Not every day, but often, as I walk across the Fort Port Channel Bridge on my way to work I see Valerie.  She is a street person.  I'm not sure where she spends her nights, but she starts her mornings looking at the water.  When she spots me her arms are flung wide and, as she continues to recline on the bench, she reaches for a hug.  Sometimes I slip her the price of a cup of coffee, but I think it's the hug that she really looks forward to.  Street people don't get hugged much, it occurs to me.

I've never asked her story.  It's none of my business.  Some days she looks rougher than other days.  She may drink or drug.  I don't know.  I'm not in the lecturing business and it wouldn't change anything if I were.  I had a spare rain poncho left over from my son's graduation which seemed like a good idea.  Mostly she can't take much because where would she keep it?

I asked her name because I saw her pretty often.  I've also asked the name of the guy in South Station wearing the Burger King purple velvet robe who hands out the Metro newspaper.  He's Dorrell.  It's a thing I believe.  If you see someone every day, you should learn his or her name.  We all need to be known.  And sometimes hugged.  But Valerie shares my first name, which caught me by surprise.  It's not a very common name, although it's certainly not rare.  Knowing we shared a name made me think about her in a slightly different way.  Maybe it was the "there but for the grace of God go I" thing.  Maybe I wonder how anyone can live with so few material possessions. Sometimes I just look at the water and try to see what she sees.

And here we are, riding on the same Blue Marble, day chasing day, seasons meaning a lot more to her than to me.  She knows where to find air conditioning or heat, of course.  But she has to think about it in a totally different way from the way I do.  For her it's life and death.  The shortened hours of sunlight mean danger, along with cold.

Meanwhile I mumble about the Red Line and dread shoveling snow in front of my own home, and digging out our two cars.  Every once in a while it's good to send a thought and a prayer to the other Valerie.  It keeps my feet a little more grounded to have to stop and appreciate how very much I have.

Doors are magical.  Every day we open our front door onto another surprise.  Sometimes it's snowstorms that change our perceptions of the world we live in, sometimes hedges defiantly peeping through piles of ice and dirt, and one of these days (please, God) a crocus or tulip.  We open the door to strangers selling things, to friends visiting, to our sons coming home for visits. When I was sick recently I opened my door and found a bag of chicken soup and treats and tea from a loving friend.  Even the mail is an adventure if you look at it the right way.

Sometimes I'm not going out.  I'm coming in.  Reactions can be "Ugh, I have GOT to clean this place before they film a Febreze commercial in here!" or "Ahhhh.  Home."  If someone is there to greet me the energy is different.  If it's my husband we putter and do our separate things in companionable silence sometimes, or chatter about our days.  Eventually we'll sit on the reclining couch to watch something (anything) on the TV and one or both of us will nod off to sleep half way through.  If the boys are home they are coming or going with friends or without, but sometimes they actually stay put for a bit and talk to us and play a board game or share a meal.  I memorize those moments, realizing that they, like the snow, are disappearing quickly.  When I open the door and there is no answer to my call, the emptiness is always a disappointment.  This is one of the reasons my house is not tidy.  I hate being there alone for any length of time.  Well, that and the fact that I don't like housework.

Then there's the Big Door at the end of our lives, the one through which we walk alone.  Who knows what surprises lie beyond that door?  I find that door is ajar sometimes.  There are times when my heart drifts through to get a look at what's coming up.  It stopped scaring me a long time ago, maybe because I have so many people I've loved who have joined my "Advance Team" and gone through first.  Other times I swear I feel the presence of those wonderful friends and family members who "visit" at the most unpredictable times.  I'll hear a song that I just KNOW is a message.  A car will miss hitting me by two coats of paint and I know I'm being watched over.  The connection is still there.  The love doesn't disappear just because it can't be expressed in a hug at the moment.  Any more than the world disappears when I close my front door.

I am in such a strange mood.  Tonight is my 40th reunion from college.  At the last one of these I went to, five years ago, I thought I looked pretty good.  Then someone put up pictures on Face Book and that was the end of that delusion and the beginning of my reunion with Weight Watchers.  I'm not expecting much to be different tonight. 

