We are off on a motorcycle trip! We are traveling Cape Breton’s Cabot Trail for the second time. It’s a bucket-list ride for our friend Tam, and we’re happy to do it again. It’s been (gulp) about 13 years since our first time around it.
…This old photo of me and my Dad is a fave of mine.
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When my book, Make the Media Want You was published last summer, I promised to donate 5% of net proceeds to a program my late Dad loved: the Steve Ludzik Centre for Parkinson’s Rehab at Hotel Dieu Shaver in St. Catharines. So on this Valentine’s Day, I’ve decided to do something from my heart, in memory of my Dad.
…After I posted last week’s story about my Dad’s jacket and horse-racing suit, I realized I’d handled another, similar situation completely differently. In fact, I decided immediately what I would do, instead of packing the things and lingering over the quandary. It had to do with my friend and colleague, Jodi Taylor.
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It’s natural to think about those we’ve lost at this time of year. Yesterday, the great Penny Marshall joined the long list of people who left us in 2018. We think of our dear friend Kerry. Mike Cooper’s wonderful wife Debbie. Our warm and lovable colleague, Jodi. And my Dad’s been in my thoughts more than usual, now a year-and-a-half after he died.
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My mother said long ago, “Everybody has something”. She meant that we all have something to deal with, whether it’s an illness or a physical issue or a crummy family life – something. More and more, we’re becoming aware of how many people’s “something” is mental illness.
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My hope for Dads yesterday was that they felt how much they’re loved and appreciated. …
Sunday would have been Dad’s 83rd birthday. Life expectancy for a Canadian man is just over 82 years, so I suppose he was pretty average in that way. Yes, I looked it up, trying to make sense of it and continuing to fail at making it okay that he’s gone. Reminding myself that it’s the natural order of things. …
Sunday can’t possibly be the first anniversary of my father’s death. It’s gone so fast and time has also crawled. I truly thought I understood what it must be like to lose a parent but I didn’t – I couldn’t – until I lost my own Dad. …
It’s been nine long/short months since we lost our Dad to complications of Parkinson’s disease. Grief is like that. It’s fast but it’s also slow. I feel it most acutely on weekends because that’s when I’d hit the road to see him. His absence is huge and created a hole in our lives that will never be filled. …
2017 has nothing to apologize for. It’s not the year’s fault that we lost my father in it. That blame goes to Parkinson’s Disease which robbed us of him even before it took his life. This is our first Christmas without Dad. …
There are many things to love about my husband but one of them is that he doesn’t hesitate when someone needs help. That was never more evident than when my Dad’s health began to fail. …
I don’t want to be morbid, but the reality is that someone’s going to have to go through all of my stuff one day – yours too – and I’ve been thinking about what I’m leaving behind. …
My chiropractor is simply wonderful. She’s thoughtful and smart. She’s the woman who fixed my neck within seconds of our first meeting, after I endured two years of migraines and trying out all sorts of experts who couldn’t do it. I will always be grateful. Like me, she lost her Dad recently, so she knows how it feels. …
I hope you’ll indulge me as I share some of the funnier moments my Dad created in his life. There’s no visitation, service or ceremony for him. That’s how he wanted – actually insisted – it should be. I might not feel like writing here for the rest of the week, but I feel like it now, so here I am. …
Too soon and yet after too much suffering, my father has died as the result of complications from Parkinson’s. It’s a horrible disease. An eventual life sentence of deteriorating motor skills, loss of independence and dementia. He was 82, but in the past year, he aged to look ten years older. He was my Daddy and no matter what illness did to him, he somehow kept a glimmer of his sense of humour, a testament to his strength.
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We’re lucky that my Dad is mostly in a good mood while Parkinson’s eats away at his mobility and dementia claims more of his time. As I’ve posted previously, we just go along with whatever reality he’s in. It’s as if he’s literally seeing things that we can’t see, which I suppose he is. He was recently in hospital for eighteen days and we thought we’d lost him. Now he’s back in his long-term care home and re-adjusting pretty well. But he fixates on things for a day or two at a time and on the weekend, he was seeing – or wanting to see – grapes.Â
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Much fun has been made of so-called Mom jeans. You know the type: they sit higher on the waist than is fashionable and offer a generous amount of room in the seat. They may or may not have an elastic waist. No one you or I know wears Mom jeans but they do exist on the bodies of some women.  They’re not cool. …