mom – Martin Simpson

This Week I am Feeling the Bittersweet Brevity of Life (posted 7/30/25)

This is going to be an unusual column for me, because I’m in a more contemplative frame of mind.

As you’re reading this, I’m on the road heading up to Tennessee and then Illinois. I’ll stop over in TN and see my mom and sister – today is mom’s 87th birthday – and then continue on to Illinois, where we’re having a family reunion on Saturday. My sister and her husband are bringing mom up on Friday, and this will be her last trip back home.

Regular readers know that my mom has been struggling with Alzheimer’s, as her mother did before her. She lives with my sister and her husband, and they have risen to the occasion beautifully. Mom is still as sweet as can be, so her care is less challenging than it often is for people whose loved ones’ cognitive decline can be marked by belligerence and inappropriate behavior.

But it still takes its toll, and while I’ve been lucky to be able to go up there frequently and give my sis and her hubby the chance for week-long vacations on a fairly regular basis, Rhonda has still been doing the lion’s share of the work with mom. We’ve recently come to the point where we’re looking at some memory care nursing home options for her.

Rhonda took her for a visit to a very nice one close to her home, and was impressed with it. Mom talked with the people there and took a tour, and at the end, she said that she really liked it, and asked if she could stay there now! Which lifted some of the burden.

Of course, the next day she’d forgotten that she’d been there. On the bright side, when Rhonda showed her brochure from the place, mom thought it looked great, and agreed that she’d like to go see it.

Our fear is that when the moving day comes, if mom gets upset or cries when we take our leave, that’s going to be brutal.

We’ve read a lot about the importance of routine and familiar surroundings to ease an elderly person’s disorientation and anxiety, which has motivated us to keep her at home for as long as possible. A while ago we arranged for someone to come in and stay with her several days a week, and that has helped Rhonda.

But over the last six months or so, mom doesn’t recognize the house or her room as hers, and every evening has involved reassuring her that she’s at home. She’s had a harder time going down for the night because she doesn’t like being alone, even if Rhonda is only 70 feet away, in her own bedroom.

The memory care center has two nurses on duty 24/7, and we hope that mom will likely recognize her room there as well or better than she does her own room now.

The whole situation is fraught, of course, and this weekend will be a bittersweet one. We know it will be her last visit to her old home state and hometown, and the area where she and dad raised us. We hope that she’ll recognize all the family who will be gathered there, and her old church, and her parents’ graves in a pretty cemetery overlooking the Illinois River.

We’re pretty sure that she’ll recognize the two-story brick house she lived in on Post Street, and from where she moved away to begin her adult life when she married dad in 1958. Because she’s been obsessing about that house, convinced that her folks just sold it, and she needs to get back there and help them clean it out before the new owners arrive to move in.

In addition to mom’s decline, a few months ago I got some tragic news from a good friend of mine. He and I met in grad school 40 years ago, and we’ve been close friends ever since. My wife and I have vacationed with him and his wife over the years, and I’ve gone up to Maine to see him at least a couple of times per year for the last 15 years or so. He and I both know that we outkicked our coverage when we managed to land our amazing wives, and have been greatly blessed in our marriages.

In April, doctors discovered that his 50-something wife had a glioblastoma brain tumor, and although they performed a successful surgery and she’s been getting the best care, that kind of tumor is heartbreakingly aggressive, and she probably has around a year to live. We’ve been praying for both of them, and I’d ask that if you’re so inclined, you would do the same.

We husbands know that we usually die younger than our wives, and we are generally prepared for that, in no small part because we know that most of us would be fairly helpless without our wives. So it seems especially cruel when a younger wife gets news that upends her life and family so shockingly.

She has two kids and a husband who love her, and a church family who is surrounding and supporting her. But still, there are no words.

On a much less weighty note – but one that still involves grieving – my much-loved Cassie the Wonder Dog seems to have entered the last stretch of her life. Since the late winter she has been gradually losing steam. She’s got the heart of a lion, but it’s in the body of a 13-year-old Aussie shepherd.

I’ve always taken nightly walks with her for around a mile and a half, which involved going to the edge of the UF campus and through the law school; I tried to teach her to bark and lunge at lawyers, but she’s more well-mannered that I am, and has charity for everyone.

In the late fall I noticed that she was missing a step – just a momentary stumble – maybe half a dozen times during the walk.

Around four months ago, she started to sit in the street when we got a couple of blocks from our house, until I turned around and we headed for home. For a while she would only do the whole law school route 4 times a week, and now we’re down to maybe once.