I look at my sons, who are already going into their Junior and Senior years of college and I see little faces and plastic knights' helmets and Fisher Price castles with cannon balls flying. How on earth did we get here this fast?  And now I get to face the strange fact that I haven't been a college student in four decades.  A large number of these women were also classmates of mine from grade seven right through high school.  Nineteen of us went to Emmanuel in the fall of 1970 from Girls' Latin School.  Trembling with anticipation in our very first class of freshman year (English with Dr. Jerry Bernhard at 8:30AM) we all gasped when he told us our first assignment was to read "The Aeneid".  Eyes widened.  Furtive glances were stolen.  Notes were passed.  "In TRANSLATION?  ALL RIGHT!"

But that was long ago when the crust of the earth was cooling.  So much has happened since then.  There have been jobs and deaths, romances and broken hearts, children and grandchildren (not mine yet, thankfully) and 9/11 and cell phones, ATMs and iPads.  It's all new and more than a little overwhelming at times.  Yet we cope, some of us better than others.  How does one start a conversation after 40 years?  "What's new?"  Well, there's always wine.  Or I could stuff my face with cheese and crackers and feign a migraine.  At least we're not quite at the age when we don't drive at night.  Or at least I hope that's true.  You never know.  I may be in for another shattered delusion.

Then tomorrow my older college boy goes off to Washington, D.C. for the summer to serve an internship with our Congressman.  This is the very first summer of his life when he won't be home with me.  Oh I know the days are numbered anyway.  His life is taking off like a rocket, as is his brother's.  They have their friends, their own interests, and this coming year, their own apartments instead of living on campus.  I realize they may never really move home again, and that's fine.  But you'll forgive me if there is a tiny bit of mourning going on.  I don't feel needed any longer, and that is as it should be if I have done my job well.  But this letting go thing is so much harder than Virgil's "Aeneid" in Latin or in English.

Forty-seven years ago today my childhood came to a screeching halt. My brother, then 22 and eight months back from Viet Nam, died in a car accident in Louisiana on his way back to the base. His car hit a patch of ice as he drove on an overpass, skidded into a tree, and that was that.

This is not a plea for sympathy.  We all face these things over the years.  My other brother died of lung cancer at 42, and my niece at 19 in another car accident, and I've lost more precious friends than I want to count right this minute.  Still, there is something about the first really close death that truly slams the door on the first chapter of one's life and starts the second.

Wayne's picture is on my piano, along with several other pictures of people I miss on a daily basis.  Wait.  That's not technically true.  Some days I get so immersed in the day to day trivia of laundry and subway rides and planning what's for supper that I guiltily admit I forget to think about them.  They have just become part of the fabric of my life.  The information about my brothers, my niece, and my friends has become a statistic about me, like the color of my eyes (hazel) and the color of my hair (silver..not gray, please) and my height (about which I will just say that my head and my feet are way too close together).  But on days like this, on anniversary dates, on birthdays (theirs and mine) I get sentimental and I open the floodgates of longing.  I miss their laughs, their voices, and all the years out of which I feel cheated.  It reminds me of the times I would re-read old love letters after the messy endings of relationships in order to tear the scab off the wound, to prove my loyalty by preventing my healing.

So today, "Big Brother", although you are forever one year older than my son is now, and almost forty years younger than I am today, I send a kiss heavenward and tear the scab off once again.  When I was fourteen you became the first member of what I think of as my "advance team", and you have been my constant reminder of how fragile and precious life can be.  It sometimes makes me over-protect your nephews, or try to, but all in all that's not such a bad legacy.

With love from your forever "Baby Sister".

As usual, Christmas came and went and we all survived.  It wasn't the Hallmark Movie of the Week, and "the perfect life-changing present" (which doesn't exist) wasn't under the tree, but it was lovely in its own, quiet, and ever-changing way.  One sister and her husband and daughter and her friend made it for Christmas Eve and brought meatballs and cookies (two different dishes, you'll be relieved to hear).  The other sister has grown fearful of traveling in the dark and didn't feel brave enough to venture forth, and while I understand and sympathize with that, it also made me a little sad.  Nothing stays the same.  I have to keep reminding myself that it's not supposed to.

The presents from the boys were thoughtful and whimsical and required no help from Mom and Dad except for transportation to the mall.  Son Number One gave me a tee shirt which reads "Vassar College  - undefeated since 1861" and there's a football on it.  Well the school was all girls until 1969 and there never has been a football team, and I thought it was very funny.  He also gave me a book on how to make money from writing my blog.  A certain celebrity on the west coast will read that line and rub her hands in glee and shout "See!  I told you!" but we'll talk later, Susan.
Son Number Two gave me a New York Times Crossword a Day calendar and I'm really looking forward to using it.  I love crosswords, but never make time for them.  He also gave me a tee shirt.  This one is flaming red with the Wonder Woman logo on the front.  I've already worn it to work, prompting some rather interesting comments.

