The Ides of March Sunday, March 13, 2016

As a young bride, the 15th of March and the days leading up to it were always a source of stress. I give birth to my firstborn son on March 15 for whom I was and am still grateful and delighted that he was perfect in every way. My husband was relieved; he wanted a son so badly and we had no way of knowing beforehand 57 years ago.

My father, although pleased to have a grandson and happy that I had come through the experience well and happy, was kind of wistful as he said that I had achieved a goal that eluded him. I was the first of his three daughters.He, too, always wished for a son.

But it was not birthday celebrations that made me anxious then and now. It was my discomfort at hav ing to get my financial life in order to present my bookkeeping first to my husband and then to the accountant. March 15th used to be income tax day until it was moved to April 15.

Now I set March 15 still as the day I have to get the tax prep done.

I confess publicly here and now that I procrastinate endlessly. Even writing this blog at 10:25 in the morning is stalling. I should be at the kitchen table organizing the piles of papers set up there. They have been waiting for me all week!

When I sum up the year's expenditures, it feels like a report card to me. I weigh how much I have spent  on editing and publishing my newest book and how little revenue has come in. I see what the ratio is of what I see now as self-indulgent expenses to the charitable donations I made.during the year. I could have done more, perhaps.

And this is the last year that my husband's name will come first on the tax forms. I review the expenses for his funeral and for the family to gather in New Jersey to accompany him to his final resting place.

Before the High Holidays each year, I judge myself and my accomplishments during the year. Then I am more lenient with myself and I feel rewarded by the time I spend with my family, my wonderful friends and with the folks at the various groups I lead during the year. I am delighted with the positive reception my book has had, with family and with strangers to the Holcaust experience.I am pleased that I attend lectures and concerts and support the artistic community as well as the synagogue community, not judging myself by monetary standards as I do before the Ides of March. 

Each year I think "Next year I will take no deductions, file the short form and leave all of these papers in the lateral file."

Missing Person Alert February 28, 2016

I read today an announcement and a call for help in the West Side Rag, an online news source for the Upper West Side of Manhattan where I will spend the summer once again this year.

When my husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease I worried daily that this article would someday be about him. "Police Put Out Alert for Missing UWS Man" In the beginning of his illness, I would leave him alone in our apartment and go to see my patients in my office a few blocks away. The door staff in our building kept an eye on him, but they could not restrain him or tell him to stay home. They talked with him and even asked what he was up to, where he was headed as he left the building. They worried, too, that he would become disoriented and not find his way home. He had a cell phone with a GPS but it had to be turned on in order to be effective and it was not yet sophisticated enough to pinpoint a specific place where a person with a memory disorder would be. 

My husband was a thrifty man, raised during the Depression and the Second World War. He turned the phone off when he was not calling someone. When he forgot to turn the phone off, he did not recognize the sound when it rang, nor did he recognize the vibration of the phone in his pocket or attached to his belt. Besides, he was often watching Con Ed workmen dig holes in the street which make lots of noise!

After two years of worrying, no one in the building disagreed with my decision to move to a gated single story house in a newly developing community in sunny Arizona. We purchased a plot of land in the center of the new community, away from main roads or highways where my husband could be involved in watching the construction of the other homes, which he loved, build a workbench (with my son's help) and outfit his garage workshop and work in his garden.

For another two years, this plan was effective. When my husband began to leave the house by himself, I installed a security system which alerted me when any of the external doors were opened. Just like a parent has to be alert when the children are quiet, which is counter intuitive because we like to get some work done when it is quiet, a caregiver to an Alzheimer person has to be concerned when it is quiet as well. Where is he and what is he doing that could cause him harm?

Caring for my husband had its rewards and its challenges, but luckily, he didn't go missing during the years of his illness. We are missing him now.

Facts of Life After Being a Caregiver February 10, 2016

When my friends can't reach me when they phone, they leave a message which goes like this:"I guess you're running around somewhere."

If I don't answer a text immediately, I get comments like "This IS 2016, you know."

Both responses are critical of me. I am expected to answer my phone and to answer a text message, no matter where I am or what I am doing.I am supposed to read my email messages often during the day. WHY?

Don't folks realize that I am reacting to so many years in which I HAD to be constantly aware of the telephone when I was away from home, lest the memory care center where my husband who had Alzheimer's disease was residing, needed me to contact them? I finally am free of the obligation to be close to my phone.

I guess that I always was so responsive to the needs of others, it is now expected of me. But what is the excuse of folks who are only meeting me now?

Younger people especially want to reschedule meeting times and wish to text or phone me to extend the time, instead of being where we were to meet at the designated hour. Usually I am on my way or at the destination already. Don't they realize that my time is worthwhile also?

There is also the issue about location. If I am in the city, I walk and carry my phone in a pocket or a fanny pack. I know how old-fashioned that word is-- and that piece of equipment. In Arizona folks use these packs when we hike or otherwise are pocketless. Since we drive everywhere, our cars hold our possessions, including our purses in the trunk and many of our clothing items have no pockets. 

I am also well trained to be on time. Folks today think nothing of being on time and think that phoning or texting they will be late is perfectly fine. We try to fit so much into a day we don't leave enough time to get where we are going.

And then there are my age cohorts who don't turn their phones on , not wanting to use up their batteries. They see cell phones as for their own emergency use only. Some don't use cell phones at all, preferring their privacy. I guess I am old-fashioned in my expectations and I do not  yet wish to be tied to my smartphone.

New thinking- Do we always need goals? January 20, 2016

A year from today we will inaugurate the 46th President of the United States. To me that is still an awesome event, but perhaps not to some.

