by Deborah Lee Luskin | Aug 8, 2018 | Living in Place
LESSONS IN GRIEF While my Dad was alive and in decline, I grieved for the man he used to be. He mostly accepted his limitations, while I was often irritated by them. Now I wish I’d acknowledged how plucky he was in his old age, even as his hearing diminished, his...
by Deborah Lee Luskin | Aug 1, 2018 | Living in Place
MOURNING FOG My father died almost two weeks ago, and I’ve been wandering around in a Mourning Fog ever since. Even though Dad’s death was expected, and even though I’d suffered innumerable bouts of anticipatory grief as Dad has declined these past few years, being...
by Deborah Lee Luskin | Jul 25, 2018 | Living in Place
Even if you don’t think of yourself as a writer and never plan to write for publication, chances are you will someday have to write an obituary for someone you’ve loved and lost. I know this, because last week I wrote an obit for my dad. Six years earlier, I wrote one...
by Deborah Lee Luskin | Jul 23, 2018 | Living in Place
Bernard Luskin died peacefully in the Hospice Suite at Grace Cottage Hospital on July 19, four days short of his ninety-third birthday. He was the son of Jacob Luskin, who emigrated from Russia to New York in 1914, and Dvorah Leah (Farberova) Luskin, who arrived in...
by Deborah Lee Luskin | Jul 18, 2018 | Living in Place
The Hallowell Singers bring music to the dying. They came last week to sing to my father – and to me. Five singers quietly entered his hospice room and sang a cappella, transforming his standard hospital room into a space as sacred and holy as any mountaintop or...
by Deborah Lee Luskin | Jul 11, 2018 | Living in Place
Rhubarb is one of the first plants to poke through the soil each spring. Its great knobs of wrinkled leaves pushing through mulch like a crowning baby’s head. In less than a month, the plants are gigantic. The leaves grow to the size and shape of the blade of a...
