After They’re Gone

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…

Continue Reading


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…

Continue Reading



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…

Continue Reading


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…

Continue Reading


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…

Continue Reading


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…

Continue Reading


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…

Continue Reading



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…

Continue Reading