One Good Day
In the end, caregivers accept the limits of what they can control while making the best of what remains—a shift in focus to one good day at a time.
Honoring the here and now offers a nurturing space for aging…
Last Stories: Adult Children as Legacy Coaches
“People attend, remember, and are transformed by stories…
Mary Pipher from Writing to Change the World
Stories have a profound impact on our lives. On one level, our identity is the summation of our stories. When our aging parents enter…
In Memory of Dr Herbert Randall: The Letter That Changed Everything
Dr. Herbert Randall passed away on February 14, 2019. He was an advocate for Senior Citizens and served as President of the Nevada Silver Haired Legislative Forum and Silver Senator with the Nevada Delegation of the National Silver Haired Congress. …
If I Die First…
Aging parents face an uneven future in which one will be left behind. FD Reeves’ poem “Home in Wartime” contains two elegant and inspiring stanzas of instructions for both possibilities…
From “Home in Wartime”
By FD Reeves
If I die…
Inconvenient Eulogy
Inconvenient Eulogy
by David Solie
Even when things are going your way,
Words don’t come easy on funeral day.
Mourners turn up with guarded belief,
Awaiting your words of pain and grief.
But others arrive with their…
Steady On…
Things periodically fall apart with our aging parents no matter how hard we try to avoid conflict.
Stay calm and let these episodes have their moment and then pass on.
There’s no time to hold a grudge or prove who’s…
Second Thoughts After They’re Gone
When a parent passes away, we take on a new kind of work. I am not referring to the necessary “estate chores” of filing papers or clearing out the house. I am referring to the psychological process of sorting out…
When the last parent is gone…
When The Last Parent Is Gone
By David Solie
When the last parent is gone,
Your heart cannot right itself,
Things that should help,
Heeding warning signs
Repairing loose ends
Bracing for impact
All…
Beyond Grief: Rebalancing What We Can’t Control
I get a steady flow of inquires about how to deal with the anticipation or actual loss of an aging parent. One reader framed it this way. “It is devastating to think about and I don’t want to create undo…
Home Unfurnishing Your Parent’s Stuff
This is an excellent article by Richard Eisenberg that offers eight strategies for systematically paring down the stuff of aging parents that apparently nobody wants. It’s a necessary but ultimately awkward ritual of sorting with an eye towards aggressively casting…