November Skies!! (Photo Bin)

I'm sure there's a meteorological reason or three why it's always this way, but the sunsets in November here on the Cape are always amazing. Years ago someone also told me that volcanic activity, even half a planet away, during the past year can affect the way the light appears. Supposedly fine dust in the upper atmosphere makes the light refract and the colors glow deeper. If so, there must have been some explosions somewhere this year, because the results above and below have had little post processing, if any. This is actually what I saw.

This magic little spot is Shubael's Pond, within walking distance from my house. The only folks there this evening besides myself, were two fishermen in their pick up truck. Nature takes my breath away again and again.

Thanksgiving sunset (Photo Bin)

Thanksgiving Day Sunset at one of my favorite spots--Sandy Neck Beach, Barnstable. I wasn't the only one who headed there when the sky started to explode with color. Some with cameras, some with kids and dogs. One more reason why I love living here.

A Tragic Death

I didn’t know Max (name changed to protect his family), but his death makes me angry. A former student and success story, he’d been a construction trainer at youth development program in Brockton, MA for a decade before being laid off recently. The administrators in charge of running the place moved people around like cogs in a machine with absolutely no regard for their personal situation or their emotional responses. The same director recently laid off a certified teacher weeks before his wedding, in the middle of student orientation, with similar lack of interest. Just hand him the packet of info from HR and say “Goodbye.” Budget crunches are a ready excuse for layoffs, but the WAY they were done in this very large non-profit corporation just simply lacked human compassion.

As one knowledgeable person in another facility said, after yet another similar lay off, “There is no ‘human’ in their human service agency.”

No thought was given to any consequences, as one employee is just like another. No one bothered to even tell Max that they might be working on acquiring money to rehire him—why tell the employees anything to get their hopes up—or make them even feel like they mattered—because if it didn’t come through, they’d be mad or perhaps even confrontational. God forbid that there be any unpleasantness!

Maybe Max had other disappointments he was struggling with in his life. Doesn’t matter. Not now. He apparently used a key no one knew he had to enter his former workplace, and hanged himself in the early morning hours of Wednesday, his only way to make a statement. He was found by his construction supervisor and friend, who had no say in the lay-off, and will likely never get that image out of his mind. Unfortunately the Christian organization Max worked for will likely not even face the recriminations they deserve. I doubt even the Program Director, VP, or even the devout CEO will acknowledge, even privately, that they are to blame for this tragedy.

I have a friend who blogs more regularly than I who quotes MLK on his page:

“Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

How I wish that Max had been treated with justice and love by the powers for whom he worked that last ten years. In death they will laud him as a fine example, a product of their good programming, but it's too late now. This kind of tragedy always brings out the "should of, could of, would have's" second thoughts in those touched by it. Unfortunately, the wrong people will likely be asking themselves what they could have done to prevent this. The powerful culprits will remain blind to their responsibility. Anger is so intertwined with sadness that I can't tell them apart as they morph back and forth. There is still so much work to be done to change in our world. Pick a small corner near you and begin. That will be the best tribute to Max.

Reaction to Success is Wrong

I still don’t get it. I do not understand the meanness and spite with which some people operate in their everyday lives and work. I’m still surprised when greed, jealousy, and the need for control motivate actions, especially in people who have outwardly devoted their lives to helping others. I keep forgetting that baser emotions are not exclusive to the profit-driven world ofcommerce, but can exist everywhere.

Bureaucratic bumbling and ineptitude I have come to expect, but vicious personal action against someone whose personal integrity has never been questioned, still sets off skyrockets in my brain. Sometimes I need to talk with Terry, my husband, and get perspective, when all I feel is a throbbing need to tear someone’s throat out for hurting a person I care for.

However, even when I feel anger driving my own thoughts, I don’t usually want to act on that feeling. While revenge fantasies are definitely at the front of my brain at times like these, I think long and hard about my responses before taking action. Like my husband, Terry, I agree that acting in anger diminishes me and often only closes doors that I might want open in the future. The need for retribution only springs from those baser emotions, a foul harvest, indeed. A rabbit hole down which I don't want to travel.

