1/8/07 The Gators won the National Championship. It was beyond cool. It made me think of losing. Funny, but I always seem to be losing, everything except weight, and that is a loss, too. I’m almost always alone. I have no friends nearby, and I don’t know how to get them. I feel drained. […]
1/3/07 Hard day at work. Exhausted. Need to get to Dr. Akey, but no money. Lots of rain — no leak in living room. I wish I could figure out how to do it. I need to lose weight and keep it off. I’m scared. I don’t know about God. I wish I could […]
1/2/07 I need to get some help. I’ll probably call one of the therapists recommended by Marcia at Alliance of Mind & Body. I need to look up clubs, but I’m thinking more about volunteering. I think I have a roof leak. I wish I knew if there was a God. Dic has diabetes. […]
1/1/07 I want to change my life. I don’t know how. It’s New Year’s Day 2007, and I’m alone. I’m always alone except when Jen and David are here, or I go to them. I never learned how to relate to men. I find it hard to make friends. I’m told I have to […]
I’m not sure how it happened. I was driving home from work. I was tired, a little stressed about moving and all the burdens I’ve been carrying for so long. I’d finished a mystery on CD, and I put Celine Dion’s Christmas album in the player. There was “Oh, Holy Night” in all its glory. […]
Here is a letter pulled from mom’s old computer hard drive. I have no way of knowing if she ever actually printed and mailed it to Dr. Akey. October 23, 2006 Dear Dr. Akey, In all the time I have been your patient, I have never received what I believe to be adequate support […]
Mom was very, very proud of the work she did for Americorps. She worked there from approximately 2002 until 2008 and I know she was thrilled to be doing something that reminded her of Camelot. Here’s a letter she wrote to prospective volunteers. On her old computer hard drive I found this file titled volunteer […]
From: Gagne, Kathleen To: [redacted] Subject: Hello Again Again (2) Sent: May 26, 2006 Hi, Brenda, Robin, and Tony (I hope) David ran in the Los Angeles Marathon on April 19. He is 32 and has never run a marathon before. His number was 23647, and I think you can see pics of him […]
On mom’s old computer I found a file dated May 15th, 2006 named Dr. Akey 5-25-06.doc.1 It’s clearly a letter to her doctor. We always joked that mom was a hypochondriac, primarily because she spent so much of her youth living upstairs from a funeral home and surrounded by death and stories of it. The […]
On mom’s old hard drive I found a document named BLACKIE.doc, dated March 25, 2006. It is split into two distinct sections: BLACKIE We got Blackie when I was almost eleven. He was a beautiful springer spaniel with only a little white on his chest. Mom wouldn’t have a dog in the house, so […]