It's still hard to think of all the missing friends and family who have been here in years gone by.  An ornament recalls a face or a time, a picture on the piano grabs my eye, and my heart gives the same kind of twinge I'm getting used to from my knees, except it hurts more.  But, as with the knees, I acknowledge it, suck it up, and move on.  Nobody wants to hear about my aches.  As they say about the Virgin Mary, "I ponder all these things in my heart."

Himself is a gift all on his own.  In addition to Herculean struggles at cleaning the house in preparation for company, he has continued to toil away at bringing order to chaos in the days that have followed. It has been a trip down Memory Lane as his archeological dig has unearthed bits and pieces from the past that I have long forgotten.  I'm beginning to think there might actually be a cozy home under all the piles, and that might be the greatest present of all, along with the purchase for at least the tenth year in a row of "The Writer's Market", which assures me that he still believes in my dream.  Some years the binding is never cracked.  Other years there is a tentative dive into certain sections to see what the possibilities are.  But as Father Hugh used to say, back in the day when I thought I'd be alone and misunderstood forever, "The groundwork doesn't show until one day...."

So here's to Christmas miracles and Hallmark moments and learning to "go with the flow", which reminds me of another famous Father Hugh quote: "Don't push the river, kid.  It flows by itself."  I am only beginning to learn at 61 how much courage it takes to get on the raft and enjoy the ride.

Nothing ever turns out quite the way you expect it to.  For all my complaining about the Twenty First Century, it was a cell phone text message that restored my ability to breathe normally, and Facebook that allowed me to reassure my friends and family, who know that the Boston Marathon is my husband's "thing".  My husband is safe, but other people's loved ones are not.  There's an eight year old boy dead, and although I'm hoping it's a rumor, I heard that his younger sister lost a leg in the explosion.  There are all sorts of stories circulating, and as usual, some are fact and some are fiction.

There's a lot of flag waving and saber rattling, and of course the ridiculous Westboro Baptist Church has threatened to picket the funerals of the Boston Marathon Massacre victims, but really they bore me and who the hell cares?  There is a weariness in the air.  We've been through this too many times already.  We're getting used to chaos.

The closest I came to tears was when I heard that the Yankees were going to play "Sweet Caroline" at their game tonight, the signature song of the Boston Red Sox.  It won't help anyone, but it was such a sweet gesture that it moved me.  I was hoping they wouldn't get a chance to pay us back for having been equally nice to them after September 11.  But I guess the world is in such a state that at one point or another we're all going to have to learn to be compassionate and caring towards our "enemies" at least for a little while.  Then we'll forget and go back to the Yankees hating the Red Sox and the Red Sox hating the Yankees and I'll probably feel a little better then, because THAT at least is normal.  This quiet sadness is not.

Today is a day with sharp edges.  One year ago today my dear friend, writing buddy, and passionate warrior, Jim Flanagan celebrated his last birthday.  He stopped slaying dragons when his heart failed on Labor Day, but his smile (which I felt you really had to see to believe) burns like a pilot light in my spirit.
Always engaged in life, and always bursting with an opinion on everything, especially the government and the way he felt it ignored the poor, Jim was fascinating to be with.  He was a talented writer, and not just of irascible letters to the editor.  He had a published book, but it was his poetry that I loved the best.  April is poetry month, and it was fitting that his birthday fell when the world was re-awakening.  He would fly to Chicago to a poetry conference every year and for a week immerse himself in listening to others and to his own inner muse.
This man with a doctorate in English from Notre Dame taught high school English in a very tough neighborhood in New Jersey by choice.  Nothing pleased him more than to transform a young person's life by pulling the beauty out of their soul with pliers and holding it up for them and the world to see. These kids had no idea there was a hint of poetry in them until he taught them to dig for it and revel in it and use it as a tool to express their pain and to celebrate their strength.
More proud of his Irish heritage than anyone I have ever met, he would throw open his home the weekend before Saint Patrick's Day every year and start baking Irish soda bread at four in the morning.  The smell of corned beef and cabbage permeated the neighborhood, and the laughter and Guinness flowed like the waters of the River Liffey.  On the few occasions when we were able to get down there from Boston I would lead the singing and my son would play tunes on his violin, although for the day we called it a fiddle.  The party was legendary.  I quietly ignored Saint Patrick's Day this year, and Jim would not have approved, but my heart just wasn't in it.
So happy birthday, dear friend.  You've had some company from my circle join you in recent months.  I hope you are all well and happy and singing and blissful.  I still have work to do down here, apparently, but I carry you in my heart every day and know that when I've finished my chores I'll join the party up there, and it will put even your amazing celebrations to shame.