I used to teach my students that the only thing in the world you can really control is your own reaction to things, to others, to words. It’s never easy to take the high road when others so obviously wrong you. It does, however, usually pay off in ways we can only dimly see as we gaze down the road. At the very least it keeps my blood pressure from causing physical havoc, and forces me to count the many blessings of the life I do have—all of which, both people and a few things, have been carefully gathered over decades of careful living. And as for those whose acts have caused, and will continue to cause such pain and anxiety—there’s a part of me that knows the idea of karma is rooted in millennia of experience. What goes around will very likely come around for them. And if it doesn’t, they are too small in spirit to waste time worrying about.

Those of us injured by them will have long since moved on. “Way will open,” as my Quaker friends used to say.

Labadee, Haiti...#2 The Girl

Her face haunts me.

I met this girl at Paradise Cove in Haiti and though she tried to tell me her name three times, her Creole accent and soft voice made it unintelligible to my American ears. I call her Atabei, for the Taino creator, the original mother in the ancient culture of the Caribbean. It seems fitting as the power of her gaze fills me every time I look at the one good picture I got of her.

Atabei spoke enough English to tell me that she was seven and her brother was 14. She was simply hanging around on the beach where we visited, accompanying her father, who sold sea shells to the visiting tourists. I asked, but couldn't get a clear answer from him where the shells came from, but I gathered he bought them from someone else to sell. Most likely a merchant who paid divers in other areas for the shells. I think Atabei's father and his family decorated many of the shells with the word “Haiti” themselves.

Of course I bought one without the man-made décor. This family seemed to include another young adult (uncle perhaps) who sold metal art a few feet up the hill from the shell merchant.

Neither man knew enough English, it seemed, for conversation beyond the practiced phrases to sell their wares to the tourists, which I assumed they did with the encouragement of the American owner of the cove, since it was private property. Perhaps mom was one of the women up in the simulated village, demonstrating how to roast coffee or make peanut butter from scratch (don't forget to add a tiny dash of hot pepper at the end). I didn't ask.

There were lots of questions I didn't ask of these people, especially of Atabei, who fascinated me. I didn't even take as many photos as I'd have liked—feeling unusually shy about imposing on their lives. I did ask for her permission to take her picture, but I kept feeling like the things I wondered about might be rude to ask. It was a weekday; didn't she go to school? Did she and her brother take off to help her father whenever there were ships in port (maybe one or two days a week) to help make the scene more picturesque, and sell more shells and metal? Was school simply unaffordable for them? Where was her mom? What did she want to be when she grew up? Did she even think of such choices? What did she like to do? If I'd known Creole or she'd known more English, if I'd have been braver about intruding, I'd have asked lots of questions.

Her face seemed so solumn in repose. I don't think I saw but a hint of a smile once, and then it was gone. Her brother too, didn't smile, though the father did a bit, as he encouraged me to buy something and gathered eveyone for a group picture. But they didn't smile in the pictures, I noticed later when I looked more closely. Bad teeth? Unfamiliar custom? Nerves?

There was a quiet stillness about this child that I found unnerving. She seemed able to remain quiet and unmoving, relaxed yet alert, in a way that belied her young age. The contrast to what an American 7 year old would be doing was astounding. Is sitting around and doing basically nothing the norm for her in her world?

There's so much I didn't know, and didn't ask. Where was their house...back in the village of Labadee? What was it made of, how many rooms? What was Atabei's favorite food?

I think her face has stuck with me for many reasons, but the primary one is the huge gap between our cultures which had me tongue-tied with a child—a totally new experience.

I'm usually the one who can talk to children, from toddlers to teens, from any background, who can always find the right question to ask to get them talking about themselves and their world.

Here, in this poverty and sun drenched cove, I didn't know where to begin.

Labadee, Haiti...#1

There are hardly any roads in Labadee, Haiti. The once tiny village of 600 is now grown to about 6000 due to the Royal Caribbean Cruise lines development of the penninsula as a private resort destination for their ships. (The newly constructed dock helped ferry supplies into the country in the immediate aftermath of the recent earthquake. Now it hosts luxurious vessels.) Labadee sits nestled by the edge of the sea separated by tall volcanic peaks from Cap Haitien to the south. Along this northern coast, most stay where they are or travel by boats, usually well-worn dinghies patched and rowed by net wielding fishermen. We were lucky enough to escape the RCI penninsula for the morning on the Haitian Cultural Tour excursion.