We have a steep set of stairs in our house, and she started to struggle getting up them, stopping several times on the way up. A couple of days ago I carried her up them for the first time.

There’s nothing dramatic going wrong, and no sickness or injury. Just aging. She’s getting regular check-ups, and we’ve got her on food for older dogs, and we’re giving her a little helping getting into and out of the car. Her eyes are getting slightly milky; it’s easier to see in the brown one than in the blue one.

I know. A dog, even a world-class one like Cassie, is not the moral equivalent of a mother, or a wife. But we’ve had her since she was a year old or so. She delighted my kids when they were young teenagers, and she’s co-existed with my wife’s cats like a champ.

She made the weekly trip up and back to Tennessee with me throughout a tough autumn 10 years ago, when my dad was dying, and I think he was almost as glad to see her as he was to see me every time we got there.

She’s going to leave a little hole in our world when she’s gone.

In the meantime, I’m spoiling her more than usual, and spending as much time with mom as I can, and praying for and talking to my buddy and his wife as often as I can.

All of these gut punches from mortality lately have got me thinking about Shakespeare, even more than usual. Because: English prof.

Sonnet 73 has always been one of my favorites, and as with most of Shakespeare, it gets richer and deeper, the more life experience I get. The speaker is an old man, and uses metaphors of the parts of a day and the seasons of a year to describe his mortality.

The two opening couplets:

“That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”

That last line always kills me.

I’m in my 60s, but I was a young man just a few months ago. I was king of the world, broke and living in a tiny apartment, my sights set on landing my smoke-show wife. Dad was still alive, and mom was fully herself. My buddy and his wife were newlyweds with kids and life and love ahead of them. Cassie was still a glint in her great-great-grand-dog’s eye.

And now, life is still amazing, and beautiful. But I don’t have to look too far or too hard to see “bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”

The final couplet sums things up the way only a God-touched poet could:

“This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.”

Yes!

And ouch.

I won’t have a column on Friday, and likely not on Monday either, while I’m the road, trying to savor the choirs before they become bare and ruin’d. I’ll be back with my usual goofiness and mockery next week, because so many good things are happening for our country, and our political opponents are making such entertaining fools of themselves.

And as jarringly dislocating as this is to say – considering what an elegiac column this has been – I look forward to getting back to it, and celebrating our victories in our national life, even as I’m simultaneously struggling with the impending losses of loved ones in my own.

But isn’t that our natural state? “In the midst of life, we are in death,” as the Book of Common Prayer says. (There is a great Gregorian chant on that theme, if you like that sort of thing, in Latin: “Media Vita in Morte Sumus.”) Despite the current storm clouds, I’ve got a Savior, and the hope of a life beyond this one.

Shakespeare knew it, and we’re all learning it: the sweetness of this life is heightened by the knowledge that it is fleeting.

So I’m going to make the most of this week, and I hope you will too.

A Good Mother’s Day, and Other Assorted Good News (posted 5/12/25)

I hope you all had a great Mother’s Day! We certainly did. Because my wife’s birthday is the 10^th, we had a combination birthday-Mother’s Day celebration for her on Saturday. Her two brothers and their wives came over, and we all went to a large animal sanctuary a few miles north of town.

It’s called the Carson Springs Wildlife Conservation Foundation, and they really do things right. They’ve got all the proper certifications and designations, and during our two-hour walking tour, we could see that they love those animals, and give them the kind of care they deserve. Their living areas are spacious, with appropriately sturdy fencing in a natural setting. (There are no concrete floors and jail-cell ambience here.) They’ve got lots of big cats, plus hyenas, lemurs, and a lot more.

I know that many people can go and see lions, tigers and cheetahs and still go through life as atheists or agnostics. But I don’t get it. I can’t look at an adult male lion without thinking of C.S. Lewis’ Aslan, or Biblical lion imagery (the Lion of Judah, roaring like a lion, the boldness of a lion, even the adversary, “prowling around like a lion, seeking someone to devour”).

And the story of “Daniel in the Weasels’ Den” would work for no one.

On the other hand, I can see how a materialist could still appreciate these animals, just for their ingenious fitness for their environment. The jaguar is so perfectly camouflaged. The cheetah can go from 0-60 in 3 seconds, and he looks like it, even when he’s standing still.