Winter has turned into an immortal monster.  Just when you think he has gasped his last and the crocuses start to timidly peek above ground, back he comes with his arms flailing and his icy breath blowing the birds out of the trees.  It's like the dinner guest who refuses to leave three hours after the dessert has been served.  I, for one, am pretty sick of his company.

Of course the benefit of a March storm is that it never stays on the ground very long, although it will probably stay long enough to mess up Son Number Two's flight home tomorrow, something which I've started to expect from my charming snow magnet.  Spring Break, which appears to be a real misnomer this year, starts tomorrow.  Son Number One is also flying tomorrow, but he is headed to Seattle with his friend and won't be back here until next week, by which time the flowers may actually be here for real.  I'm looking forward to deep voices in the house, empty milk cartons, and the traffic of friends coming and going at all hours.  I watch in amazement as these young men float in and out of my area of vision.  Trying to retract my "mommy claws" is difficult.  They don't sleep enough, either of them.  I have no idea how they manage to do so well at school.  Nagging is pointless, but expected, so I do it but half-heartedly.  I know it will have absolutely no effect.  But what a joy it will be to have them home to nag! 
It will be the first time I've seen them in person since "Uncle Jim" passed away a few weeks ago.  They had a hard enough time when my dear Flanagan died in September, and then in November when my mother slipped away, but "Uncle Jim" had a special place in all their growing up years and they both adored him.  We need to cry together, remember together, pray together, and then celebrate.  Ritual is crucial at times like this, and then we will learn to live with the memories as a quiet companion in the background, and get on with the business of spring.

I can't see it, but I can hear it.  It's a tiny blue-gray thing with a tufted head, and even though the temperature is still in the thirties, I've thrown open the window so that I can hear it better.  It seems to be calling around to see if anyone else has arrived yet.  If ever a year needed a spring it's this one.  Now in the distance I've started hearing other types of birds joining the chorus.  Of all the things I miss in winter, including light, birdsong is in the top three.

There is an ocean separating me from where I want to be right now.  Funeral preparations proceed for Jim, who will be laid out in Saint David's Church in Mold, North Wales on Thursday evening in preparation for his Mass on Friday morning at ten, led by the Bishop.  It will be five o'clock here, and I'll be up, saying the rosary with the ring he gave me years ago, and listening to "Jerusalem" through my iPod, rocking and weeping in the ancient tradition of "keening".  Nothing will help the pain.  Still, I know that under the melting snow outside my window there are daffodils, the flower of Wales, which will emerge in a few weeks to remind me of my precious friend, and to connect me to him and remind me that it takes more than death to break the bond of love.

I find the period after a "hit" physically exhausting.  Going to the boutique and pasting on the happy face as I deal with ladies buying clothes I couldn't begin to afford and which they don't need serves to distract me, but doesn't begin to deal with the issues.  I want a bit of quiet, but that doesn't seem to be on the schedule.

It has occurred to me that I need to start cultivating younger friends or I'm going to run out.  Since I was a child I have always gravitated towards "wisdom figures".  I wept bitterly on the last day of school from the third grade right through high school.  My teachers were my first real guides and friends.  After school I would sometimes stop by for a cup of tea and then work in the garden.  While I was in college I was the weekly housekeeper for my retired eighth grade English teacher, and we remained friends until I was well into my thirties when she passed away. 

My first priest friend fell into my life when I had surgery at the age of thirteen and hit it off with the hospital chaplain.  Since then I have met and added to my list of "inner circle friends" a number of priests.  I'm not sure why.  It's not a plan.  If there's someone in a sweatshirt and jeans at a party and we have a wonderful time talking about important things, at least six times out of ten I'll find out he's been ordained.  I guess I see the human being behind the Roman collar, and treat him accordingly.  And sometimes very irreverently, which we all need once in a while to keep our feet tethered to Earth.  My husband considers the clergy part of my dowry, and he and my children have become the family that some of these men never had.  It's "win, win" until you get to today when one of them leaves and then everyone is reeling in pain. I suppose that's true any time you open your heart wide to let someone into the inner circle.  The pain is in proportion to the depth of the joy received. And over the years this family has been blessed with great joy.

