July 2025

Two years ago, I received diagnosis that I’m still grieving from and struggling to accept. After an endoscopy and colonoscopy to determine the cause of my anemia at age sixty, I was told I had celiac disease. Somehow after sixty years, my gene for celiac was activated, and now I had to make drastic, lifelong changes.

My husband and I took care of my mom for five years, when she had Alzheimer’s. She could get lost walking out the door, which is why I was always her shadow. But I felt lost too: whom was I dealing with, hour by hour, day by day, due to the changes in her Alzheimer’s-riddled brain. I felt lost and confused by our new puzzling reality.

One thing that helped me cope was humor. Sometimes my mother would say something funny, like when she wanted to tell someone that she had pounded the pavement after college, looking for an accounting job in New York City. But what she said was, “I walked the streets of New York City, if you know what I mean.” Yes, my mom might have been a sweet talker, but she wasn’t a street walker!

There were three of us in the same high school class who chose to study medicine. We passed our admission exams together, and celebrated the fact with a hearty meal and a generous libation of red wine, a once-in-a-lifetime event. We were already making plans for future specialties and career prospects.

Then one of the three collapsed suddenly at home and died of a previously undetected heart problem. That was in the twentieth year of our lives, the third of our studies. Our trio became a duet.

Sitting by myself on the balcony at the Asa Wright Nature Centre. Waiting for the dawn chorus. Hungry and waiting for breakfast. And wondering: Am I too familiar with Death?

We first came into each other’s circles in 2008, when Uncle Steve died.

For the next few years, we watched each other from afar.

But then, in 2011 when I started in the Intensive Care Unit, we moved into the same neighbourhood. I saw Death more and more, especially during holiday season.

As I dwell on the recent death of my oldest son, I can’t help but think of my father, who dealt with his share of losses.

At the age of 16, he lost the use of his (dominant) right arm during a polio epidemic. The response from one girl he asked out was “I don’t date cripples.” How’s that for a confidence-booster?

After graduating from college in 1927, he went to work as an accountant on Wall Street, just before the onset of the Great Depression. Talk about poor timing. But one of his proudest moments was that after working a few days around the clock, trying to balance the books, he kept his job through the Depression.

The three years from 2013 to 2016 were the worst of my life. I am still recovering.

In June of 2013, I had a mental health crisis, diagnosed as an acute psychotic event and eventually bipolar 1 disorder. The loss of my mental health was crushing. I was fifty-two years old and married with two amazing young adult children. I had a great career as a physical therapist and was seemingly thriving in a master’s program. After a manic weekend with little sleep, racing thoughts, compressed speech, grandiose plans and euphoria, I was hospitalized in the psych unit. After a week of acute care, I transitioned to a two-week partial hospital program. Unfortunately, two months later, I sank into the other “pole” and struggled with a clinical depression. With a lot of support, love and compassionate psychiatric care, I gradually resumed working and carried on.