Reflections

I grew up thinking buckets were the solution to a leaky roof. I didn’t know there was anything else.

An eight-year-old was placed in front of a dying woman and told to read. No one asked if Margaret had the energy to comfort a frightened child. In hospice, even kindness has limits—and choice still matters.

A long-term care ombudsman meets a resident who can no longer speak—but still creates joy through handmade felt pins and quiet resilience.

A long-term care ombudsman reflects on “puzzle masters”—residents who find purpose, pride, and identity through caring for shared puzzles.

I dropped my mother off at the door, never imagining she would leave in an ambulance. What followed has stayed with me ever since.

I grew up watching my mother fall—physically and emotionally—after surviving polio. One afternoon at a dental school parking lot, my lunch money became our way home and taught me something I’ve never forgotten about love, dignity, and resilience.

“Can you just watch me play?”

She wasn’t confused. She wasn’t asleep. She was listening. And she felt invisible.

worst motel experience while traveling

A long-term care ombudsman meets a nursing home resident convinced she’s moving to London to marry Paul McCartney—until a romance scam emerges.

“This is my mother’s arm, I thought, staring at the torn skin on the side of the road. Except it was me. And in that moment, I realized my body had crossed into a different stage of life—without warning.”

When you’re three, you don’t expect your body to change overnight. Sometimes growing up surprises you—literally.

Residents reported a missing shower grab bar and followed the process. A long-term care ombudsman shows why their voices still needed amplification.

When my father, who had Alzheimer’s, came home without my three-year-old son, we lived twenty minutes of terror—and learned the hard truth about dementia and driving.

When my brother calls, his aphasia makes speaking hard—but we still talk. Naming dementia, laughing together, and saying the hard things keeps us connected while we still can.

When my brother’s Alzheimer’s took away our ability to talk and connect, I lost access to him—not because of distance or choice, but because of disease. It is a different kind of grief.

In 1990, my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. We lived together for years, yet we never talked about what the diagnosis meant to him. Looking back, the silence around his illness is what I grieve most.

On formal night aboard a cruise ship, everyone dressed up. I dressed down—and discovered the unexpected freedom of being invisible.

When I arrived for a routine ombudsman visit, I thought I was looking at a resident sitting on the roof. My first instinct wasn’t panic—it was advocacy. That moment, brief and mistaken, became a quiet lesson in how easily assumptions form and how essential it is to question them before taking action.

A vintage green Pyrex bowl from the 1940s prompts a reflection on family heirlooms, memory, dementia, and why some things are meant to be used.