We boarded a water taxi with about 30 others. The owner of the tour, an American ex-pat, and two Haitian young men took us to Paradise Cove.

Roberto summarized Haiti's long and difficult history while we remarked on the beautiful, mostly untouched coastline and the huge mountains which rose so steeply from the water's edge.

Paradise Cove, when we arrived, was one of the most unspoiled beaches I'd ever seen, and we waded ashore through soft white sand and protected, gentle tropical waters. The palm-spotted beach was backed by steep mountains with only one house and a boathouse nearby, built into the hillside. Once ashore, the group was divided into two smaller groups each taking turns on the climb up the zig zagging hillside path to the village, while the remainder enjoyed relaxing on the beach, or on lounges floating in the calm turquoise water.

I've read some online critiques of this “village” tour because the village was created specifically for the purpose of educating and entertaining tourists.

My own response was, “So are Plimoth Plantation and Sturbridge village” in my home state of Massachusetts. Locals employed to re-inact what life was like in the sixteen and eighteen hundreds. I see no real difference. The Haitians employed by this tour are locals hired to demonstrate how things are done in the villages inland—which we'd never have any chance to see, otherwise. It's not perfect, but it helped me begin to understand a bit.

And it pumps money into the local economy. Those who were hired as guides had excellent English while the “villagers” had much less, but the craftsmen had the opportunity to sell work and the musicians and guides got additional tips. The tour owner is the second largest employer in the area with about 25 locals at work here.

I came away from this tour with some new perspective. In particular I was fascinated by how many activities in the village require an extended charcoal fire...it's so easy for us to criticize from afar those who cut and burn the rainforest for the trees. If you are stuck without the ability to buy charcoal or wood, you make your own from whatever you can find. The Haitian villagers, we were led to believe, are basically “living off the land” around them. It may not be “sustainable” but it sustains the family then and there. It's very arrogant to make moral judgments on those who have so little, especially without offering an alternative.

The owner also commented at the changes he'd observed over the last three decades in Haiti and in the Dominican Republic. He said that the decision in the 80's by the Dominican government to invest in infrastructure—roads, airports, etc.--had made all the difference. Infrastructure brought investment and construction all along the coastline and now there is a thriving tourist industry with resorts, condos, cruises, and the businesses that supply them. In his words, he's even noticed the existence of an emerging middle class in DR who can now consume goods and keep the economy going. In Haiti, by contrast, any attempt to develop has only landed money into corrupt government pockets over the last 30+ years, discouraging potential building. How sad. Clearly the country has equally spectacular scenery and shoreline, ripe for some thoughtful development, if only there was a stable and honest government to deal with.

Overall, Paradise Cove was a little piece of heaven and a place I'd go back to in a flash.

Beautiful, restful, and educational. I'm sure it's only an approximation of the reality of the interior of Haiti—kind of like Plato's cave shadows. But it's far more than those who stayed on the RCI Labadee private peninsula got to see. They could have been on any well kept beach in the Caribbean; no reminders anywhere that they were actually in Haiti.

Samana, Dominican Republic

Samana, is both the name of a town and the name for the entire peninsula on the northeastern shore of the Dominican Republic. Far less developed than several other areas of DR, Samana is just now coming into its own. Separated from the rest of the Dominican Republic by Samana Bay, this area is rapidly evolving with new amenities for visitors constantly being developed. There's lots of undeveloped and preserved land nearby, with waterfall excursions and trips to Los Haitises National Preserve easily available. We chose a simpler excursion, avoiding the climb to the archeological cave sites due to Terry's problem knee.

Instead we spent a bit of time ashore shopping and talking to people we met, including shop owners and hawkers and the very persistent sidewalk salesmen. We got to ride in one of the "Dominican limousines", which are the typical Dominican scooter attached to a cart that seats 4-6 passengers.

We'd seen the ubiquitous scooters without carts previously on our honeymoon near Puerta Plata, often with three people perched precariously on them riding to work or around town. Terry believes they all need a tune up and was amazed at the amount of oil spewing from their tailpipes. We watched dancers performing for the the tourists and then boarded our catamaran to sail across a portion of the bay to Cayo Levantado, a renown beach. About 25 of us boarded with all the young folks sitting up front on the net to catch the splash--they weren't disappointed with the winds we had as we raced, tacking back and forth across the bay.

