Getting to Your Happy Place: How Long Does It Take?
This stretch of months, this time, this moment right now is the happiest I’ve ever been. It’s taken five years to get here. I’ve crossed, separately, and together with Sam, some dark canyons since 2013. We left D.C. five years ago with the intention of reinventing ourselves. Yes, for a final act. When you start […]
First Dispatch From My “Book Tour”
Sorry for the radio silence since publication day on Feb. 6, 2018 of At Peace: Choosing a Good Death After a Long Life. I’ve been on my “book tour” (please note the small letters and quotation marks). This was not a Book Tour with red carpets, black limos, personal assistants, and the exchange of pleasantries […]
Write an Amazon review of Sam’s book: At Peace: Choosing a Good Death After a Long Life!
* Add your review to Sam’s Amazon book page! – Debbie * Sometimes you have to go for it, as my youngest grandchild is doing with his first birthday cake. His oldest sister verbalized her baby brother’s thoughts as he reached for the remaining cake: “Hmm… this looks promising.” Today is pub date for my book, […]
Sam’s book on end-of-life decision-making to be published Feb. 6, 2018!
{Update from Debbie} It’s almost here! You’ve still got time to pre-order Sam’s book, At Peace: Choosing a Good Death After a Long Life, before it’s published on Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018. Pre-ordering pushes up his Amazon rankings and is hugely helpful in promoting his book. And if you’re reading this after that date, you […]
Dissonance: from middle-of-the-night emergency to an impersonal system
When I was a practicing physician, there was nothing more meaningful or rewarding than a middle-of-the-night emergency endoscopy, usually completed successfully (although occasionally not), when a patient’s esophagus was cleared of obstructing food or a bleeding ulcer was clipped and cauterized. The tension of the scene would dissipate with the team’s collective sigh of relief […]
How Sam’s book fits into the end-of-life discussion
As I wait for the publication date (Feb. 6, 2018) to arrive, my mind is playing tricks on me. I wake up at night, asking myself if I have made one of several central points in my book. In the morning, I remember I have. Other books on end-of-life issues are popping up or recently […]
You can pre-order Sam’s book!
Greetings, loyal readers. It is time that I stop procrastinating and start with the most ambitious makeover of the Gap Year After 60 era. It is time that I become a self-promoter. At Peace: Choosing a Good Death After a Long Life is in production with my publisher, Hachette / Grand Central Life & Style. […]
Amazing and Wondrous: Four-Generation Total Eclipse
Thanks to my 86-year-old father’s planning, two dozen members and four generations of my immediate family flew from Maine to steamy Athens, Tennessee for the day to see the Aug. 21, 2017 Total Solar Eclipse. It was the first since 1918 to cross the entire U.S. Given our ages, and the logistics required to get to the path […]
Considering Your Options When Lethal Injection Is Not Available
Lethal injection is not the only way to assert some control over how you die when you are old and suffering from a terminal illness. You might not know that if you read the recent piece by Catherine Porter in the New York Times: At His Own Wake, Celebrating Life and the Gift of Death. […]
Year Five: Words Have Power
Today is day eight of Year Five of this gap year experiment. If there’s a theme, it’s one of gradual acceptance of aging along with an increasing appreciation of the power of words. If there are surprises, perhaps it’s that Sam and I are still happily married after so much time in each other’s company – […]