Humanity: Raw & Unfiltered
At night, after my day as a spice merchant concludes, the smell of garlic and onion dust coats my clothes and body like a new skin, as though I am someone different. I do not shower before visiting my parents, my scent melds with their age and confinement. My mother Read more
I’ve never minded solitude. For a writer, it’s a natural condition. But caring for a dementia sufferer leads to a particular kind of loneliness. —Laurie Graham My mother is leaving me. Her mind allows her to tell me about my favorite stuffed animal when I was three, my Effalunt, but Read more
I don’t tremble, but they assume I’m Katherine Hepburn’s kind. We share our Parkinson’s frozen mask, expressionless, involuntary deceit of emotion. My shuffling gait halts while I calibrate my balance, refusing my wife’s arm even as my committee of limbs won’t comply. Stiffening, my six-foot body cracks against the shower Read more
The old man really loved his woman, clutching his arthritic hand around a curved cane confused without his love, lost without her. Mind decay, mixed with golden years heartache the love of his life tries to fade away, yet her lasting memory remains. I cry like a baby Read more
My mom desires a closeness with me now that she never did when I was young. I’d long suspected my mother didn’t embrace parenting in that fervent, born-for-this way that some of us do. Still, I was stunned the day she actually confirmed just how trapped she’d felt in the Read more
“I want to die.” It was hard to hear when my mother first said the words to me over the phone, but I understood why she felt that way. Besides robbing her of memory, that thief dementia had stolen my mom’s independence, dignity and ability to have an adult conversation. Read more
Sometimes I find her so heavy with thought, She can’t remember where she put it, the thing, the one thing she ought to bring to the houses, with the people who call her— “Friend!” A parting gift, for the folks who stayed. She leaves it with them to be polite. Read more
There is an age old adage that says, “Man makes plans, then God smiles”. All of us have many wonderful plans for our lives, only to face a detour or two along the way. I had married for the second time and my husband and I loved to travel. He Read more