There's been another tear in the tapestry of my life.  Canon Webb (aka "Uncle Jim" around here) slipped away quietly in his sleep on Sunday night after dedicating the new chapel in Saint David's Church in Mold, Wales.  Since my boys were tiny (indeed, before they were born), we would spend our summer holidays at the presbytery, using it as a launching place for exploring castles.  Every Saturday at 7:30 either I would call him or he would call me and we would catch up on the week.  There was never a birthday, Fourth of July, or Christmas that the phone didn't ring with a greeting.  We were family by choice, which, as I maintain, is the best kind of family to be. 

Scary at first, his Cambridge University accent, hard acquired after a childhood rife with poverty, could prove off-putting.  Then he would say something outrageous like, "One found that very amusing.  We laughed so hard the tears of mirth ran down our leg," and after doing a double-take to confirm that I'd heard what I thought I'd heard, we'd howl.  He introduced us to the phrase "tickety-boo" for use when things were just lovely.  The first time I saw the town of Mold I commented that it was much larger than I'd imagined it.  He replied, "Yes, but even in one's moments of most diminished sobriety, one would never mistake it for midtown Manhattan."

He was the friend of my high school history teacher, Rosemary, and I'd known him almost twenty years before we became friends.  She passed away two months after my wedding, and when he came to town to collect his things which he'd left on various visits, we mourned her death together and sealed a friendship that will last forever.  Himself and I named our second son after him, which delighted Uncle Jim.  My friends are carefully chosen and fiercely and permanently loved.  To take a third major hit in six months has been difficult.  I haven't seen him face to face since 2007, what with college tuitions and airfare costing what they do, but the bond has never faltered.  His face, intentionally stern and unsmiling, sits atop the piano and keeps me company.

Jim's funeral will be on Saint David's Day, which is Wales' equivalent of Ireland's Saint Patrick's Day.  He'll miss the field of daffodils which should be in full bloom in his garden by then.  But not a thousandth as much as we'll miss him.  Sleep well, my dear, dear friend.  And save me a good seat.

Last post on the death of my mother, at least for a while.  The funeral was as nice as a funeral could be, I suppose.  Mom was laid out in the mint green lace dress she had worn to my wedding twenty-one years ago.  In her hands were her father's rosary beads, around her wrist a charm bracelet with the names and birth dates of all five children, and on her finger the wedding ring Dad gave her in 1941.  The grandchildren participated as pall bearers and lectors, and I actually managed to sing the Communion hymn without falling apart.  The trip to the cemetery was strange.  I hadn't stopped to think that on the other side of the hedge from my mother and father's grave is the grave of my brother and niece.  The last time I was there the hedges were up to my knees and there was space between them to walk through the rows.  Now they are at my waist and dense as a wall.

Stupid thoughts raced through my head all night.  I was aching because she was outside in the cold and the dark, as if that mattered.  I remember having the same silly thoughts years ago when my younger brother died in February.  Today begins the business of learning to live in a world without Diamond Lil.  As the tongue always searches for the hole after a tooth is removed, my mind keeps going to the empty space she has left in my life.  For today the time I spent at the nursing home can be spent writing thank you notes to the many friends who went out of their way to show their love and caring.  Tomorrow will be another story.

I've been quiet lately because I didn't want my sons to read about my mother's passing on my blog site, and they needed to finish their exams before coming home for Thanksgiving.  A week after disconnecting the feeding tube, Mom has finally found peace.  I was by her side on Monday as she drew her last breath.  I don't know if she could hear me or not, but I would have been disappointed if I had missed that part of the journey we've been on together for all this time.  Before the nursing home, we bought her six years of independent living in senior housing, where she had her own apartment and had her hot meals delivered to her door.  "I'm not eating in the dining room with all those old farts!" was the usual reason given for this.  Mom was not particularly soft-spoken or subtle.  If she didn't like you trust me...you knew it in the first three seconds.  After the fall and the broken hip which landed her in the nursing home, she became this sweet, docile, totally unrecognizable little old lady.  The transformation fascinated me.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and I'm truly thankful that she is not stuck in that aged, confused, frail body any more.  Still, I'm having my moments.  My friends, who have always amazed me as being God's most generous gift to me, continue to outdo themselves in expressions of love and support.  There have been phone calls and flowers, meals and hugs.  I find that I do better when I'm working, or organizing, or anything.  The moment anyone is sympathetic I fall apart. 

