December 1st, 2024 | Changes, Friends, General, Loss, Memory, visual arts
Obituaries mark with increasing insistence the evanescence of my own memories. A notice reminds me of this musician or that scholar or politician or athlete. On Friday, November 29, 2024, the day after Thanksgiving, it was the loss of the great photographer, Paul...
April 30th, 2024 | Changes, Family, General, Law, Loss
They say it takes nine months to bring a baby into the world and nine months to see a person on to the next. There are reasons for that. Probate requires that the opening of an estate be advertised to overlooked children and random creditors. Fair enough, I have...
April 24th, 2024 | Changes, Family, Genealogy, General, Loss, Memory, Time Passes
It is April 8th. This morning I meet with Dan’s estate attorney, Bob Blue, at 10:30 am to finish up details. This afternoon, Turning Leaf ladies come by to “stage” the house for the estate sale that will take place this coming Friday and Saturday. And, of course, the...
March 13th, 2024 | Family, General, Loss, Memory, Time Passes
No one asked me, but if they did, this is what I would say. “On your 50th birthday, stop collecting stuff. Immediately. Tell friends and family members that from here on in, you only want comestibles or donations made in your honor. No stuff. No tchotchkes. No...
November 30th, 2023 | Family, General, Holidays, Loss, Time Passes
The most difficult change has occurred, as I have pondered for the last six months in this blog. Dan’s struggle with kidney failure and other chronic illnesses came to an end on June 6. It wasn’t something unexpected. I had a sense of being ready. I don’t think,...
November 6th, 2023 | Family, Friends, General, literature and poetry, Loss, Matters of the Spirit, Memory, Writing
I must have read Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White dozens of times; probably for the first time when I was about thirteen. The book and I are the same age, both of us born in 1952. Charlotte’s Web was in a pile of books I had pulled from Dan’s study, mostly children’s...