The hyenas aren’t as handsome, but are fascinating to watch. Our tour guide pointed out that their back legs are shorter than their front legs, which allows them to sprint backwards while keeping their eyes and teeth facing a pursuer.

In the SEC, we call that “a shutdown corner.”

Because: God and football, two essential parts of life.

That night I caught the SNL monologue – only because one of my favorite actors Walton Goggins was the host – and saw his very touching tribute to his mom. She was in the audience, and when he called her up on stage to dance with him, it was enough to make even a flinty stoic like myself get a little misty eyed.

(Goggins is in The White Lotus, which is too weird for me to watch. But he was in Justified, which is arguably the best series this century: amazing actors; characters and writing from the great Elmore Leonard; and fantastic Kentucky-ness everywhere you look.)

On Sunday I called my world-class mom. Regular readers know that she is beset with Alzheimers, but is still soldiering on. For the sake of new readers, I’ll re-tell the story that best sums up my mom.

She lives with my sister and her husband in Tennesee, and after she had a mild stroke two years ago, she was unsteady on her feet for a few days after she came home. My sister told her that she was going to sleep in her bed with her the first night or two, so that she could help steady her if she had to get up in the night.

When they had been in bed for about 15 minutes, mom rolled over and saw Rhonda there. Seeing that mom was confused – in fact, she’d forgotten the mild stroke already – Rhonda said, “Remember? I’m going to sleep with you tonight.”

Mom said, “Oh, okay.” Then after a moment, she said, “Did you have a bad dream?” THAT’s a mom: 86 years old, and still taking care of the kids!

When I called her yesterday, she said she’s doing great, because that’s her standard response. I thanked her for being a great mom most of the time – there is some controversy in the family as to whether she spoiled my sister too much 😊 – and she thanked me for being a great son all of the time.

Thus proving that her mind and memory are still strong!

Later this week, I’ll be going up to see her and my sister, on my way to Illinois and another traditional May trip with two of my cousins. (New readers can go to “Road Trips” on my website and read about our trip on Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica in a ’76 Caddy Eldorado several years back, followed by our “Lap the Lake” trip around Lake Michigan.)

(You can also see a 6-year-old picture of my mom and I there, in stylish headgear. She’s the one in the birthday hat; I’m the one in the turkey chapeau.)

This year we’re going to Harper’s Ferry, with stops along the way in Cleveland (for the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame), Pittsburgh, Gettysburg, Antietam and the Shenandoah National Park, along with anywhere else that we stumble across along the way.

All of that being said, I don’t have time to comment on all the good things that have happened in the world over the last couple of days. But ticking off even a short list should make us grateful.

India and Pakistan seem to have pulled back from a nuclear war. The Catholics have a new pope. There are positive signs on the tariff front. Letitia James is so panicked about the karmic arse-whipping she’s about to get that she has painted herself bronze and is trying to hide in plain sight on top of a pedestal in Times Square.

Trump has intimidated Hamas into releasing their last American hostage. (Though if they don’t immediately release the rest of their hostages, I hope Israel descends on them like the Lion of Judah, if the Lion of Judah had exploding pagers and groin-seeking missiles and whatever other weapons it takes to wipe every Hamas terrorist off the map).

By the way, you may remember that American hostage’s name from all the time the Dems spent wailing about his illegal captivit—

Oh no, wait. They haven’t mentioned his name, because they’ve been too busy rending their garments over wife-beating, human-trafficking, gang-banging illegal thugs like Kil-Mar.

Speaking of which, Democrat politicians never fail to keep failing, as four of them did when they tried to illegally force their way into an ICE facility in New Jersey last Friday. A Dem mayor got arrested, and more arrests are likely coming, as DHS reviews video of the incident. Which was exactly like The Great Escape (1963), except that instead of brave POWs trying to break out of a Nazi camp, it was a clot of bumbling, deranged commies trying to release a bunch of violent thugs into America.

Because: self-detonators gotta self-detonate!

Finally, I have to mention Maine high school teacher JoAnna St. Germain, who appears to be a miraculous agglomeration of the DNA of Jasmine Crockett, Ilhan Omar, AOC, and Lil’ Davy Hogg, all rolled up in one.

This “educator” took to Facebook to call on the Secret Service to “take out” the president and “every sycophant he has surrounded himself with.” She later clarified that she’s “not talking about assassinating a president.”

But wait. Didn’t she just— Oh, read the next sentence: “A president is a person duly elected by the American people.”