There is Thanksgiving to prepare for, and I'm so not ready.  Then there is the eulogy to write.  I'm not sure how I'm going to manage to deliver that, but I will.  I've got all six living grandchildren as pall bearers, three of them reading, one playing violin, two bringing up the gifts.  It feels like a production. On the desk in my living room is small picture of my mother and me, taken when I was about two, on a picnic somewhere or other.  She was in a stylish two-piece suit, and I was wearing a yellow organdy dress.  She must have told me that, because the picture is in black and white.  She always had style.  I'd never seen the picture before I had to close out her apartment and move her into the nursing home.  I find myself staring at it a lot these days and trying to understand what I'm feeling.  What's it like to be a sixty year-old orphan?

I don't like being the grownup.  The decisions we are stuck making just aren't fair.  Today I signed the form that stops my mother's feeding tube.  She is in the later stages of Alzheimer's and her body is forgetting how to swallow, so even the pureed mush she's been getting for the past year can't make it down her throat, and last night the food from the tube made her violently ill.  At 89 it's time to throw in the towel.

She spent most of the day sleeping, but when she woke she was cheerful and glad to see us (whoever she thought we were).  I'd like to think she recognized me and my sisters and their families, although I'm not really sure.  But I sat next to her bed for six hours knitting a totally unnecessary and poorly-executed scarf for my son, and as I knitted I had a lot of time to think.  I remembered her sleeping across the foot of my bed when I was seven and had the measles.  I remembered her throwing her fake fur coat over my bed in the winter because we didn't have central heating until I was fourteen.  I remembered her dealing with the deaths of her two sons and her firstborn grandchild and her husband. I watched her cope with legal blindness for the last twenty years.  This is a strong woman.  It was so hard to realize that she's been strong for long enough.  It is selfish for me to wish to prolong her time with us.

Is anyone ready to let go of a mother, regardless of age?  I am lucky to have had her for so long, I know, with all her quirky ways.  Death could come in a day or maybe a week, but it's coming, and I am leaning on all my faith to face it.  And unlike Dylan Thomas with his father, I pray that she will "go gentle into that good night."

Oh dear.  Back in the emotional sludge. The lack of sunshine isn't helping my already dour mood, I'm afraid.  Sometimes it is just all too much.  There's not much to do except lash oneself to the mast and ride out the storm.  The squeeze of being between the generations is one of the hardest challenges facing the Baby Boomers.  Our parents need us desperately, yet so do our children, and somewhere in there we are supposed to take care of ourselves, but that seems to get pushed off to last on the list.  If it makes the list at all.

I'm trying to keep a sense of humor through everything that is going on, but it gets harder and harder.  I feel inadequate to every task.  A patch job is the best that I can manage at the moment, and it feels as if I'm trying to put pantyhose on an octopus.  Just when I think I have things covered, something pops out somewhere else.  Is Thanksgiving REALLY less than two weeks away?  I can't wait to hug my children, but I'm already dreading putting my younger son back on the plane on the Sunday after the holiday.  That's just dumb.  Tonight I get to take care of my mother-in-law for a few hours on my own while Himself and his brother-in-law take Dad out for a Veterans' Day dinner.  It's a lovely idea, but I'm not sure I'm equal to the task.  It involves walking in circles for hours on end.  She never naps, watches television, or sits except to eat.  While feeling very sorry for her, I also wind up feeling sorry for myself and praying that I never get to that point.  Everything feels sad.

The bright side is that I feel a poem forming.  When the hurt gets to the point of bursting it usually comes out in the form of words, and the sharper the pain the brighter the images.  Everyone has his/her bag of rocks to carry.  I'll get through.  Humor, faith, and poetry in no particular order.  What a mighty arsenal!

I have no idea when I first heard of Lane Goodwin, the young teen from Kentucky who lost  his battle with cancer this week.  Someone must have sent me the Facebook link at some point, and somewhere along the way I became caught up in his struggle.  The outpouring of love and support from total strangers was enough to lift my heart and make me believe in the basic decency of most people.  Movie stars and athletes and farmers in the field were all photographed with their "thumbs up" for Lane.  This brave little soldier, for as long as he could, would show his optimism with his own "thumbs up" and an increasingly weak smile.

