Mama is slowly going blind, her eyesight ravaged by macular degeneration. She and Daddy have been together for fifty four years of marriage plus a couple spent in courtship prior to the official tying of the knot. Between the two of them they have buried more loved ones that I can ever imagine even knowing, much less going to the graveyard with. Daddy's slowing down a lot, spending days propped in his personal recliner watching Law and Order and Gunsmoke marathons, thanks be to the DVR gods. There's a birds eye view of hummers and finches and cows right outside the den window. Life is good if you see the glass as half full, which we normally tend to do. It's an inherited trait that I hold dear.

Daddy has a "touch" of what some call Alzheimer's disease. In my humble opinion, it's only Alzheimer's when it happens before the normal time for senility to kick in. He remembers things from forty years ago like it was yesterday but doesn't put the truck in park when he gets out at the store. Thus, the engine won't start. So he proceeds to put multiple quarts of oil up in there trying to fix it so he can get home with Mom's caffeine free diet coke before she freaks. They are confined together most hours of most days in the house where they have spent the majority of their married life, raising three children for better or worse. And you know what? We all adore them. So do the adult grandchild and the one in the oven who will carry on the family name. Yep...it's a boy.

I always knew this time would come, and perhaps that is why I embraced the concept of improvement in end-of-life care delivery several years ago. I was sittin' at home on a Friday night waiting for the appointed time to go pick up the babygirl from somewhere or another when I stumbled upon the Bill Moyers piece on the subject of hospice and palliative care. I read books and surfed the net and pitched the concept to the powers that be at the sawmill, but I never had a workable plan and continued to stick people with needles and run their lab tests to pay the rent here on Pecan Lane like countless numbers of other corporate whores.

This too, shall pass.

^j^