Seven years, three months, one week, and one day ago, I lost my Dad, Neil, to a Glioblastoma (GBM). My father was a “man’s man” and, although he was able to scare many of our suitors away, if you made it into his inner circle- a place of unconditional love and support- you would find that the only thing bigger than his brawn was his heart. Ronni found this out in the mid-80’s when a fluke run in with this small town man changed both of their lives forever. My dad was born in the tiny hamlet of Shickshinny, PA. He spent his childhood there and married the love of his life, Donna, who grew-up a ..read more

It has been a long time since I posted a list of quotations about age and dying. In fact, it is probably years. But I don't stop collecting them – my god, people have a lot to say about death, at least in short form – so here are a few for your perusal and commentary. Not too many today because quantity becomes overwhelming and they lose meaning. So just a few. Many wise men and women have left behind worthy ideas about death for us to ponder. * * * “It is too bad that dying is the last thing we do, because it could teach us so much about living.” - Robert M. Herhold (As it seems to be doing ..read more

Seven years, three months, one week, and one day ago, I lost my Dad, Neil, to a Glioblastoma (GBM). My father was a “man’s man” and, although he was able to scare many of our suitors away, if you made it into his inner circle- a place of unconditional love and support- you would find that the only thing bigger than his brawn was his heart. Ronni found this out in the mid-80’s when a fluke run in with this small town man changed both of their lives forever. My dad was born in the tiny hamlet of Shickshinny, PA. He spent his childhood there and married the love of his life, Donna, who grew-up a ..read more

This morning finds me with an overwhelming anxiety. I have been up for hours, and have reached for my phone three times to call one of the only people I know who could understand, empathize, and validate the terror I am feeling about the state of the world and more so, the state of our country. Ronni and I have spent COUNTLESS hours talking about health care, Social Security, Medicare, taxes, global warming, education, equality... well, you get it. Recently, however, our conversations had changed to the basic difference between right and wrong. We discussed that this election has drawn a mora ..read more

Yesterday, at 6:28 PM local time, Veronica "Ronni" Bennett passed away. Ronni bravely documented the aging process, with her Last Great Gift being the documentation of her death. We spoke for sometime yesterday, and throughout our conversation, she circled back to you. It was very important to Ronni that this amazing community continue to have a place to come and discuss this amazing journey we are all in together. Your support and love was a gift that Ronni never could have imagined when she started this blog 16 years ago, and she was forever grateful for each and everyone of you. We all wil ..read more

We have come up today on a new episode of The Alex and Ronni Show, recorded on Wednesday. When I started this blog 16 years ago, I subtitled it (see banner above) “what it's really like to get old” and for a lot of years that's what I tried to do - research, write about and ruminate on how we age. Then, three years ago, the universe hit me with cancer followed shortly by COPD and I knew from the start where that ends. So I made a course correction in the topic so to write as openly and honestly as I can muster about what it is like to know you are dying – the good, the bad, the whatever else ..read more

If, like me, you have a big-deal disease or two such as cancer and COPD, there is one thing you can count on: nothing stays the same and hardly anything gets better. That's the cosmic joke. (There are more earthly ones too.) In the first instance, such diseases progress. No pleading, no appeal to divine intervention, no miracles. It is the diseases' job to grow and from your and my point of view, get worse. I've always thought it is weird that it works that way. When the disease does what nature compels it to do, it eventually kills its host (in this case, that would be me) and therefore itse ..read more

By TGB reader Jean-Pierre Some years ago - before I got to be eighty-five with a miserably sore hip - I was walking my youngest grand-daughter to the play park on a golden Fall day when she said, quite unexpectedly, right out of the blue, "I'm glad I chose my Mother and Father." She was a toddler, barely five minutes into this crazy world, remember - and when it soaked in, I said, "I'm glad you did, too, Charlotte." She spent a few minutes explaining why her Mother was kind and her Father was responsible, and then she was back to herself, eager to hit the swings and the roundabout, the adult ..read more

As I noted at the end of Saturday's Interesting Stuff post, it's been a few rough days in a row – weakness, lethargy, disinterest, lots of sleep and not much else. Even one of my top two or three favorite small pleasures, a hot bath, has been hard – it's too difficult to get out of the tub. There is nothing new on cable news, just repeats of what the hosts said last hour and the hour before that, etc. My mind is too addled to read. I sit in bed or at the computer and stare into space for long periods of time quite comfortably. What is lovely are the email notes from you, dear readers. You say ..read more

This Sunday Elder Music column was launched in December of 2008. By May of the following year, one commenter, Peter Tibbles, had added so much knowledge and value to my poor attempts at musical presentations that I asked him to take over the column. He's been here each week ever since delighting us with his astonishing grasp of just about everything musical, his humor and sense of fun. You can read Peter's bio here and find links to all his columns here. * * * Here is some more music I thought well worth a listen. FRANCESCA D'ADDA was born in Milan and lived most of her life in that city. Sh ..read more