What I found most amazing was the willingness of his mother to share her incredible pain with the world in order to raise consciousness about childhood cancer.  There were pictures of her with Lane and his brother at Disney World, and at major league ball games, and many other places that people had generously arranged for them to visit.  I will confess that when I first saw all the pictures I was a little skeptical, but it soon became obvious that this child was really dying and this was no scam.  How does a mother share so many private moments at what she knows is the end of her child's life?  Angie is incredibly brave and generous, and I suspect that trying to find the kernel of something positive in all this pain is all that is keeping her going.  She has made a lot of people think about childhood cancer who never gave the issue a thought before, and that is definitely something positive.  I have a young friend in my town who is now a junior in college who raised my consciousness on this issue a while ago.  She, too, is a fighter, and she is doing well, thank you, God.

So when people ask me how we are dealing with the stress of sending two kids through college at the same time, my standard answer has become, "I thank God I'm not looking for money for chemotherapy," and that is true.  There is no rhyme or reason for who gets cancer.  No one deserves it, and it's especially hard to deal with it when it attacks a child.
Every day we are surrounded by reminders of how short and unpredictable life is, and also how beautiful.  So enjoy the gorgeous autumn leaves, hug your kids, and say a prayer for Lane's family.  He, himself, is finally resting pain-free in the arms of God.

I've heard about the "sandwich generation" who are torn between taking care of elderly parents and taking care of their children, but I haven't felt the intense pressure of it until now.  My mother is 89 and has Alzheimer's.  I won't say she "suffers from it" because for the first time since 1967 she seems at peace and charming.  That was the year my older brother died in a car accident after returning from Viet Nam with a Purple Heart, and my mother hated the world and everyone in it until she had a fall in her bedroom almost two years ago and broke her hip.  I don't know who this new lady is, but she is much easier to deal with.

I try to get to the nursing home about five to six days a week and I always come at meal time.  There is nothing to discuss besides food and how sleepy she is.  She calls me a "Deah"  and a "Dahlin" (this is Boston, after all) and some days I think she knows I'm her youngest daughter, but most days I think she thinks I'm a REALLY attentive aide.  "Why are you so good to me?" she asks at least twice a week.  "Because you're my Mama and I'm your baby girl!" I reply.  The answer is usually, "Well, I'll be damned!"

Watching her fade away a little at a time is strange.  I still have my mother, but I don't.  There has to be a bubble of protection around me when I visit or the sadness will crush me like a bug.  She had her hip repaired, but has been in a wheelchair since January of 2011 because she's too afraid of falling.  She has gone from regular meals to ground food, to puree.  I ask sweetly which lump she'd like to taste first, the green one, the beige one, or the white one?  Sometimes there's gravy.  None of it looks appealing.  She takes a mouse-sized nibble of each and then announces that she's full.  She has been on a gastric feeding tube overnight for a long time.  The coughing is starting, even though I always remember to put the thickener in her coffee.  She always wants her coffee.  They tell me that once she forgets how to swallow (and it's coming) they will rely on the gastric tube for all her nutrition, and then eventually her body won't be able to process that either.

Knowing what to pray for is getting more difficult.  I feel guilty if I want the end to come more quickly.  Part of me really doesn't want to be an orphan, even if I am 60.  But she doesn't participate in the music, or the "activities", because she is legally blind along with everything else. It doesn't seem fair to pray that she hang on for this life.  The next one is bound to be an improvement and she deserves the rest.  For the moment, I'm glad that she is not in pain, either physical or emotional, and that she has no clue that she is in a nursing home.  Because if she ever figured it out it would kill us both.

Summer's back would appear to be pretty much broken.  While there might be an 80 degree day hiding around the corner, autumn has arrived.  The edges of the day are cool and require a sweater, and the mornings arrive later and later, while the nights sneak up on me earlier and earlier.  I'm not a beach bunny and never have been, so it's not as though I'll miss "summer fun".  The closest I get to a tan is when my freckles all come out at the same time.  But this time of year always makes me wistful.  The ghosts of first days of school, my own and my sons', come back to haunt me, and I have an uncontrollable urge to go out and buy new notebooks and pencils in spite of the fact that we could supply a small country with what we already have in the desk.  Reason plays no part in this.

There is something poignant about autumn.  The trees are tired of being green and are getting ready to put on their big show before November strips them bare.  And to tell the truth, I think I'm tired of them, too.  I'm ready for something different.  Still, I am not altogether happy about the fact that the boys have another summer under their belts, that my mother is that much frailer, that my hair is that much grayer (or "silver" as my younger son, the diplomat calls it) or that so many of my friends have joined what I euphemistically call "the advance team".  I'm missing people and times gone by.  For some reason many of my friends have decided to take their leave of The Big Blue Marble during the month of September.  Then there's 9/11 to think about.  All in all, it's becoming one of my least favorite months.

