Ten weeks have passed since my husband died. Ten weeks of a new status --widow. Widow. The word just seems to beg to be followed by a period. Period. The end: The end of years of love, intimacy, sex, companionship, friendship, partnership, marriage, the end of status -- wife.

Given...

Widow: The doctor records the time, declares your husband dead and, instantly, you are no longer a wife, but a widow.

And you are thrust into all the arrangements that have to be made after a death; surrounded by people; moving one foot in front of the other through the...

When you reach a certain age, you begin to become familiar with death. Every year brings another round of funerals, so many that life can seem to be a long series of goodbyes. When that becomes too sad, we have to remind ourselves how glad we are that we had...

What Nancy Reagan called the long goodbye has, for me, come to an end. My beloved husband has died, peacefully, in his own home, surrounded by people who loved him.

It was indeed, a long goodbye. Seven years spent with Alzheimer's.

And a final year, playing hide and seek with...

This month, we enter the seventh year of living with Alzheimer's (AD). My husband is the patient; but the circle of those who share in that diagnosis is very large.

The grandchildren, whom he might or might not remember. When he doesn't, how does one soften that blow? The young...

What is there to say, this week, to think about, to pray for, to write about, but those tiny little bodies, laid down to sleep in Connecticut, not in their cozy beds with their parents kneeling beside them, reciting familiar prayers, but to forever sleep, in small coffins, surrounded by...

Most of us prefer to delay bad news. But, when it comes to Alzheimer's Disease (AD), the earlier the diagnosis, the better -- for the patient and the prospective caregiver.

An early diagnosis of Mild Cognitive Impairment/ First stage Alzheimer's gives the patient some control. He or she can modify...

There are not many books or articles that deal with the special psychological and emotional issues encountered by the caregiver whose patient is a spouse. Dr. Ruth Westheimer does -- very honestly and accurately, for gay and straight partners -- in her new book, Dr. Ruth's Guide for...

Just in front of every baby boomer, there is a parent. Or parents. Like me, on the brink of old age, with all that aging brings.

Let us suppose that I am your mother.

Chances are, when you ask me, "How are you Mom?" I will answer "Fine". Am I?

Glen Campbell made our feet move, our hips sway, touched our hearts and made us smile with "Rhinestone Cowboy," "By the Time I get To Phoenix," and perhaps prophetically, "Gentle on my Mind" with lyrics like "By the rivers of my memory, ever smiling, ever gentle, on my mind." Now,...

I don't have any desire to be young again. Like most older people, I think the world I experienced was the best one. I have no desire to Twitter and tweet, have a phone hanging, like an umbilical cord, from my ear or walk around town in what to me...

Distance, we are told, lends enchantment. Living as we do on the 46th floor of a high-rise in Manhattan, I have seen the enchantment: the pearly glow of the moon on the East River, four bridges laced with necklaces of diamonds and a tapestry of ruby, emerald, sapphire, topaz lights...

My grandmother's remedy for anything and everything was castor oil. It tasted so terrible that the thought of it cured a lot of ailments. Faced with a choice of castor oil or feeling well enough to go to school, we went to school.

Dr. Howard Fillit, the Executive Director of...

There may be saints among us, but I am not one of them.

One does not usually associate the words lucky and Alzheimer's disease. But within the world of almost six million North American families struggling with the emotional and financial costs of this terrible disease, I am lucky in...

"Do as I say, and not as I do." That's the subtext of these suggestions to other caregivers.

Yes, when I write about how a caregiver should take care of him or herself, I am talking to myself as well as to others. When it comes to looking after yourself,...

My mother used to start her day by sitting alone in the kitchen, with a cigarette and a cup of tea. She called it "getting a handle on her day."

Well, I don't recommend the cigarette but a caregiver definitely needs to "get a handle" on his or her day....

In this Alzheimer's parallel universe, there are two concerns: the care of the patient, and the care of the caregiver. Sometimes, what is good for one is difficult for the other but, when a solution is found to the problem of the patient, life usually also gets better for the...

Once the unheralded and forgotten group, caregivers are now the subject of a cottage industry of advice. It pours at us in blogs, articles, books, and runs the gamut from saying that one must enter the Alzheimer's world completely, forget all other aspects of self, and become totally the caregiver,...

The Alzheimer's world is a parallel universe: the patient and the caregiver, the one who forgets and the one who is forgotten, the one whose memories recede, the one for whom those memories become even more important.

Ours is a second marriage, for both. Given that I was 50 when...

When we have memory, we take it for granted. Six years ago, if I thought about memory at all, it was as a photograph album, a sentimental depository of our past, where we preserve the faces of those we love and why we love them, the rites of passage, ours...