Category Archives: Blogs

Guest Post: It’s Really Mother’s Yard

2 Replies

This post is taken from my late sister’s blog, “Going on Alone.” It was posted on March 10, 2008. My parents were both still living at home. Bonnie, who had become their primary caregiver, captured her life with them perfectly. She could write. I’m sure you will agree.

You have to love 94-year-old women who still tend their own gardens. We’re not talking a few pots and 6’x6′ of grass here. We’re talking close to 10,000 square feet of yard that includes two mango trees (both over 60 years old), a lemon tree, a guava tree, the newly planted guapple that is supposed to be a cross between a guava and an apple, several banana trees (you can’t kill these guys …), a Surinam Cherry (aka Princess Eugenia cherry) bush, and one more papaya tree — all of which bear fruit that gets eaten for breakfast, made into something edible, given away to whomever will take it, or sliced/diced/pureed/juiced and popped into the freezer. Then there’s the look-at stuff: the Bird of Paradise, the 3 dozen or so orchid plants, the Royal Ilima bushes that Daddy hates and periodically cuts down, the Ixoria with its wonderful hemispheres of brilliant flowers that seem to bloom forever but are terribly susceptible to powdery mildew, the brilliantly multicolored crotons and the Lantana, several varieties of ti leaves, ferns and ornamental grasses — and the lawn. This is green garbage week, which means the City will haul away for free all garden waste — with certain limitations. No can or bag can weigh more than 50 lbs. You can’t put in sharp things that could poke out eyes. If it’s not bagged or in a can, it must be bundled. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of green garbage week are always garden days. If I can’t find Mother in the kitchen or at her typewriter, I only need look in the bushes that ring the yard. She’ll be in between or behind something that’s two or three times her size, perched on a one-step rubbermaid stool and armed with a large butcher knife, a pruning saw, and a hefty pair of pruning shears. I’ve learned that if she cuts and throws, I can follow around with a garbage can or — when I can get away with it, bags — and bag or bundle, then move everything out to the top of the driveway for pickup. Bags, you see, are only used once and cost $$$. Which, I remind you, they have enough of.

Have I made a difference? Although no one would be caught saying Yes!, I was instructed to call a classifed ad in to the evening newspaper today — the one that gets run free for 7 days. Yard helper wanted, 3-4 hours once or twice monthly. Easy. $10/hr. Kahala. (with telephone number). She recognizes she can’t do it all herself. Daddy wouldn’t even if he could. He figures if the lawn is mowed, the garden work is done. But life is easier with two working, and green garbage is only picked up twice a month. Oh yes. HE hired the yard man. HE will direct the yard man. SHE may not. The yard man will ONLY do lawns. So this second yard helper is a small act of defiance.

As for the bundling — that’s all done with rags. My mother grew up in the country, was in high school and college during the Great Depression. Nothing goes to waste in this house. Every garment — including underwear — gets stripped into more-or-less 1″ strips and used to tie things up. If it’s too small to make useful strips, it gets cut into larger pieces to use for cleaning rags. If a garment still has some life, it gets washed, ironed and sent to Goodwill. Maybe I will suggest she cut strips for rag rugs which I can make next winter!

I give thanks that my mom is still able, at nearly 94, to do this much for herself. I look forward — because looking back does me no good. I keep praying, and hope you will, too.

A reader questions the sharing life’s “final indignities”

7 Replies

A question left in response to yesterday’s post was brief and to the point:

Ian, how do you go about deciding whether or not to publicize your dad’s final indignities?

It’s a good question. Thought provoking. I’ll try to answer, if I can.

I should say at the front end that I was asked the same thing when I chronicled my dad’s final two years while it was all happening. He had been taken to Queen’s hospital after a second fall at home, and then admitted to a bed in a room with four other patients in the Oahu Care Facility, a nursing home on Beretania Street, near the corner of Artesian St. That was his last stop. He was there just a month short of two years.

