I haven’t been blogging much this summer, due to a variety circumstances, which I explained in my most recent blog post, Giving myself grace. In that post, I danced around the specifics of my husband’s illness that has had him hospitalized since June 24. But I can reveal it now. On July 29, he had a heart transplant.
Tagged with: family, health, priorities
My father, Gene Adams, passed away on August 20. He was just a few weeks shy of his 92nd birthday. (I took the picture at left in January 2022. He was such a cheerful and adorable man!) Gene had moved into assisted living three months prior and his passing was swift and peaceful. I’m so grateful I was able to be with him when he died.
Tagged with: estate organizing, family, planning
I find the question of what’s important carries through to every aspect of my life. It’s become a touchstone of sorts for me.
Tagged with: family, priorities, self care, stress, task management, time management
I published this article in my newsletter this month and, based on the feedback I received, it struck a chord. It’s an important message, so I thought I’d share it here.
Last fall, my aunt asked me to be her Power of Attorney for finances and health.
Tagged with: estate organizing, family, planning
Three years ago, shortly after my mother passed away on June 17, 2015, I wrote a post about helpful it was that we had talked about what kind of arrangements she and my father would like after their deaths. The workbook we’d filled out was invaluable and since then my father and I have gone through it again to make sure it’s up to date. The issue is so important, I thought I’d share the post again today.
Tagged with: estate organizing, family, planning, worth repeating
I recently scheduled a one-week trip that had me in Portland, Oregon, for the wedding of dear friends, followed by five days in Walla Walla, Washington (a 4.5-hour drive from Portland) visiting my father.
Things didn’t go quite as planned. I had a marvelous time at the wedding and headed to Walla Walla on Sunday as scheduled. But I discovered on the way that my father had fallen in his condo, where he lives alone, and was unable to get up for 16 hours. That’s scary business for an 86-year-old. Fortunately, he was able to get up and get help and he was driven to the emergency room. I arrived at the ER about 30 minutes after he did.
Tagged with: family, flexibility, travel
My mother, Betty Sue Brown Adams, passed away on June 17. She’d been living with Parkinson’s Disease for years and the end of her life was swift and peaceful. My father, brothers, and I took great comfort in that.
Tagged with: estate organizing, family, planning
My brother, Larry, is coming to visit later this month. It’ll be the first time he’s ever visited me. He lives in Australia, and his visits to the U.S. are fairly few and far between and usually restricted to Washington state, where we grew up and where our parents live. (When he visits Walla Walla, I go there too.) But this year I persuaded him to come to St. Louis before going to visit our parents.
Tagged with: decluttering, family, guests
I’ve been thinking about mail a lot, because of the Make Peace with Your Mail contest, which ended last week. As I read the entries in order to determine the winners (whose entries you can read here), a theme emerged.
I’m going to write a blog post about the wonderful AAPO conference, but I’m tired today, so I’ll just share some photos. I’m still loving Australia!
My brother, Larry, his daughter, Miranda and I took a trip a couple hours up the coast to the Sunshine Coast where we paid a visit to Larry’s sister- and brother-in-law in Caloundra. We had such a lovely time.
I’m here to tell you that Qantas rocks. My flight across the ocean was really quite easy. It was an overnight flight that lasted 14 hours (we left LA at 10:30 p.m. Thursday and arrived in Sydney at 6:30 a.m. Saturday, crossing the international date line). The captain cheerfully told us that the duration of our flight was “just over half a day.”
I’m kind of nerdily excited because I’m writing (and will be posting) this blog post while on an airplane. In the air. My American Airlines flight to Los Angeles has WiFi. I wish I could say it was free, but they did give us a coupon for 25 percent off, so it’s only $6 to use WiFi for the duration of the flight.
I’ve been in the Pacific Northwest visiting my parents for the last week or so. I took along my computer, fully expecting to do a little blogging, but got caught up in the combination of family activities and not really thinking about work, so there’s been pretty much radio silence from me.
Tagged with: family, travel, walla walla
There was a fascinating article in the New York Times last week about how difficult it is for people to part with furniture (or art or other artifacts) that had belonged to relatives. Even if the furniture did not fit in their home, physically, or clashed with their other furnishings, the people interviewed for the article still hung on to it.