"If only" runs through my mind as I remember our 50th reunion of a week ago. Twenty-nine of forty classmates (three have died) met at Camp Geneva in Holland, Michigan, from Tuesday afternoon through Thursday morning. Many of us, as proud members of the Blodgett Memorial Hospital School of Nursing Class of 1962, had not …
Category: retirement
My sister’s obituary – Kathleen Korthuis, PhD, RN
As I worked on my eulogy last evening, I became more and more impressed with how much Kay, as the oldest of us Hoitenga Sisters, had unassumingly jammed into her life. Enjoy her efforts, efforts she would call modest, with me in her newspaper obituary. Meanwhile, before I attend her services this weekend, I'll be …
Continue reading My sister’s obituary – Kathleen Korthuis, PhD, RN
In Memoriam – Kathleen E. Korthuis, PhD, RN, 1934-2012
My sister Kay passed away during the night from lung cancer. Just a month ago, as I sat at her bedside, she told me in that big sister tone, "I'm going to beat this thing." As a nurse and teacher, she was my lifelong career mentor. I mourn her passing in the most gut-level way. …
Continue reading In Memoriam – Kathleen E. Korthuis, PhD, RN, 1934-2012
Nurses are Lifelong Learners
It’s August 1 today and my body is automatically going into back-to-school mode. For about half of my seventy years, either as a student myself or as a teacher of nursing students, I’d spend August assessing my wardrobe from next-to-skin to outerwear. Then I’d shop. My wardrobe had to be in place before school started …
Another Retirement Crisis
You’d think I’d be having a heat-related crisis today—it’s the third day in Chicago of heat indexes over one hundred—but instead I’m having my second identity crisis of the year. The first was in May when, after fifty years, I could not give up my registered nurse license and, at the last minute, clicked myself …
Calling All Elders, Seniors, Oldsters, Geezers…!
I'm happy to offer my older friends an opportunity to submit your words via written interview for consideration for a new book being edited by one of my writing teachers, Carol LaChapelle. Here is a blurb from her blog: ON THE GEEZER BEAT: Tales from Elderville a forthcoming book by Carol LaChapelle, author of Finding …
Continue reading Calling All Elders, Seniors, Oldsters, Geezers…!
Growing Older in “Style”
One thing I know as a nurse is that wearing white can become boring. I worked for years to graduate from the stripes of student to the white of graduate, but after another forty years of white uniforms or lab coats, it really is time to move on. That brings me to my topic today. …
Have you met AGNES yet?
If not, I met her just the other day in the newspaper, and she’s so true-to-life. In fact, she’s so much like me that I liked her immediately. For one thing, she looks to be about my age—on the eve of seventy—and has the outward signs of infirmities that are starting to visit me—those bodily …
“I am now my own classroom,”
wrote Robin Jennings on ElderChicks recently. A former teacher, she has no time to sit in the rocking chair given to her when she retired. Rather than face a classroom each day, she now sees herself as her own classroom. As a retired teacher myself, I loved the way she phrased this stage of her …
An Update on Skipping Sugar
Well. A few of you have held me accountable this past week by asking how the no sugar deal is going. Fine, thank you! Marv is loving every piece of the pie he bought last week, and he doesn't have to worry about me inhaling every sweet he brought home from his office Christmas party. …
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