I'm Back

It has been over a year, but I'm back. I must say that this past year has been challenging, with this past month especially so. I gained a sabbatical, which begins now, and which will include this blog as a key component. But when I applied for the sabbatical, I was fairly confident that Mom would still be lucid and able to help me interpret the several logs she kept over the years. My hope is to use them as part of a memoir project. That was not to be, however.

The last week of June, Mom became very weak, ended up in the hospital and then had to go to a nursing home. Up until Thanksgiving, she was still lucid most of the time, but after that she seemed to grow very confused from time to time. Specifically, she seemed to be obsessed about our living room--after I had suggested that she might want to come home for Christmas. We had a lovely afternoon Dec. 8, enjoying a Christmas party at the nursing home, and we talked three times the next day--the last at 7:15 p.m. as she was getting ready to go to bed. Sometime between then and 5:45 a.m. Monday she had a massive stroke and died ten days later (Dec. 20). We just buried her Dec. 27.

Irony of ironies. She can't help me any more with her logs, but one of her friends just sent me a packet of letters Mom had sent her over the last 30 years. I went through some, but had to stop when I read her describing her thoughts about Dad's illnesses back in the 1970's. It's just too soon. In fact, I'm wondering how hard this memoir project is going to be because right now I'm feeling pretty raw.