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The Panini Press

December 6, 2015 • Laurie Newbound

I am fifty nine years old and I am losing my mind. Ok, I am not technically losing my mind, at least not yet. I see a therapist irregularly, and she assures me of this.

Of course, she is fifty nine, too, so not sure how much she can be trusted.  I just FEEL like I am losing my mind. And, to my defense, I think most of my friends are, too. As defined by Wikipedia, (yes, this is lazy, but it is as good a definition as any) “the SANDWICH GENERATION is a generation of people who care for their aging parents while supporting their own children.” The term was officially added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in July 2006.

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The Last Conversation With My Father

February 6, 2020 • Laurie Newbound

The thing about a final conversation is you often don’t know at the time that it is, in fact, the last one. And this conversation, which took place on May 20, 2017 (two months after my mother died) was no different. I did not know it would be the last sustained conversation I would ever have with my father. He lived another two years and we did have countless short exchanges during that time, about what he was eating or the weather or how he was feeling.  

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The Most Normal Thing in the World

September 28, 2017 • Laurie Newbound

My mom has been really annoying me lately, and it’s been especially bad since she died last spring.  It didn’t start immediately.  Initially after her death I felt her presence from time to time, mostly in the condo she had shared with my father the last dozen years of her life. Her presence, but not her voice—it just felt like she was in the room.  

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A Small Mystery

November 29, 2016 • Laurie Newbound

It was pretty dull the other day at my parent’s place, both of them just seemed to want to sleep. Their matching living room recliners are getting a lot of use, there is a lot of reclining going on these days. Hopeful that one of them would wake up soon enough for us to have some kind of visit, I indulged in my not so guilty pleasure, which is digging into their old photo albums.

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Apology

November 17, 2016 • Laurie Newbound

I began posting on this website not quite a year ago, intending to share my experiences with, among other things, my parents as they went through this last chapter of their lives. But a short while ago, as the going got tough, I, I have to admit, got going.  I didn’t show up here.  The moment shit got real, the moment my mother started to really, seriously fail, I found it almost impossible to sit at my computer and put my thoughts together, to barely even record what was happening.

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