Category: Family Stories

When my father turned 65 in 1975 he went on Medicare and that gave him the courage to leave my mother who had taken care of him and supported him through years of mental illness and inability to work. We thought she would be happy to see him go, but she was frightened of being…

November 2017 Dave died at the end of November, 2012. He was 76 and had been dealing with congestive heart failure for more than a decade. He said he was surprised he outlived our father who died at 70 from lymphoma. Dave was six years older than I was. When we were kids and our…

Summer, 2015 (updated Nov 2017) Growing up, I often heard my father talk about the family trust fund, of which he was a beneficiary. It had been set up by the bequests of “Grandpa Lewis” –as Aunt Virginia called him— when he died in 1927. Grandpa Lewis was a “mad hatter” in Washington DC. at…

October 2017 I like to think in numbers. Today, these numbers are important to me. It is the 29th anniversary of my marriage to Kathleen Mary Bernadette Hayes of Bayshore Long Island and the 31st year of our living together. Kathy was the best decision I ever made, and I have been happier living with…

June 2017 When I get up, I go into my office and take down from the wall a large greeting card that my daughter gave me two decades ago. Then I read it to myself. It starts with a cartoon of Garfield the cat who is saying: “Dad, it makes me happy that you accept…