Don Murray's 'Now and Then' Column
Tuesday, 27 July 2004
Crabby Old Lady and Ronni Bennett need a couple of days off from writing to catch up with some personal business. Meanwhile, they will rerun a couple of golden oldies from TGB, but today is the weekly posting of Don Murray's Now and Then column in the Boston Globe. You should read it. You should read it every week. Here is last week's Time Goes By story about Don Murray:
Thanks to Jill Fallon, whose Legacy Matters Weblog you should make a regular stop, Crabby has discovered 80-year old Boston Globe columnist, Donald Murray. His weekly column Now and Then, published on Tuesdays, addresses precisely what Crabby's alter ego means with her banner tagline, "what it's really like to get older." Recently, Murray wrote of coping, after 53 years of marriage, with his wife's Parkinson's disease:
"In trying to adjust to a marriage of daily visits, I have learned many things about Minnie Mae and myself. We do not have to speak but only touch to communicate. When she can speak, we often meet in memories recalled, in familiar expressions, in her quick wit that suddenly flashes out of her unfamiliar passivity."
In another column, after noting some of the technological advances during his 80 years, Murray concludes:
"I am struck, however, that for all the convenience, how essentially unimportant these improvements have been for a man. The homemaker's lot is far different and yet, even there, life is about birth and death, sickness and health, caring and the end of caring - not a microwave."
In the past, the Globe has allowed the most recent four of Murray's columns to be available online without a paid subscription. Crabby noticed this week, that it has been reduced to three, but if you bookmark his page, you can easily keep up with what Crabby Old Lady believes is the best regularly-scheduled writing she knows of on the reality of getting older.
Thanks for the pointer to Don Murray's column. I read that one out of every two seniors would end in a care facility, and as the 63 yr old wife of a 68 yr old husband, that means one of us will probably end there. I look forward to more of Mr. Murray's musings. I also look forward to yours. Your time with your mom spoke to my heart, and reminded me of my mom's last days. I'm so glad to find another journalist my age.
Posted by: kdip | Tuesday, 27 July 2004 at 01:40 PM
I am looking for Don Murrays column when he had to put Minnie Mae at Kirkwood corners and felt guilty for being burden free. I would like to forward it to a dear friend who is facing the same feelings after putting her husband at a care facility. Can anyone help me? I think it may have been in early July or late June. Thank you
Posted by: Julie | Sunday, 01 August 2004 at 07:46 PM
At the bottom of any boston.com page, click "feedback," then enter your search terms. You will get a list of articles which you can then scroll through. However, there is a fee to read the entire article when it's older than about three weeks.
Posted by: Ronni | Monday, 02 August 2004 at 02:26 AM