Rose's Cantina

On Friday, Scott finished up moving Jennette from her perch at the Hunt Club Manor. That move took us roughly 10 hours, and was a lot easier than the last two times we moved her. The first move was the most challenging. You see, she might have been all of 4 foot 9, but she lived like four people: her mother, who was a keen collector of jewelry and Royal Doulton; her father who was a spirited collector of paper and coins; Roger who was a curator of all things Blue and Jay; and Jennette herself who liked to keep bills, photos and newspapers until they literally disintegrated. The first move came in 2014, after Roger died. Don't get me wrong, the place was well organized, with small paths that took the couple to the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. Everything was covered by a inch of ash, including the birdcage which had sat in the middle of the living room over the two years since the Cockatiel Digger died. The aftermath of Digger's death by second hand smoke at th...

Last week, Jennette and I had the big talk. You know the one, the talk where you set everything straight, and confess to past transgressions, lies and half-truths. If you're a caregiver for a cancer patient, you know what I'm talking about. Even the most solid gold hearted caregiver sometimes has to lie to the patient, if for no other reason than to keep heart and soul together. My big lie concerned Jennette's apartment which I had to empty out over the course of about six days when she undergoing radiation at the Ottawa Hospital. Her doctor told us that Jay needed to go into assisted living, and would no longer be able to live the swinging single life at her pad on Kilborn Avenue. The oral cancer was now Stage Four, and it was inhabiting the side of her face like a burrowed squirrel. "Unless you have someone to care for her 24/7, she might choke to death one night," he explained in that concerned oncologist voice. "You don't want to come to ...

#149264186 / gettyimages.com The old man sat in his favorite easy chair cradling a glass of vodka, neat, and stared ahead at his big screen television, the one that his son had bought him for Christmas, the one he could no longer see. He loved this pocked old chair in the screened-in porch overlooking the par three golf course. For years, it had been a place of great joy for him, for his wife, for the family on the occasions when they came to visit.  There were snacks enjoyed here, Sunday barbecues, board game contests with the grandkids. Not anymore. His only company these days was the wind whipping around the autumn trees and the occasional mosquito drunk with the season, unable to fly, weaving around his head. He could hear a mosquito; alas, he could no longer see one. The day had been difficult, he had railed at the children who somehow had become his parents, telling him what to do, how to live. When had this happened? It seemed like only yesterday, h...