We stopped on a fairly deserted strand of trees and beach to try some of the local fruit and have a rum drink. Then it was back aboard, sailing to a snorkel spot where the crew loaned gear to those of us who wanted to see if we could spot turtles or other wildlife.

It wasn't nearly as good a snorkel location as we'd visited the day before in Trunk Bay St. John, but interesting to try to snorkel in such choppy water. I lasted longer than Terry did, but mostly learned how hard it is to put on and remove gear when the boat is rocking in the sea. The sailboat was delightful and the crew as friendly as we've come to expect. The Dominican people may bemoan the tourists privately (as we all do here on the Cape) but publicly they couldn't be more delighted to interact with us. Even the myriad brown pelicans around the island as we approached didn't seem to mind our company.

Last stop was at Cayo Levantado, but we had little time to wander or relax on the island due to the mix up with the tenders. We were dropped there late and together with others were worried that we'd never make it back to the ship, waiting for tenders that didn't show. I did manage to take a brief walk for some pictures.

We were eventually rescued by Benny Weidacher, the hotel director, who just happened to be relaxing on the island on his time off. He proved to be a charming, delightful man who helped explain what had happened. Unfortunately the unexpected strong winds in the bay and the equally unexpected appearance of two other cruise vessels in the harbor put a strain on the tender service and caused problems and delays. We all survived and I would love to return for a longer stay. Samana has much I would love to explore when Terry's more able to do so...horseback riding to the waterfall, climbing to the Taino carvings in the park and more.

Cruising....#2 Reflections on San Juan

Our first port of call was a late afternoon (far too brief) stop in old San Juan. Terry and I hiked up to El Moro through the narrow, steep, cobblestone streets, during an extremely hot afternoon. We viewed the signs of franchise civilization as an affront, though the residents proudly brag about their "Starbucks" and "Wendy's" as if they convey some kind of impressive status. We were far more impressed by the varied colors of stucco walls and the amazing mosaic tiled into stair risers hiding behind intricate wrought iron gates. Everything seemed tilted, so we gave up trying to take pictures that would look straight.

Turning a corner, we came upon a fountain jammed by kids, similar to the one I saw on the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston last summer. Kids and pulsating water--can there be a more joyful sight?

One lone policeman stood off to the side smiling as he agreed to have his picture taken by a young woman (his girlfriend?). I saw one father grab up his son, about 10 years old and run splashing with him into the water...it was a perfect Sunday outing for local families.

Just beyond the fountain we came to the huge und

ulating grassy field that leads to the fort. My immediate reaction to the sight was that every family in San Juan who wasn't playing in the fountain was flying a kite in the skies over El Moro.

The winds were brisk and there were more kites than could be counted, flown aloft by people of all ages--from children thrilled with their independence to young couples, dancing their individual kites flirtatiously with each other, 100 plus feet overhead. Triangles of every color and many sizes with long trailing tails bobbed and jigged on high. Families sat together enjoying the breeze and the view and whatever picnic they'd brought along. I briefly pondered the inability to actually do justice to the scene with my camera and Terry commented that if it was back in the states, there'd be lots of complicated styles of kites and you'd be able to tell who had more money by the elaborateness of their kite. Here they were all pretty simple and I couldn't tell the professionals from the laborers. Apparently this spot is a favorite for a day like this and we just happened to catch it alive with families.

Our last stop was for something to eat. We decided to try a small eatery based on their A-frame sidewalk sign, and the nice young man hawking for them. When we agreed to go in, he carefully led us through the dress shop and the men's shirts behind, to a four table restaurant in the rear, where he also seated us and took our order. The kitchen was up a few stairs to the side and I think his sister was the one waitress who brought our food. I got a chance to try Mofongo, which Terry's graduate student Christian had recommended as a local speciality. It was really interesting and quite good. Mofongo is mashed plaintains cooked with bacon bits and formed into a mound on a plate. You dip forkfulls into a bit of olive oil as you eat. It's probably not the heathiest thing, but very tasty. I also had a chicken Quesadilla and got so much food I couldn't finish.