I'm listening to Thomas Moore's "Dark Night of the Soul" in the car these days.   There are some interesting observations about the positive aspects of dwelling on "the dark side" and most of them involve personal growth, which I believe happens far more often during times of sorrow than joy.  I don't want to become a permanent citizen here, though.  I'm already planning my escape from the doldrums.  I think I'll start by planting a sea of daffodils for the spring.  But first I'm buying myself a new notebook.

I had the insurance money all spent this morning.  Himself went for a run.  Sundays are his "long runs" and I should know that.  If I make it through two miles I pat myself on the back and celebrate with a doughnut, but his long runs tend to be between fifteen and twenty miles.  On purpose.  Really.  But when he wasn't back in two and half hours my stomach started doing that "top of the roller coaster" thing and my breathing was getting painful.  Because the worst part about getting older is that you are in on "the secret."  Bad stuff does not just happen to other people.  Good people are not always protected by angels (at least not the way I think they should be).  And people we take for granted will always be there just won't.  I had pictured cars, heart attacks, and killer dogs.  I had police on the way to the house because they couldn't break such news to me over the phone.  Have I mentioned that I tend to be dramatic ?

Some of this comes from the recent loss of my darling friend Flanagan, who added so much joy to my days with his Irish fire and fury and fun.  Some of it comes from losing other people I love...young people..much younger than I am now.  Intellectually I have always understood the fact of human mortality.  I just didn't believe in it.  By the time you hit my age, however, it's rather difficult not to.  So no one (please believe me on this...NO ONE) leaves this house without a kiss and a hug and a prayer.  OK.  Maybe the Jehovah's Witnesses who interrupt my movie, but that's it.  I hug shy people, priests, gay people, poor people, rich people, people who need a bath (remember, my husband is a runner!), I hug them all.  It's not just that I am ridiculously friendly (although that is the rumor).  The reason is that I know as sure as I know my name that any goodbye could be the final one.  This sounds gloomy and depressing.  It's really not.  Think what the world would be like if we all remembered this every time we parted with someone we loved.  Think of all the stupid arguments we could avoid and the silly minutia that we could overlook.

So the worst part of getting older for me is the loss of the illusion of invulnerability.  My boys still both think they can fly and walk on water.  I envy them their ignorance and it worries me, too.  At the same time I am grateful for the knowledge, because it makes me pay attention almost all the time.  My motto is "Life is short and so am I."  It's only partially a joke.  Although I love to horrify people by telling them that if I were any shorter my hair would smell like feet.  But every day really is a gift.  Today's gift for me was the sound of the key in the lock when a very sweaty runner came through the door.  And if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go celebrate with a doughnut.

I don't indulge myself all that often.  I went through the entire summer with embarrassing toes peeping through my sandals, but yesterday I so needed a little pampering.  So while Himself was at work and after visiting my mother at the nursing home and trying to spoon in her lunch (whatever it was) I decided to go for it.  The immediate result was toenails that are a deep rose and look rather fashionable with my black sandals.  It was the feeling surrounding it that took me by surprise.

Like most women of my generation, I have  habit of putting myself last on the "to do" list.  The family comes first.  Himself, and the two boys, my mother, my mother-in-law, the local church, whatever.  They all seem to get my attention long before I do.  So when I actually got around to sitting down in the big chair with the massaging rollers making their way up and down my back and having the sweet Vietnamese teenager gently massage and tend to my feet I was a little surprised to find myself in tears.  You'd think it would be a pleasant experience, wouldn't you?  And you'd be right.  Except I realized that I'd been traveling at warp factor six away from the things that were bothering me.  I tended to them.  I took care of them.  I just didn't think about them.  When I stopped for a moment there was a massive highway pile up of stress.  I'm nervous about finding a new job.  I miss my two sons who are away at fabulous (expensive) schools.  I'm not nuts about watching my mother fade like a picture left on a windowsill too long.  And Flanagan went and died on me without saying "See ya!", the jerk! There's a lot going on and I need some tender attention from myself.  Flanagan always admonished me to "put my own oxygen mask on first" so I could take care of everyone else and I always waved away the suggestion with a "yeah, yeah, I know", but the truth is I need someone to remind me because I forget.  We all need to take care of ourselves first. 

And how are YOU doing on that score?  I have rose-colored toenails.  It's a start.