Last year I had the honor to be a nominee for the honorary post of Texas State Historian. This year the Governor’s office turned me down for the position. Depressing but not devastating. For those of you who, like I, have lived a while, I’m sure you will agree. One of the benefits of old […]
At 98, she took no pills at all. The doctors and nurses, when I took her in for a check-up, were flabbergasted to learn that she was on no heart medication, no thyroid, no high cholesterol, no blood thinner, no blood thickener, nothing. Even when she arrived here to stay with me, she took none […]
Mom loved books and she taught us to love them as well. Christmas morning brings back memories of opening the most wonderful books. There was nothing more pleasurable than feeling the heft of a book through the wrapping paper and knowing there was hours of pleasure in store. The books were almost always the Caldecott […]
I just thought there would be no more blogs once Mom was gone. Not so. This past weekend, PBS produced a beautiful one-hour program called Christmas at Belmont. All of the music students, and it looked like most of the student body, from Nashville’s Belmont University joined with country singer Sheryl Crow to sing Christmas […]
Martha Louise Gorton Castillo, age 98, passed away on December 18, 2017 at her home in Huntsville, Texas. Martha Lou was born in Utica, New York, on June 25, 1919 to Charles Ruddell Gorton of New York and Caroline Oates Gorton of Greenville, Kentucky. She learned her love of travel early as her father and […]
I was with Mom alone on Saturday. I felt certain I could handle one day alone with her. If the other caregivers could, I thought, so could I. Just because I was also night shift shouldn’t matter. Didn’t nurses pull double shifts all the time? I tried to rouse Mom several times from the bed […]
It’s been a week without water. Okay, not without water, exactly, but without running water. Living out in the country means that we live by well water alone. Many people do, out here in East Texas. Or Middle East Texas. Or north of Houston, anyway. Or much of rural Texas. It’s not uncommon. Unlike the […]
“I’m sorry, I can’t come. I have to take care of my mother.” I’ve heard this from others on occasion and I scoffed. Certainly they could find a way to attend the meeting or the party or the festival. Surely someone could have taken care of the elderly parent. Or somehow they could have left […]
“No! Leave me alone!” It’s 4:30 am and Mom is sitting on the bedside commode refusing to go back to bed. She doesn’t understand where she is or what the bed is. I’ve cut off the wet pull-ups and laboriously slid a new pair up to her knees but that’s it. Not moving any farther, […]
Wait! Where’d the peace and quiet go? Gone are the halcyon days of getting to sit with the Hospice nurse calmly watching Mom sleep and waiting for the end. Nope. That’s definitely not happening. Now that the Witchdoctor is here, we are scrambling to keep up with the new routine. […]