Joan Weaving
Anne Strozier
At this time of year we celebrate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. We members of the older and (hopefully) wiser generation often take a moment in the midst of being entertained by our children and grandchildren to pause and reflect on our own parents. Looking back through time at the choices they made and at the memories their presence built in our own lives is both poignant and beautiful. This week’s blog features two short memoirs, each a richly detailed and lovingly scripted reminiscence of a beloved parent—because, after all, we stand on their shoulders.— Editor
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Stories like the ones you are about to read satisfy our common need to share the experiences of our own past, our family histories and the singular events that helped create our individual life path and personal identity. And now we ask you to please share a part of your story in our upcoming Memoir Challenge. More details are given at the end of this week’s edition. — Editors
“Just a week or two, maybe less,” I heard my doctor quietly tell Gillian. She walked him to the door, wished him a good day, and came back to me. “You heard that, right Mom?” she asked, sniffling, holding the embroidered handkerchief her grandfather gave her when she was just a tot. And what a bright, energetic girl she was. She grew to be so accomplished. Married well as the old saying goes. Made me a grandmother to three amazing people. 
I had insomnia on Memorial Day weekend of 2016 and disregarded the advice not to check my phone.
Yogi Berra once advised: “when you get to a Y in the road, take it.” So that’s exactly what Kay and I have done. Oh, you say—but how do you know where you will end up? We don’t, and of course, that’s exactly the point. Our Y in the road was the decision to relocate to Colorado and take residence in a brand-new sparkling co-operative. So, if you are not sure what life in a cooperative is about—neither are we, but we are going to share with you what we know in this essay.
When my mother became a widow, I was 12 years old, living in Tallahassee, Florida. The morning of April 20, 1960, I walked into the kitchen just as my mother was hanging up the phone. “Daddy’s had a heart attack,” she said. I assumed she meant her father, Clough. No, it was my father who’d had the heart attack.
Yogi Berra, the greatest philosopher and sage of our time, put it this way: “The future ain’t what it used to be!” No, it’s not … it’s what we imagine it to be. How do I imagine the future? At almost age 80, I imagine a future that is not far off. Indeed, nearly five years ago I imagined a future that would put us in our forever house. Oh, how wrong I was. Why? Because I learned that it is near impossible to imagine a future that is different from the present. Let me clarify. 
Socrates is alleged to have said: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Was he talking to the elite of ancient Greece? Or are his words still applicable to us, even though we are separated by thousands of years?