There are some days when I feel my mom so intensely, it is uncanny. Today was such a day. I woke up in a bad mood, as if the wind and rain from the last few days had somehow moved inside of me, as if I was utterly disconnected to the world around me—my singular world with its myriad of blessings—as if I was being buffeted by great gusts of weather that allowed me to see only grey, despite the sun shining in a bright blaze. I got to work only to discover that the computer, whi

November is Bladder Health Awareness Month, according to the National Association for Continence (NAFC). This is the first you’ve probably heard about it. It's true. I’m not making this up. Which makes what I’m about to write all the more poignant. Bladder and bowel issues are a constant problem with many elderly individuals. According to NAFC, “one in five individuals over the age of 40 suffer from overactive bladder or urgency or frequency symptoms, some of whom leak urine

I blanked out while driving today. One minute I was happily driving towards the familiar intersection near my house, and the next, I couldn’t remember where I was going. I started to panic. Everything was familiar, but my destination was missing. I even started to talk to myself. “Where am I going?” I said out loud, as if I could will myself to remember. “Where am I going?” Thousands of images and connections flitted through my brain as I tried to make sense of why I had left

We tried unsuccessfully to take Mom’s rings off today. In addition to her wedding and engagement ring, Mom wears four other rings, each one tightly hugging her fingers, so much so that even with liberal amounts of lubrication, the rings do not come off. She’s been wearing them for so long that her fingers have shaped themselves around the rings. Mom does not have pain in her fingers from her rings. They are not (yet) cutting off circulation. But they look like they might. The

“To forget your birthday is…tragic,” Mom declared in a moment of clarity. We watched her bounce between unbridled joy, disbelief and even annoyance as she “discovered” it was her 75th birthday today. The first time we told her, she expressed such enthusiasm. “It is?” she asked in a child-like voice. The third time, she rebuked me. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “I don’t have time for that nonsense.” By the time we’d left for a birthday lunch at a nearby restaurant, Mom was