perfect unison, wings spread, allowing a small V in the center of the formation. I watched in awe and pleasure as they moved out of my sight and the sound became faint in the distance.

The visual treat would remain with me for the remainder of my day.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

Writer's Block

By Ellen Younkins

I'm trying to write a poem tonight
but not a single thought can I recite.

I hear things in both my ears
and some of it brings me to tears.

So much to say that should be read
is hiding somewhere in my head.

Writer’s block has taken hold
but soon - a new story will be told.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

On Life and Love and Stuff

By Brenda Verbeck

In 2004, my husband of almost 25 years died. He’d had lung cancer. The love between us was deep and strong. I felt like everything in me died with him.

People tell me I did very well. I moved along in my life, went on trips, was blessed with friends who treated me as a person, not as the remnant of a couple, and so continued to include me in activities. And I have wonderful, caring children and stepchildren and siblings who called regularly; and my amazing then-93-year-old mother called me every evening during that first year.

But the reality was that I was going through the motions. At the end of the day, I went home to the empty house and the empty heart. He wasn’t there. But then, just like they say, if you are not paying attention, the bluebird of happiness can land on your shoulder when you least expect it.

At the end of 2006, I emailed a message to a friend thanking him for an emailing that he sent out regularly to a cast of hundreds containing among other things a column by the Boston Globe columnist Donald Murray. I said in my message that I wished I could tell Don Murray what his columns meant to me, particularly since my husband’s death. It was just wishful thinking.

That afternoon I received an email from a stranger. He was a longtime friend and former neighbor of the friend to whom I’d sent that email – and a lifetime friend of Don Murray’s. They had served together as paratroopers in WWII. And, as it turned out, he was the source of that column I so enjoyed. He asked what I wanted to tell Don Murray and I responded. He said that he would send it along.

Two days later I received another email from him with an attachment: Don Murray’s obituary notice.

It was the beginning of a correspondence that increased in frequency as we began to share our individual life journeys. His wife too had died, a year before my husband, and he knew the pain and the loss. It was so easy for us to “talk”. We shared so many perspectives and enjoyed many of the same things. And so we “talked” via email until we had forged a friendship that was deep and caring. When we finally met for the first time it was like getting together with an old friend.

Things moved rather quickly after that first meeting and this past September we celebrated our second wedding anniversary. That first year was filled with beginnings and endings during which I faced the thing I dreaded most: selling THE house and dismantling its contents. Yet, the thing I had dreaded most, and make no mistake, it was painful, became an affirmation of friendship, family and love.

I still feel somewhat like a displaced person and occasionally mourn for those things that are no longer “my things” but on the other hand, I can visit them as I travel from Maine to California visiting the homes of various children and stepchildren. And I will always cherish the support of friends and family that stayed me on my course.

I’d flown in from Florida to the mid-Hudson Valley to begin the dismantling process. It snowed that first night but a few longtime friends who had gathered at the house for what we knew would be our last potluck there helped me put together the cartons I would need and then left in a thickening snowstorm.

One returned a day or so later to help me get the ball rolling and to my amazement I found myself laughing instead of crying as she and I filled carton after carton with memories. Another came later in the week to spend hours shredding documents while packing was going on all around her.

Children and stepchildren and grandchildren came to sort, organize and pack, carefully indicating what was being sent or transported to whom. I’ve heard about families that crashed and burned during a like process. But all I heard was, “Well, I’d sort of like the (fill in the blank), but not if someone else really wants it.” I felt, and feel truly blessed.

My expanded family now includes another stepson and daughter-in-law who are special, loving people, and a new extended family that has taken me in with love.

So here’s to life – however it sorts out. You never know.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

Alzheimer's: Part 9 – Separated

By William Weatherstone of The Diesel Gypsy

From the day that I sent my wife to the emergency of our local hospital, she has never returned home.

Since she had started the constant wandering throughout the apartment, she started to walk around the secured ward and on the second day, she fell and cracked her pelvic bone. She was bedridden and started to deteriorate fast. They could not operate and decided to heal by bed rest.

Eventually they tried to teach her to walk again through physical therapy but she could not get past two or three steps while being supported and then balked at continuing. She spent five weeks in the hospital and continually went downhill.

There is a long waiting list to get into a nursing home. There are three within a 100-mile radius, and the fastest entry will be at least 18 months.

There is a private retirement home in town that I was not aware of. It is at the end of a long lane at the edge of town, and is not noticeably visible.

The hospital administrator suggested that we apply for temporary living quarters. They have a three-story building and the second floor is totally secured for people with dementia or Alzheimer’s. They have the first and third floor for able retirees who are free to come and go as they please.

There are couples there who are separated by two floors. One alone on the main floor and the other with Alzheimer’s on the second floor which needs constant surveillance and is staffed 24 hours a day by professional caregivers and a registered nurse.

Because it is a retirement residence and not a full-fledged nursing home, they require that the individual be able to at least bear weight for just a moment. (To just be able to stand, with assistance, so that one nurse or caregiver can turn the person alone to sit down into a wheel chair.)

We applied for residence and the retirement home sent a nurse over to the hospital to evaluate my wife’s ability to bear weight with assistance. She had to be slid from the bed to a standing position on the floor while the nurse turned her a quarter turn to be lowered into a wheel chair. The nurse accepted her condition and called the ambulance to have her transported to the retirement home directly. She is sharing a room with another lady, who is quiet and friendly.

She is finally getting settled in and adapting to the hours of feeding and sleeping. I am allowed to visit any time, 24 hours a day. I have the security codes to get into the second floor at any time. Her retention is only lasting for a moment or two, but she still recognizes me when I approach.

There was a day when she was wandering down the hallway and stopped, sat down and passed out. The nurse was there in a flash. She tested her sugar, as she's diabetic, but found it okay. She then went cold and clammy and the nurse could not get a blood pressure reading. She was sent directly to the hospital emergency room and was there in minutes.

The ambulance was rushing out of the driveway as I was coming in and I had no idea it was with my wife. I immediately took off for the hospital. The staff and the ambulance people are first class, and they bend over backwards to help you.

They found that all the drugs that she was taking were too strong and her body couldn’t take it any more since she has shrunk to under five feet and less than 100 pounds. She was stabilized and back the next day.

Neither of us has ever been in a hospital before, so all these new experiences are at times driving me crazy. If it were not for all the help from different organizations around here, I would be a total basket case for sure.

As I write this, she was sent to the hospital again just a few hours ago and found that she has a bladder infection. She is now on antibiotics and will be okay in a day or two.

She is deteriorating at a very fast pace and I have no idea as to how long she will last. I visit twice a day and the odd time, three visits. All this has happened in less than a year. (Scary) As mentioned before, I have never been an emotional person, but every time I leave her I am weeping.

I am now back at the gym trying to get my body back in physical shape and reinstalling my web site to get my mind back in shape.

This disease is devastating and affects all of those people close to the patient. I wish you all good health and long life.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]