I have been grocery shopping for Willie. This started as a function of the pandemic. Willie does grocery pickup. Each week, there is an item or two or seven missing from her order. At the height of the pandemic – those terrible days in March and April – Willie would go into the store…
Indy has a hairline fracture of his toe. He woke up one day last week, unable to walk without limping. He hobbled around the Temple of Doom for three hours before finally telling Willie. This is pretty typical behavior for Indy, keeping his cards close to his chest like that. He had Parkinson’s…
I’m not supposed to tell this story. But sometimes, stories just want to be told. When Indy And Willie moved to their independent living facility, they believed it to be nirvana. There’s a pool and pool table. A movie theater and classes to get them moving. A café with groceries and a bus…
I have most of Willie’s Dickens’ Village houses temporarily stored in my garage. They’ve been there for two years. This is a Dickens’ Village house. It’s a porcelain imagining of any architecture featured in a Charles Dickens story. You can also buy porcelain people and fir trees to, um, spruce up the…
Willie and Indy are selling some property. Indy fancied himself a land baron back in the 60s. By the time he married Willie, he owned three properties, which Willie only discovered once the tax bills began arriving. After their wedding day. But now, Willie and Indy are looking forward. They realize they…
Don’s uncle is a government assassin. We don’t know this for sure, obviously. But wherever he goes, a foreign dignitary gets injured. Or dies. Pope John Paul? This uncle was in Malta. Viktor Yushchenko’s poisoning? This uncle was in Ukraine. The obvious conclusion is that he is an assassin. Not a good one,…
I had to get Willie tested for dementia. And believe me, you have not lived until you’ve told Willie you’ve discussed her memory problems with everyone but her, including her doctor, who now wants to see her pronto. And that you’re going with her to the doctor. If she hated me before,…
I think Willie is trying to kill me. Her weapon? Sleep deprivation. Her motive? Well, she still hates me. Willie was victimized by a phone scammer, the scope of which you can read about this coming weekend. I am Willie and Indy’s financial power of attorney. I think normal people maybe…
You know, I thought once Indy finished his weekly speech appointments, I’d have nothing to tell you. But as long as Willie lives, I’ll have stories. Stories upon stories upon stories. I spent two weeks with Indy and Willie, two weeks where they circled me like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park, taking a…
I’d like to take you back. Back to the roughly four days of warmth and sunshine between Willie’s illness and Indy’s Parkinson’s. They were gone in a blink, those days. It took me a year and a half to bring Willie out of illness. Almost as soon as it was over, I started another year and a half journey bringing Indy into illness….