My son wants a government job. After obtaining a Masters degree in Public Policy, with an emphasis on economics, he was the envy of his classmates when he actually got a job. He has been working for the last seven months for a giant consulting corporation. Early every Monday morning, at the bidding of his… Continue reading The Irony of It All
Category: Mom stories
This Be The Verse
“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.” Oscar Wilde I buried my mother on January tenth. After a long struggle with dementia, she passed away in her sleep. In the end, my father was too ill to attend a funeral service, so my sister… Continue reading This Be The Verse
You Can’t Go Home Again
“Look homeward Angel, now and melt with ruth, And O, ye Dolphins’ waft the hapless youth” In the fall of 1971, I entered Yale University as one of 250 freshman women, the third class of women to be admitted to a college still dedicated to the concept of graduating “1000 male leaders” a year. … Continue reading You Can’t Go Home Again
The Care At The End Of The Road
Seven months ago, in Carbondale, Colorado, staff at the skilled nursing facility where my mother had resided for over a year recommended that she be placed on hospice. My mother has severe advanced dementia and can no longer walk, speak, feed herself or recognize her family members. As much as I know about hospice care… Continue reading The Care At The End Of The Road
The Purple Bathing Suit
“April is the cruelest month” T.S. Eliot Although I have spent my professional career battling cancer, cancer is not the cruelest disease. Tonight I was looking through old photographs that my father had taken to a print shop to be scanned on to a disk. He sent me a copy, but I had not had… Continue reading The Purple Bathing Suit
You Play Hardball, Kid
Whenever I have a female medical student, as I did today, I always catch them looking at a framed cartoon on my desk and smiling. The cartoon is an original hand lettered Doonesbury strip by Garry Trudeau, and it is indeed larger than life, each section about five by four inches. If you look closely,… Continue reading You Play Hardball, Kid