Night Owl Cards

  I found my blog on the Bedford Falls Bridge last night, looking over the railing, ready to jump.   He was a wreck, crying and sweating and carrying on. I tried to tell him all that moisture isn't good for the computer, but he was inconsolable.   "Blogging isn't what it used to be," he exclaimed, moving even closer to the edge. "The new blogger changes are ruining my life, constant format fiddling between 'normal' and 'paragraph' mode, struggling with the size of photos, battling to get text left-justified! I actually now need to upload the pictures after the post is written if I have any hope of a thumbnail photo showing up on the blog roll! It's all backwards!" I tried to calm him down by reminding him that I'm the one who is doing the writing and uploading. But he wouldn't listen, muttering something about how one of the images took four tries to upload in the right spot for this very blog post. He eyed the crashing waves belo...

    One of the most important conversations I had last year came in the final stages of my mom's life.   She was in the hospital and we had already endured the end-of-life discussions with doctors and specialists around my mom's hospital bed. But, now, my dad and I were back at home, sitting at the dining room table in a room that could only be called a disaster, talking with the head of the hospice organization in the city.   He explained, like I'm sure he has to many people, that the end of life is not tidy. It is messy. "Death and dying," he said, "is messy." I looked around the room at medicine bottles everywhere, bills and notes and get-well cards strewn about. Common items like car keys and batteries, random cash and 27 different kinds of pens were scattered across the table and the counter next to it.   What the man said clicked in my head. Yes, what we had been through all these months, and especially the past three months, was definitely a mess....