The past week has been sad and difficult for my family.

My mother passed away last Wednesday, October 18, shortly after 2:00 in the afternoon.  My father and my brother were there with her.  I came home from school on the earliest commuter train I could catch.

Mom and everyone else in the family knew, at least in the back of our minds, that the ( Read more... )

It's been a little while since I have posted, and the main reason for this is that I haven't had the heart to write about the main thing that is happening in my family now.  To put it bluntly, Mom's condition has been declining and she probably has only a short time left to live.  We suspected this after both rounds of chemotherapy failed, but ( Read more... )

When I was driving home from the train station last night, I saw an animal that I've never seen alive before - an opossum, the only marsupial native to the United States.   It doesn't look like any other animal that lives around here, though - the long snout with white fur was the giveaway.  I've seen them in pictures, and a couple of them that had ( Read more... )

For one day this weekend, my whole immediate family was together.  My brothers both came home to visit mom, but their schedules only allowed a short overlap.  It was good for Mom to have everyone together, and it was also good for everyone else to see each other - Dad, me, my 2 brothers, and my sister-in-law, who has really become a full part of ( Read more... )

Why do I take so many pictures of sunsets, plants, and landscapes?  For one thing, they are remarkably un-selfconscious about their appearance:

Type your cut contents here.


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Mom is OK most of the time at home, but her pain attacks are still sometimes too strong for the medicine to really control.  Dad has taken an extended period of leave from work to stay home with mom - one of the advantages of having worked 27 years for the federal government is that you can can accumulate a LOT of leave without having to use it or ( Read more... )

Mom came home last Friday evening.  She is still glad to be home, but things are not easy for her.  The pain in her legs and lower back continues, sometimes making it difficult to even shift positions while sitting or laying down, and even more difficult to stand up and walk.  Her legs are weak from lack of exercise, but the pain sharply limits the ( Read more... )

Mom is returning home this afternoon.  If everything went according to schedule, she should be getting home right about now.

The second round of chemotherapy did not work.  She is coming home for hospice care where the main priority will be to try and keep her comfortable.

Time is running down.  Tomorrow is the day that Mom gets her biopsy, to see if the second round of chemotherapy succeeded.  If it has succeeded, she will be able to get a transplant ( Read more... )

Years ago, before the United States "lost its innocence"* in the age of terrorism, a person who left a bag unattended would only hurt themselves.  In our modern era, though, leaving an unattended bag in a public area will almost certainly result in the arrival of police, firemen, and other emergency personnel, causing whatever public area that the ( Read more... )