Last night as we were headed home from a trip to Costco, I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a car hit a bicyclist. I witnessed the moment of impact and saw the boy’s body fly through the air and land on the sidewalk. I quickly flipped the car around as Alex frantically dialed 911.

The boy’s name is Raul, and he’s 17 years old. I held his hand and tried to reassure him while I relayed information to the 911 dispatcher.

A woman came up and said, “I’m a nurse.” She checked Raul’s pulse. A man came up and said, “I have emergency medical training.” He took off his jacket and put it under the boy’s head. In less […]

The third step in developing an attitude of creative indifference toward grief is ACTION. Before you implement an action plan, you need to know that there is no cure for grief. It is a process. You don’t get over it, but with time and effort you can get through it.

Over the course of the next several days, I will be writing about a variety of action steps that could be helpful. Today I’d like to start with suggesting you eliminate the words “normal”, “expectation” and “judgment” from your vocabulary for a while.

Wherever you are today, and whatever you are feeling right now is okay. Don’t set expectations for yourself. Don’t judge yourself, and don’t let anyone tell you what […]

Our grandson works as an instructor in a rock climbing gym in Vancouver, Canada. He has scaled the sheer faces of rock formations all over the world. Recently he and his girlfriend Sarah took a trip to Yosemite National Park. Since they are both experts, they chose to start on a difficult climb.

It didn’t take long before they realized the rock in Yosemite was different from the surfaces with which they are familiar. Their equipment wasn’t perfectly suited to the environment, and fairly quickly they realized that their typical approach to climbing wasn’t going to work in this environment, so they quit.

I’m so proud of both of them for not letting their ego get in the way. They didn’t try to convince […]

In 1995 when Alex and I started talking about getting married, we were both aware that our age difference would eventually affect our quality of life. Wanting me to consider the future carefully, he warned, “We might only have ten good years.”

We were both aware from the very beginning that the clock was ticking, so we agreed that we would never look back and say, “We wish we would have done (fill in the blank) while we could.”

We will celebrate our 18th anniversary in September. We have both done meaningful work. We have traveled all over the world, and we have had marvelous adventures. We kept our promise to live our lives fully, and reflecting back, I have to say we […]

My young friend who owns his own business, has three little girls and is the primary caregiver for his grandmother collapsed last week. He had been pushing himself way to hard for way to long, and then he had several clients who all needed big projects completed at the same time, so he pulled a number of all-nighters. One day I asked him if he had slept the night before, and he said, “Sleep? Who needs it?”

Apparently, he does. A visit to Urgent Care turned into a trip to the Emergency Room and a diagnosis of pneumonia and severe dehydration. The doctor gave him a prescription and strict orders to go home, rest, take his medication and drink lots and lots of fluids. He was told if he tried […]

I am always delighted when I find humor in unexpected places and situations. On Friday, after getting off the plane in Phoenix, we stopped at Costco before heading to our family reunion in Sedona.

We were buying food for 15 people for 7 days. The list was long, and we were hungry, so we ordered a sandwich and sat down in the cafeteria. We watched watched an older woman limp toward the condiments bar, and commented to each other that the poor old soul was obviously in a lot of pain.

To our surprise, when she turned around, we read the front of her T-shirt. It said, “Smile if you aren’t wearing undies”. Alex and I laughed out loud. We complimented her […]

While it’s true that we don’t always get what we want, I do believe that we almost always find what we’re looking for.

When I first started writing this blog, I made a list of a couple dozen words that I thought would be appropriate. When I got close to the end of the list, I started to worry about whether I’d be able to continue to find a new word every day. I started Caregiver Help Word of the Day on Thanksgiving Day, 2013, and so far I haven’t been stumped. I think it may be because every morning when I wake up I start looking for something to share with you in everything I read, and in every experience and interaction […]