Our leisurely walk back to the cruise ship was late enough on Sunday evening that most shops had closed, so we weren't tempted to buy anthing...only street vendors were available. I just wished we'd had longer to explore. Maybe someday I'll go back and I'll have a chance to get out of the city and visit the rain forest. Perhaps.

Cruising....#1

Cruising is such an odd way to travel. The elaborate design of the cruise ship creates a world within which we are encapsulated in luxury and comfort. Three tier dining rooms, and ice rink with a show (!), a room steward neatening up after us three times a day, entertainment and activities to suit every taste. A total disconnect is created with our real world selves (much needed by some) but unfortunately also from most of the hordes of people around us. Cruise lines have gone for bigger and bigger ships, so they’ve become a city afloat, and like a city, individuals become anonymous faces

in the crowd. I suspect it would be a wonderful way to travel with a group of family or friends, but as a couple, it’s actually hard to find others to interact with beyond the random dinner partners assigned to our table. For that reason I requested a large table hoping to meet a bunch of other people,only to have a mix up at last minute that sat us at a table for 6 with only two others in residence. An elderly mother with COPD and her adult son. They were lovely to talk to, but not what we’d hoped for in sharing our interests or wanting to join us for activities. Those we did meet on excursions seemed to be either younger folks headed to more active sites in a group of friends, or older travelers who complained when their every need wasn’t instantly accommodated.

I enjoyed the relaxation, the visits to ports, the time to read in a lounge chair undisturbed, and the time spent with Terry in conversations we never have time to share at home, but parts of this trip made me nostalgic for camping and for bed and breakfast inns where everyone talks to everyone else….a very different type of travel indeed. I returned rested and relaxed, but wishing I’d had more time in some places and more people who’d left an impression. More on those who did....in another entry.

Moral Compass Questions

Just thinking....

How is it that we develop the moral code that lies at the core of who we are? I look around and am continually amazed at much of the world that does not function with the kind of inner compass I feel so essential to my life. I wonder how I developed the certainty I have about right and wrong and justice. It's been a long time since I was a philosophy minor in college and thinking about such issues, but they continue to fascinate me even more with the enhanced vision of age. I look back on decisions made and obstacles overcome and wonder how I managed to figure out that doing the right thing brought its own inner reward. And I confess to being baffled by evil—especially those who, though greed, guile and inaction, cause such harm to others and truly feel no remorse, no twinges of conscience. No sense of responsibility. How can humans be so different from one another?

The Waking (Theodore Roetke)

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I do learn by going where I have to go. All my life, I've felt like I was simply putting one foot in front of the other, making logical choices. In reality I don't think it's that simple. I'm by nature a planner. I spent my earliest years always focused on my future and making decisions aimed at goals I could barely discern. As an adult, I found myself in a difficult transition, slowly learning to focus on the present and to enjoy the moments I was actually living, as I was living them. The path ahead was important but how one moved through the present mattered too. Many times the steps involved a careful tap, tap, tapping of a toe to be sure the ground underneath was stable enough to stand on. Other times, it felt like one step backward for every two steps forward and excruciatingly slow progress.

Sometimes I've been stuck at an obvious crossroads trying to decide which way to turn, how to move forward in a positive, healthy way. With multiple disabled family members and the attendant emotional upheaval that accompanied key turning points, I spent lots of sleepless nights reflecting before acting. I guess I thought everyone did this. During those times, my personal mantra has always been to make decisions in such a way as to be able some time in the future look back without regrets, knowing I did everything I could have done.... to advocate for, to nurture, to stabilize, and to mend those in my care.

I guess what baffles me sometimes is the reaction, when I tell others my story. They act as if what I've done is unusual, somehow laudatory, while to me it just seems what any normal person would do. Why does doing the right thing, caring for others, doing your best, seem so unusual to them? Is my moral compass set to a different “north?” How does that happen? I know I am my parents' child, and that I absorbed my sense of justice and notions of integrity from growing up in their household. But I wonder, for those who reason differently, what did they see and hear that made them so?

What do you think?