New thinking sometimes leaves me nostalgic for the old.

Take the article from the Sunday NYTimes Magazine for example. It tells us we need cold, hard rationality to set our minds thinking clearly. Out with beliefs we cannot substantiate, out with expecting a problem to go away if we don't pay attention to it. Is this new to younger people?

January is the month we seek to renew our energy toward self-improvement. Okay, let's notice some of our behaviors and assumptions and begin to question them. Can we find the root causes of what we believe and of what we do? Can we use what we learn to make changes in our lives?

Can't we just do what we want to do?

Can't we just complain about everything we don't like, blame others for it and just go about our business as if we are the most important people and we know all the answers even if those ideas haven't worked for us before?                                                                      

Happy New Year January3, 2016

New Year Resolutions

Appreciate Good Health

Work toward Achieving or Maintaining Good Health

Enjoy My Surroundings

Get Pleasure from Everyday Things

Slow Down at least for a while.

Increase Compassion for those whose lives are limited by pain.

I am so delighted to be well after a month spent recuperating from pneumonia. I just this minute completed a three mile walk in under an hour for the first time since I returned from New York in December. I had "practiced" by walking in the mall for the past few days when the gym was closed due to the holidays. And I had taken yoga classes for the two weeks prior, but every day I had to return home to rest for the remainder of the day!

Recuperating from pneumonia meant initially doing absolutely nothing. I had no energy for reading and I fell asleep while the television was on. I turned it off and listened to music on the radio. Finally I was able to read and I read mystery novels- four of them by Peter Lovesey, interspersed with snippets from a book titled Maimonides and the Book that Changed Judaism by Micah Goodman.

I next began to cook and bake because I could rest while the food was cooking; I had no patience to wait in a restaurant or to dress in anything other than gym clothes.

Finally I was able to share the fruits of my labors  with my family and friends who had been so patient and helpful to me, baking, bringing me food, driving me where I needed to go and inviting me to their homes.

If you are lucky as I have been, to be healthy and full of energy, perhaps you will understand how devastated I was to be sick for a month. Perhaps you will understand how blessed it is to feel well and join me in having increased understanding and compassion for those whom we know who are limited in what they can do everyday by pain and a lack of energy.

Blessing or Obligation December 23, 2015

How easy it is to complain about the holidays. How much time and effort it takes to find and purchase "just the right" gift that our relative might not appreciate fully. How much money it costs to make the family dinner or to travel to our relatives' home where the food is what it always was, but our tastes and nutritional needs have shifted. How much we really don't enjoy the company of the relatives or perhaps of their friends who are invited this year. On and on we go, finding fault with our families and with ourselves for "doing it their way" instead of sticking up for our own needs and wants.

What's so special about getting together with folks we seldom see except at holiday time, weddings or funerals?

Why not make holiday time about us, about our friends, with the foods we want to eat and the people we want to socialize among?

Why should we do something if it doesn't make us happy in the moment?

What is it about the holidays that leaves many of us feeling empty, like we're "not good at family" relationships. What is it that makes us judge the relatives who don't show up?

Maybe we feel that since we make the effort, after a lot of quiet complaining, everyone else should too. It's only fair, right? How do we feel if we don't participate? What is left to feel special about?

What holds the holidays in place? If everyone feels as the complainers do, why are so any people crowding the airports and highways to get to these mediocre overstuffed dinners with relatives we see so seldom?

There is no right answer, no one way to handle these stressful times. We remember when we were children, we idealize the past where we can, we whitewash the sad or angry moments, the disappointments. We make jokes of the minor calamities, but we hold on to the relationships we have because in a heartbeat or a series of years, they will all be taken from us. We need to carry on the traditions of our families, to keep the connections, to provide fun times and good memories for the children because we were there once and our children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews will be in our position sooner than we think. We need each other, even those who see or speak with each other only a few times each year.

Call if you can't visit with family and find people to share the holiday spirit, open up your heart and let the good shine in.

Responses to Loss December 9, 2015

I lost my husband to the scourge of Alzheimer's disease on July first of this year. I felt not only the terrible loss of my life partner, but the huge loss of the resonsibility of caring for him during the length of his illness.

I wondered for a time how I would fill the hole left in my life by his loss and by the removal of that daily, hourly responsibility. I reveled for a while in the freedom I now had, to choose how to spend my time, where and with whom. Thre were so many relationships that had been put on hold, so many lectures, books, performances. I threw myself into a kaleidoscope of activities.

From July until the beginning of December. And then I caught pneumonia. Even though I was at the gym every morning, took three yoga classes and three execise classes each week plus a dance class and a Zumba class. I worked on my posture with an Alexander Technique person and a Feldenkreis instructor. I hosted two dinner parties and a tea.I ate well, walked miles every day, I felt energized and healthy.

So where's the connection? Coincidence? I can see coincidence if I developed a cold. Or even the flu from being in the confined air of an airplane cabin. But this is more than that. I'll tell you the clues.

One: I cleaned out my husband's "stuff" that was special only to him from his New York hobby room. I gave away his clothing, except for two sweatshirt jackets I couldn't part with, not that I would wear them. Two: I have yet to clean out his special "office" in our Arizona home. I just can't get myself to do it, although I did find his Army dogtags that his son asked me for.

Three:  The health insurance company sent me a new identification card. I went for an xray on Monday and I was obliged to fill in the forms. For the first time I circled "widowed." And in "relationship to subscriber" I entered "self " instead of "spouse". Twinges of pain I have been running away from for the past five months entered my system not directly at my heart but just behind it, in my left lung.