Transitions

It’s been over a month since my last posting, and I think some explanation is needed. Several things contributed to this hiatus: I traveled to Moldova to visit my daughter who was working there, and went to family weddings in Florida and California. (All this travel occurred before COVID-19 changed our lives, hopefully temporarily.)

But I mainly took a break from my blog because health issues of friends and family interfered with my writing about humor and aging. A close family member and husbands of two good friends all have Alzheimer’s disease – and are on the advanced side of the disease spectrum. Seeing their deterioration, and the impact on their families, saddens me… and frightens me. But while I can empathize with others’ tsuris (a Yiddish word for troubles that conveys the pain better than any English word), and these concerns are likely to worsen as we all age, I will not let them overtake me. I am committed to providing support for people I care about who are in difficult circumstances, be it by listening to them, or when possible, providing concrete assistance for life’s tasks. But I need to affirm my own life and vitality. Retirement has been a period of beginning to explore my interests, unfettered by the constrictions of a challenging career… and I will nurture these new beginnings and the transition. So I am back from this brief break.

I also decided that my blog postings do not always need to have humor, although aging will remain a theme. In the coming months you will see a broader mixture of postings. There will be pieces about aging and retirement, some based on interviews I am doing with older people. No doubt some will also contain humor. This expansion will reflect my own explorations, will enrich the blog, and hopefully will be of interest to you. Also, if you have suggestions about the kinds of things you would like to see in my blog, related to aging, please let me know.

Thanks for still being there.