Spring in Name Only, Except for the Birds

This is an odd time of year here on the Cape. March and April are spring in name only—mostly. Though our fall weather delights us with its long gradual slump into the cold, the days filled with warmth and color long after the rest of New England has bare tree limbs, the reverse happens in the spring. The trees and ground stay brown and bare for a very long time and though the days lengthen dramatically, it still feels like February lasts forever. Just this week we've had bits of snow, sleet, gale force winds and (surprise!) one day inching into the 50's to tease us. Only the increasing birdsong in the mornings and the fluttering of unusual species overhead as dusk falls remind us that spring is really here. The birds passing through and those arriving from warmer climes for the season, don't seem to care that it's still cold out. They have nests to build, meals to gather, and mates to attract.The birds are everywhere it seems. Two days ago, a huge flock of geese honked loudly on their evening commute over my yard from the golf course greens to Shubael's Pond. Coming into work today smaller dark birds were flying from tree to tree above my head, leaving me once again sorry that I could not identify them by their songs. There were, I think, at least three varieties singing.The two swans who wintered on the Mill Pond have been joined by at least three other couples, although they spend at least half their day with their heads under water eating the weeds that now must be growing again.

I was startled at Dowses Beach parking lot Wednesday by dramatically marked black and white ducks who were cavorting in the waves of the cut as if they were totally oblivious to the rain and cold wind that blew. They probably were. My problem was that the bird book was at home so I couldn't be sure if I was seeing eiders or mergansers (white back and black sides or black back and white sides) ....all I knew was they were so different from the usual mallards seen all year. Today on the other side of the beach I took a picture of a red-breasted merganser and his spouse, but I don't think it's the same bird I saw previously. Probably a cousin. In the parking lot, two herring gulls chomped on the innards of the shell creatures they'd dropped from on high, totally uncaring of any human observation. They rule, and they know it, but with no potato chips to steal, they're rediscovering their natural seafood diet....grab, drop, smash, devour. A timeless routine.The finches are returning to the feeders and one friend has already spotted her first osprey, down in the New Seabury area. Ospreys are a favorite graceful predator; we often can only see them through the web cams at the Natural History Museum or Barnstable High School. The platforms are built in several other locations, but it's harder to catch them in flight. I still vividly remember a chance encounter years ago watching one seemingly huge osprey swooping over the estuary, hunting, and returning with the fish in its claws. Like watching royalty in Mother Nature's realm.

Each season has its charms, if one takes the time to look. My recurring challenge is to make the time, take a step away from the everyday responsibilities, and really look around. And listen too. The new camera helps remind me that there is art everywhere and I need to find it to feed my soul. Today's venture out to South Cape Beach State Park yielded a huge

flock of swans in the marsh, huddling out the the wind, while male and female mallards hunted vegetation in a pool created by the high tide. Tiny birds chirped as we walked, and sometimes emerged from the tall grasses to dip in the air currents swishing around. It was midday so the most interesting visitors were not in sight. Maybe tomorrow a flock of swans in the marsh, huddling out the the wind, while male and female mallards hunted vegetation in a pool created by the high tide. Tiny birds chirped as we walked, and sometimes emerged from the tall grasses to dip in the air currents swishing around. It was midday so the most interesting visitors were not in sight. Maybe tomorrow.

Final Journey is Not the Whole Story

My Aunt Adele died on October 27, 2010. It seems like a very long time ago, although it's only been four months. I'm still finding myself dealing with the final remnants of paperwork for her; I sent in the final taxes for the year to the IRS and Massachusetts just last week. I was reminded that though caring for her was such a big part of my life for the last 4 years, I'd never written anything about it up on the blog. In fact I haven't written much lately at all....too busy living my life and taking

care of the people in it.

Adele was always my favorite of the relatives who came to visit us in West Orange. My

mother's younger sister, she was the dashing relative who lived most of her life when I was young, as a single, independent woman with a professional career as a nurse. For a while I remember she drove a yellow Austin Healy Sprite, a convertible sports car which made her the “cool” one and she often took vacations with a woman friend to exotic locales. I envied her and looked up to her. To my young eyes, her life seemed so much more exciting than my “poor” mother who was stuck at home taking care of us. Eventually Adele supervised an entire pediatric ward in Orange Memorial Hospital.

When I was in college, she married a longtime family friend, Gene Barraro, and moved into an antique house in Connecticut. Years later, in 1997, Uncle Gene and Aunt Adele moved to Cape Cod to be near me, bringing the latest in a long line of daschunds, Oliver and Sarah, with them. We saw each other frequently, and as Gene started to fade (he was 15 years her senior) Adele and I commiserated about both being well spouses (I was still married to Mark at the time) and the problems associated with that role. I divorced in 2000 and less than a year later Uncle Gene passed away in Florida.

