InMotion

OK, this is a single-issue post and it's about TV.  I spend time watching TV.  And, in the last several years it has been quality-time.  The writing and acting can be at times jaw-droppingly good.  I found myself watching The Good Place  on the recommendation of my wife, and almost quit after the first few episodes (each is 22 minutes long because it is a "sitcom").  I am now on episode 10 and I'm all in (3 seasons, I think).  On our flight home from Minnesota a couple days ago, I read a piece about Roger Stone by Sam Anderson. I thought it was very interesting, and when I learned that Mr. Anderson had earlier written about The Good Place, I sought it out.  It is a marvelous article, and I recommend it (and the show ), to you: The Ultimate Sitcom by Sam Anderson

This 1500 word post describes our experiences in the first days of February, 2019 around the death of my father.   Like all of us Dad was always doing the best he could.   I don’t know, but it seems like his behavioral range was a fair bit above average.   Every family thinks it’s special and I’m not going to be contrarian on that point; it goes without saying.   But saying it puts me in mind of the structure (psychological, spiritual, physical) of our unique family, the group sparked into being by Dad and Mom. I can tell as I write that these unique features of our family will be metamorphosing spectacularly as we now all move too fast toward our own exit.   Even the memories seem to be shifting.   I hope to be celebrating all these inevitable shifts and discoveries and insights as we survivors continue to be here together, doing the best we can. - 2/17/2019 Me and my sisters with dad: L to R Janine, Cindy, Linda Dad died, on my birthday February...

Several years ago, I read an essay by Zadie Smith in The New Yorker  .  In it, she tries to explain her encounter with Joni Mitchell's music, which for her was apparently nearly a life-changing experience. Her piece inspired me to write, and I titled my piece  Reflections on Reflections on Joni Mitchell: Blue and Green.  An excerpt is included below. I am currently having trouble doing something I want to do: write.  So I dug this out and offer it as a stimulus to me, and you, to be receptive, and expressive in whatever ways feel real.  Music is a vehicle, and it is hard to describe what it is exactly, and how it works.   What is the mechanism of its magic?   It must be a resonance that occurs, a harmonic vibration between the performance and the listener. This is no doubt what Zadie Smith is talking about when she talks about attunement in her New Yorker essay, Some Notes on Attunement, a Voyage Around Joni Mitchell .   When the lis...

My wife Carol and I have returned from an extended (23 day) live-in experience with my 92 year old father in his apartment in the Memory Care unit of his retirement community.  He moved into memory care a couple months ago, and for a while before that, it appeared that he was nearing death. Carol and my sister Cindy decided that we would stay with him for his last weeks, and we took turns living with him.  We appreciate more deeply and better understand the work staff in these places do. Lots of bathroom time.  Understatement.  Now Dad's recovered some physical abilities. He is still able to walk, talk, and laugh, but has very little short term memory.  His thoughts and memories and present experience seem to blend and twist into surprising shapes and utterances that challenge one's ability to make sense of anything.  Being his son and having all those shared years with him at a tender young age the things he says and does often trigger emotions and tho...

What do you do when your father is 92 years old  and his equipment (heart, kidneys, structural supports, brain) starts going on the fritz big time?  Well, I have concluded that there is something I can do to help, and here I am trying to do that. After my mom died in 2004, he lived alone for 12 years  in the independent apartment section of a 3-tiered senior living facility in Spring Park, Minnesota, 20 miles west of the Twin Cities.  3 years ago, while walking in his apartment he fell and broke one of the vertebrae in his neck.  He's never made it back to the independent living he enjoyed, and now my sister Cindy and I are here seeing what's what and hoping to return to our  "regular lives" in the not too distant "future".  My parents raised my 3 sisters and I in Michigan, and 2 of the sisters still live there. I live in Louisiana, and Linda, the oldest of us 4 sibs, took a long life journey that finds her currently pretty much home-bound with disab...

 After 2 weeks back in New Orleans, on Nov. 15 I arrived here in Spring Park Minnesota, where my dad resides in a dementia unit of a care facility.  This is a unique and intense emotional as well as physical journey.  I am squeezing this post in early Sunday morning, while dad is still sleeping.  Soon we will begin the day, and I promise to return with another post and will try to report from this very different place I find myself in now. From New Orleans' newest bicycle bridge, Wisner street City Park

Monday: Quick moment between very slow trips across the apartment and other aspects of life with my dad here in Minnesota. We're getting it all together as we the family take over all the care from the care center, with spectacular help from my wife Carol and sister Cindy. I'm back (Tuesday afternoon), had to stop writing because I am too distracted here in the studio apartment with dad.  I am just here.  I don't have a profound insight on the end of life or my relationship to my dad, but being here is just what it is, is important, is real. He's now finally drifted off for an early afternoon nap. He may awaken anytime, so I'll just post these pictures, taken on my bike rides.  I will continue trying to write when I can.  I have been able to ride for an hour or more on 6 of the 9 days we've been here so far.  I liken it to plugging into a charger, beautiful.  Late afternoon, Dakota rail-trail, Mound, MN (across the street from dads place) bridge ...