I got a lot of moving feedback the first time I wrote about my mother, Catherine, in The Long Goodbye, published three years ago on this blog. After she died last Christmas, I expanded on the story of our relationship and turned it into a magazine piece for Glow Magazine. It’s in the May issue, on newsstands […]
Goodbye, Mommy
Originally published in December 2012 in Blog
Catherine Lucy Garwood-Jones (1928-2012), Hamiltonian extraordinaire, died on Sunday, Dec. 9 after a ten-year battle with Alzheimer’s. Pre-deceased by her husband Trevor in 2011, Team “Cath and Trev” changed the face of the city they loved so much — he through architecture and she through her commitment to health care, education, music and family. Catherine’s […]
The big reveal
Originally published in May 2011 in Blog
How would you feel if genome analysis revealed you were predisposed to “early sudden death” from vascular disease? Less hungry for chips? Determined to blow all your savings in Vegas and have as much sex as the day is long? And what if a message in your inbox from a lab in sunny California coldly […]
2010 Roundup
Originally published in December 2010 in Blog
The scariest post to write My best posts are usually the scariest to write. I’ve found that the more scared I am about the content, the more likely I am to connect with my readers because we all struggle with the same stuff. But there’s a fine line between tacky confessionals and honest storytelling. Maybe […]
Christmas past
Originally published in December 2010 in Blog
In conversation with Maureen Judge
Originally published in May 2010 in Blog
In a display of human nature at its worst, I once worked with a fashionista who sneered, “Old ladies smell like sour milk.” Wow, I thought, if women can be this disdainful of their mother’s generation, we’ve got a problem. Judging by popular culture, society as a whole finds post-fertile women not worth looking at […]
Momento mori
Originally published in February 2010 in Blog
The long goodbye …
Originally published in February 2010 in Blog
I got a lot of moving feedback the first time I wrote about my mother, Catherine, here in The Long Goodbye, published four years ago on this blog. After she died in December 2012, I expanded on the story of our relationship and turned it into a magazine piece for Glow Magazine. You can read that version here. I […]