It's a common scenario: Your parent is aging, and little by little the roles are reversing. You are becoming their parent, and they are becoming like your child. If you were born between 1946 and 1964, then you might be one of 76 million baby boomers approaching and/or ready to enter retirement. Or perhaps you're first ramping up a career that had been put on hold while you focused instead on raising your own family. (That's how it is for me. When my two sons were in high school, I returned to college for an advanced degree, knowing that once they flew the coop, I'd want to focus on a new career. I'm { Read More }
The Newtown School Shootings: A Most Unfortunate Way to Reconcile a Death
As I sit here this Monday morning, it’s so hard to make sense out of my emotions, which are flip-flopping through my crowded mind, competing for attention. I am grieving the death of my father, who passed away on Friday. But on top of that I’m also grieving – along with the rest of the world – the 20 young children who died that same day in Newtown, just 30 minutes from my home here in Connecticut. It isn’t surprising, I’m sure, for you to hear that the events in Newtown pretty much eclipsed the death of my father. The loss of a 90-year old is a natural loss; the senseless massacre of innocent { Read More }
On Not Being Somebody’s Child
I've managed to live this long - 58 years - still being someone else's child. I may be an adult child...but nonetheless, there's something strangely comforting about being in your 50s and still having a mother and a father. And although I may be fooling myself, being someone else's child makes me feel less like an adult in this so-called midlife, and more like a (somewhat) young thing. For that, I count myself among the lucky ones. So many people I know have suffered the loss of a parent when they were in dire need of parenting themselves - as young children, as teenagers, as young adults. It { Read More }