My mother let the cup of coffee cool in front of her. She had forgotten how much she loved this drink that she first tasted on the knees of her father.
This was one of a hundred sad images from her two years in a memory care facility at 95.
My father, who loved and appreciated well-prepared food like no other member of our family, lost his taste buds to radiation treatment for sinus cancer.
For Pat, my youngest brother, who died of liver cancer last fall, the worst symptom, by far, of the six tumors and the chemo, was the unfathomable deprivation of energy.
My remaining brother, Peter, on the day of his death in January, told his caregiver he was going to see his wife, Pamela, who had died five months earlier.
Subtraction, from the 4th grade onward, was always more complicated than addition.
Today, it’s natural.
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