I have told many folks that I am not sure when her dementia/Alzheimer's began, but I know she was fine in 2001. At the time she handled everything related to Gene's death by herself—paperwork, banking, taxes everything. We spent lots of time together during the 6 months each year she was on the Cape, and she helped meet delivery men at my new house and took Janai and friends for sleepovers from time to time. She also gave me her unvarnished opinions on the guys I dated, when I was serious enough to let her meet them. Upon meeting Terry, she opined that he was a “keeper” and I shouldn't let him get away!

The dementia came on slowly, creeping like a thief, stealing her ability to make judgments first and then her ability to reason all together. She hid the early stages from me quite completely. Gradually, over time, her outspokenness became truly inappropriate comments, and stubborn refusal to change any long held habits. I found myself handling more and more of her affairs, supervising whatever she'd allow. But a legal adult is hard to control. Her last trip to Florida should never have happened; when she went missing in her car down there, I found myself dealing with friends and the local sheriffs and the credit card handlers in Pakistan to track her down. All from 1000 miles away. She was found 250 miles north trying to enter an air force base. We safely got her home, hid the car, and I flew to retrieve her from Florida.

After that it was a precipitous downward spiral. I kept her in her little house in Centerville with services brought to her there for about a year, through the death of one dog and eventually the other. When she started wandering at night, despite staffing all day, all week, we moved her to assisted living, in a locked memory care unit where she was safe. I worried frantically about orchestrating the move, but within two days she'd forgotten she'd ever lived anywhere else. Within six months, her brain started to shut off circuits to muscles, forcing her to a walker and then quickly to a wheelchair. The incapacity and incontinence went from bad to worse and the move last May to the nursing home proper went quickly. She still recognized me, but over the summer she lost my name. I could tell the face was still familiar, but by early September, she had no idea who I was. She was quiet, unable to put words together, but still smiling when I showed her pictures of family members or my dogs. I'd bring a cupcake or decorated cookie, but the visits became so incredibly painful, that I'll admit I started going less frequently—stretching it out to sometimes 10 days at a time.

Two weeks before she died the staff and I reviewed the plans for her and our decision to do nothing if she became ill except provide comfort care, nothing to prolong her life in this condition. The docs agreed and when the final cold/pneumonia set in, it didn't take long. I visited her twice in the few days right before she died and sat silently crying at her bedside as the breath rattled in her chest. I don't generally pray, since I don't really believe in a sentient being hearing prayers and responding. Those days, though, I prayed/wished just for her to go home to Uncle Gene and her beloved dogs, wherever they might be. When the phone call came in the middle of the next night, I felt only relief.

Within days, my relief took concrete form—I was released to remember who Adele really was. The agonized form in the bed blurred quickly in my memory and my mind filled with pictures of

her smiling, toothy grin, and bright mischievous eyes. I had previously, when we moved her, stashed bags of her accumulated pictures in an upstairs closet. I took them out now and began to go through them—finding not only pictures I recognized, but some of her as a young girl with my mother, their brother, Arthur and some

with my grandparents as well. Some of these I'd never seen before. Pictures of her as a young graduate and another with her white cap and uniform smiled out at me as well.

I don't regret any of the caregiving, any more than I regret anything else in my life. I did the right thing, the best I could do at the time. As with all of the other illnesses and disabilities in my personal circle, I quickly became the family expert on Alzheimer's and dementia. I learned about the state of scientific knowledge (or lack thereof) and what medications do what. In the early days, I learned how to orchestrate services—like finding an online service where I could program a phone call reminder to Adele in my own voice to get her to remember her nightly meds, or a tracker I could place in her car with alerts if she went out of range, and a way to find the vehicle if she got lost. Later on I got skilled at listening to my instincts when it came to both choosing caregivers and making legal and financial decisions on her behalf.

It was never easy, often exhausting, but she was family—it's what we all hope family will do for us if it becomes necessary. And because we'd had discussions, I never hesitated at the end; I knew exactly what she wanted. That was a blessing.... Adele, Gene and the dogs rest comfortable now in my memory—happily together, where they belong.