At that time, I wrote about my visits to his bedside, his life in the facility, his struggles with dementia, and my own coping with what was happening. I couldn’t avoid writing about family history, sometimes family dynamics, and occsionally about a family secret.

I probably did tread somewhat on his privacy, had he been in a condition to worry about such things. To tell you the truth, my mom probably didn’t know what I was sharing. My dad certainly didn’t. My sister, Bonnie, was supportive, and occasionally wrote on her own blog, a successor to another blog in which she previously detailed her husbands years-long battle with lung cancer.

I wrote primarily for myself, and still do. Witnessing through writing helps process the direct experience. I viewed myself as a chronicler, a reporter, trying to convey the intensity of our shared experience. I really didn’t worry much about privacy, although there were topics I avoided at the time and still sidestep.

And apart from a few questions like this, the feedback I received was uniformly positive and personal. Others who were dealing with aging parents and the scourge of dementia said they appreciated the insights they had gained. I didn’t write for that reason, of course. I wrote as a means of coping with an unfamiliar and painful end-of-life process.

And here’s the thing. Why should the end of life remain an unspoken realm that we enter with parents, loved ones, and ultimately for ourselves, unaided by the experience of others who have gone before?

In an earlier time, when death and dying wasn’t controlled by The medical-industrial complex, people died at home. Families dealt with the details, and such knowledge and the resulting skills were recognized as valuable and passed on to younger generations.

Today it’s much different for most of us. I’m betting that others will receive my sharihg of personal experience, and personal details, in the spirit in which I offer them.

It’s also fair to point out that, at this point, my dad’s gone. My mother is gone. Their siblings are all long gone. His longtinme girlfriend is gone. Their friends are dead. None of them are much worried about keeping the “indignities” of aging secret.

It’s not that I don’t edit myself. But it’s a very light edit, and perhaps uneven and inconsistent. Human, one could say.

Welcome to the mysteries, joys, and pain of this end of life.

And thanks for putting the question out there. Now I’ll have to go back to check how I first answered the question a decade ago.

Yes, I thought I had been hacked

2 Replies

If you tried to visit this site on Tuesday, you likely got an error message or a strange unrelated screen.

I discovered the problem when I tried up upload a new post. I couldn’t get through.

I contacted my hosting service, and after checking it out, they advised me that the DNS pointers had been changed and it was no longer connected to them. My first reaction–I thought I had been hacked, less than a day after posting about a certain presidential campaign.

Well, I did a bit more diagnosing of the problem, and it turned out to be much less dramatic than an outside hacker. Embarrassingly so, truth be told! Apparently I had not updated the credit card on file with the domain registrar and my domain had expired yesterday. The charge was rejected. Then, basically, the domain was repossessed for non-payment.

While embarrassing, that was good news. Much easier to fix than a full scale hack job.

So now, several hours later, it’s back online.

My apologies to all. Hopefully I’ll get that new post up in the morning.

A resource for understanding Thursday’s killing of key Iranian commander

3 Replies

Another Lawfare Podcast Special Edition was published on Friday afternoon: The Soleimani Strike and Its Fallout

It is, again, an excellent source for perspective on the incident and what it means in the region.

The American drone strike last night that killed Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Iranian Quds Force, is a seismic event in U.S.-Iranian relations—and for the broader Middle East. We put together an emergency podcast, drawing on the resources of both Lawfare and the Brookings Institution and reflecting the depth of the remarkable collaboration between the two. Iran scholar Suzanne Maloney, terrorism and Middle East scholar Daniel Byman, Middle East scholar and former State Department official Tamara Cofman Wittes and former State Department lawyer and Baghdad embassy official Scott Anderson—who is also a Lawfare senior editor—came together the morning after the strike for a diverse discussion of the reasons for the operation, the vast repercussions of it, the legality of the strike and the role Soleimani played in the Iranian regime.

Also see:

“The Soleimani Strike: One Person Decides,” Jack Goldsmith. Examines the legality of the drone strike.

Heather Cox Richardson, “Letters from an American,” January 3, 2020.