This is the first in a series of posts I'll write in the Blogging from A to Z in April challenge. My theme will be Aging from a Recent Widow's Perspective. I had a high falutin' word starting with A to present to you today, but my experience of the last twenty-four hours gave the …
Blogging from A to Z in April
Last year I stumbled on a delightful Australian blogger who was participating in the A to Z April blogging challenge. The challenge involves blogging every day during April, except Sunday, on a letter of the alphabet, starting with the letter A on April 1. Makes sense right? Thirty days hath September, April.... Skip Sundays and …
Locked Out
As the garage door boomed shut, I jumped out of the way. I’d programmed new pin numbers into the door opener and hadn’t expected the door to close. My heart went wham. My car was in the garage. The keys to the house were in the car. And there I stood, at dusk, in the …
Ice Cream at Thirty-one Months
Meandering through my brain the last few days to discover a suitable topic to chat about on my 31-month anniversary of widowhood, I came up with the number 31. As in 31 flavors. Probably because I’ve spent concentrated time this last month eating ice cream. Why eat ice cream? Because after a year affected by …
Growing Older: On Turning 79
At the start of my 80th year, I agonize most about how much I still don’t know. As an advocate of life-long learning, everyday I’m confronted with new and challenging ideas and information. I’m grateful, however, that my parents instilled in me a love for learning and an insatiable curiosity. Always questioning. Taking nothing at face …
Merry Christmas!
It's a sunny seven-degree day here in Sioux Falls. I wonder what the temperature was in Bethlehem the day Jesus was born. I heard on NPR this morning about the situation in Bethlehem today. Not good. They talked about the wall around the city that effectively isolates the Palestinians in Bethlehem from the financial and …
Tears of Thanksgiving
They started in my church parking lot. When I turned in, off of 26th Street, an older masked man motioned for me to veer right. Then a second older masked man signaled for me to open my window. He leaned over and told me to follow the car in front of me. I did. And …
Finding Humor Today
As virus numbers soar, I work at finding humor everyday. It's all around me; I just have to be aware of it. It's easy, as a friend says, to be a Debbie Downer. That's not my choice. For instance, just now I took an OLLI class on donating my body to science. I signed up …
Memoir-in-Pieces: Announcing Countdown for Cancer Book
My second book, our experience of my husband's terminal small cell lung cancer, is on its final trajectory toward completion. I started it with his first warning sign that something was awry. And hope to have it published by the holidays. In Part One, Refusing Treatment, I describe how the book is structured: "...my story …
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Caring Lessons Celebrates Tenth Anniversary
Ten years ago this month, the completed copies of Caring Lessons: A Nursing Professor's Journey of Faith and Self arrived in Chicago. I began the writing in 2000, after retiring as professor emerita of nursing from Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, IL. After many revisions, I finished it, finally, around 2008. Then the publishing process took …
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Write Along with Me 