Life is hard, and it does not get easier as we age. With an incurable, progressive disease like Parkinson’s there are bound to be moments with little or nothing to look forward to, which begs the question, why continue? I…
A friend of the strangest sort
Astros, Peloponnesus Peninsula, Greece, 1976. Gently kicking face down on the surface, I breathe deeply from the plastic snorkel with disciplined practice while following the shadowy school of giant fish on the bottom. The water is clear, but the ninety-foot…
Delightfully depressed
A few select songs incapacitate with their haunting beauty, stranding me in a netherworld of delightful depression, frozen in a timeless dimension of emotion. Lola, by the Kinks, has always been one of these songs for me. These compositions evoke a…
Preparing to land
Trying not to squirm in the 737’s exit row, I struggle to avoid bringing attention to my condition and risk losing the relative comfort of extra legroom. As I stare at the boarding passengers, no earth-shattering revelations pay visitation. Carefully…
My father
My father died several years ago at age 87 after a meaningful life. He lived overseas and traveled extensively, including a three-year stint in the navy as a ship’s navigator and many years teaching in Athens, Greece, and Damascus, Syria.…
A child’s love
When five years old, I had a thing for Captain Crunch cereal; fortunately for me, my parents would rarely buy the sugar-laden garbage. Finally, sensing a fatigued mother one morning, I browbeat Mom until she relented to my pleas to…
Life’s details
Sunday, while driving through town on my way to the grocery store, I encountered one of those indulgently sincere, shared moments created by connecting souls with candid meaning. I stopped as a middle-aged lady with impaired mobility wheeled her chair…
And loving it…
For the last year or two, pacifying insecurity from attachment has become a futile nocturnal chore of necessity. Never able to wholly rid my body of instinct, night after night, even our dogs sense my alerted “fight or flight” state…
Reflections
I usually prefer to walk or hike alone to have an undistracted opportunity to think until thought is no longer helpful. These periods of meditative-silenced cognition bring my most peaceful moments, absent the standard lunatic ravings that bounce around my…
Tribe
Most of us spend our lives in a small circle of friends and family, echoing back familiar reactions to what we perceive to be objective reality. But the cruelty of a chaotic world occurs so quickly that even a formally…