In an effort to identify behaviour patterns, I began sorting through old papers the other night, setting aside all my credit card statements. Sometime I must have thrown some out. They only go back to 2001, when my debt was already considerable but less than half what it is now.

I took a cursory look through them. I have rarely spent money ( Read more... )

Cleaning the office turns up many interesting things. Buried on my desk was a bundle of photos Dad took last fall and printed to send me. I think this photo was taken on Labour Day weekend as we said goodbye. Mom might have guessed it would be our last photo together, though I didn't think of it at the time.

There were plenty of photos around after ( Read more... )

I still haven't shed a tear. I don't know what this means. When I mentioned this on the phone last night to Joyce, a close friend of Mom's, she said it's normal to feel numb, but I don't feel numb either. I simply enjoyed the opportunity to spend some days with Dad, and introduce my dear Danny to Poplar Bluff and a few family friends and relatives ( Read more... )

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Many times a day, weariness would catch Mom and she would lie on the couch. Often she would talk. The words were usually unintelligible, but the tone was always earnest, as if she were explaining something.

Usually after sleeping soundly for a few minutes she would wake halfway and push into the usual sitting position, propped on the good left arm ( Read more... )

What a strange week this has been: some great blessings mixed among the hardships. I don't have to stop and make myself think in order to see them; they are clearly evident.

My apartment flood hit remarkably few valuable and precious things. This seems almost miraculous. Several years ago Sylvie gave me a small replica of Van Gogh's Sunflowers, ( Read more... )

The good news is, Mom's condition has stabilized. Taking her off morphine was the right thing to do. She is almost almost back to how she was when we visited at Christmas. I encouraged her to try massage therapy to relieve the lymphedema, so Saturday morning Dad took her to an appointment. Almost immediately we could see (and she could feel) an ( Read more... )

I heard what sounded like pouring rain in the night and thought how strange the weather has been. At 6:00 when the fire alarm went off, I discovered the downpour in my hall and living room. Some pipes had burst upstairs, and there was an inch of water standing in the middle of my apartment.

Since the upstairs tenants moved out last month, the ( Read more... )

Happy New Year, everyone. It has been a while, I know-a whole month, in fact.

Christmas with my daughters and parents was good. It was hard seeing Mom severely affected by the oedema. Her face is so swollen that it affects her voice, which for some reason I hadn't noticed it over the phone.

Dad recently had to close the family business, founded by ( Read more... )

When I expressed distress about the imminent loss of Mom, a friend gave me a book to read, No Fear, No Death by Thich Nhat Hanh. Essentially it presents the Buddhist argument that being and non-being do not exist, nor do birth and death-that these are only ideas. I perused a few chapters, but couldn't get into it. It doesn't make sense.

The ( Read more... )