My body knew before the news told us.

Late Sunday night, I felt dizzy and listed to the left when I got up to use the bathroom. It happened a second time, a little worse. In the morning, before yoga, when I bent down to dry my hair, I felt really dizzy.  

Okay, here’s yet another post involving aging, what’s mostly on my mind these days…

I’m not sure quite when the discussions with our son about the need for a first-floor bedroom began. We’d bought this 1756 farmhouse twenty-six years ago, overlooking the stairs that were easily as steep as a ladder, lost in a blur of ardent love for this old house.

The Surgeon General has declared the state of loneliness a national health issue. I read about this in my various news sources, and while I do believe he is absolutely correct, I haven’t felt very much aware of its applicability to me. After all, I have a loyal husband of sixty years, a caring son and his wife, three special grandsons, a sister and a niece, many wonderful friends, a loving black lab, an ongoing and fulfilling teaching and writing career.

I’m at a writing residency, struggling with what to write next—blog post, another poem? Just now I walked over to the kitchen, where we go to pick up our box lunches. I usually come back to my studio to eat so as not to be distracted from what I’m working on by the desire to chat, as there are always fellows (that’s what we are called here) there, but today I sat down and ate my tofu salad with A and C, badly needing the break of human connection.

Even my fifteen-year-old Saab is in better shape than I seem to be these days. It only needs a visit to the repair shop once a year, when lately I seem to be constantly in need of one.

Here they are again.

I don’t know about you, but for me, the time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s is fraught. It arrives with not only our aspirations for joy and celebration, but also multiple layers of stress, memory, hope, and grief--to say nothing of the work of decorating, tree trimming, present buying, candle lighting, card writing and sending, shopping and feast preparations.

This week one of my oldest and dearest friends has embarked on an incredibly courageous journey, called VSED (voluntarily stopping eating and drinking) as she has rapidly increasing Alzheimer’s disease, saw what it did to her father and her as she cared for him, and did not want that for her family or herself.