Get it? That thing in November wasn’t a legitimate election, because any election in which the Left doesn’t get what it wants is by definition illegitimate. Thus, Trump is a fascist dictator, and should be murdered.

She seems nice.

She’s got social media pics and posts that check ALL the boxes:

Crazy eyes? (You betcha.)

Odd hair? (Several variations, the most recent of which appears to be a shaved/very short ‘do. If she is undergoing cancer treatment, I sincerely apologize for the mockery. But… NOPE.)

Pics from protests featuring badly-made, hand-written signs? (Oh yeah.)

Do those signs have way too many words, heading off in multiple, incoherent directions? (Need you even ask?)

How about vulgarity? (If a big “F” bomb counts, then yes.)

Any pics of the rainbow flag? (Obviously.)

Does it have the big, ugly, triangular thing on it, indicating that just 5 or 6 made-up genders aren’t nearly wacky enough? (That’s a bingo.)

The Secret Service confirmed that they are aware St. Germain’s creepy posts, but no charges have been filed against her yet. On the bright side, she is probably now one of the leading Democrat candidates for 2028.

And “Crockett/St. Germain” has a nice “JD-Vance-walking-in-accompanied-by-‘Hail to the Chief’” vibe to it, don’t you think?

Have a good week! If you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favor and watch Justified, and if you’ve got a little donation money lying around and want to support some of God’s creatures, Carson Springs is a 501-C-3 non-profit, and can be found at http://www.carsonspringswildlife.org.

And don’t forget…

Hamas delenda est!

Looking Forward to the New Year, While Enjoying the Last of the 12 Days of Christmas (posted 12/31/24)

I hope that you all had a great Christmas! I’m still enjoying the holiday, since the 12 Days of Christmas don’t end until January 6^th, with the Feast of the Epiphany. This January, I’ll be combining the religious and the secular, when I celebrate the Feast of the Righteous Schadenfreude on the 20^th.

If the bourbon holds out, I’ll probably compose a speech for the occasion. I’ve already got a title (“Our long national nightmare is over!”) and a first line (“Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this Orange sun…”)

We had Christmas here at home, with both of my wife’s brothers and their wives coming over. Among my favorite gifts were two coffee mugs: one with a pic of Trump and Vance on it (from my wife), and one from my liberal brother-in-law with the words, “I love when I wake up in the morning & Donald Trump is President.”

You know my bro-in-law is a good egg when he’s willing to go against all his instincts to buy that mug for me! I don’t know if I could have brought myself to buy him a Que Mala mug if 11/6 had gone horribly wrong. (And if I did, it would probably have been sarcastic and mean-spirited. Like, “Nice job! You’ve ruined everything. Thanks for destroying the country!”)

My wife, daughter and I drove up to Tennessee the day after Christmas to spend four days with my mom, sister and her husband, and we really had a great time, even though there was a melancholy undertone because of mom’s progressing Alzheimer’s. She is still herself, and sweet as can be, even as time has become a winding current that she enters and emerges from unpredictably.

Not long after we arrived, she asked me when her brother Joe was going to get there. (She’s the last survivor of four siblings, and Joe’s been gone for almost 10 years.) My sister tells me that at least a couple of times in the last month, mom has come out of her room early in the morning, nicely dressed and worrying that she’d be late for work. One morning she said she hoped she hadn’t missed the bus for school.

But her maternal instincts are still there, as strong as ever. Regular readers may remember that after she’d had a small stroke last year, my sister had told her that she’d sleep in mom’s bed with her for the first several nights back home, since she was still unsteady on her feet and would need some help getting to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

By bedtime mom had forgotten the conversation, and as Rhonda was tucking her in, she had to remind her that she was sleeping in her bed that night. Mom said, “Oh, okay.” After a pause, she said, “Did you have a bad dream?”

Each night we were there, mom got up after she’d gone to bed, and pulled a bunch of blankets out of her closet and carried them out to me, asking if we were going to be warm enough. Two nights she did it twice, 10 minutes apart. The last time, as I was putting her back into bed, she looked unhappy with me. She whispered, “Who was that woman in your bed?”

Because I’m still basically a child, I said, “How can you expect me to remember all of their names?”

For just a moment she started to scowl, but then her expression changed, and she slapped my hand, saying, “Oh, that’s Karen. I know!” And she giggled like she used to when I was a kid, and she was a young mother.

It’s like watching a loved one walk into a foggy twilight. With each step, you see less of her, and she of you. The fog cyclically thickens and thins, and one moment you can look into her eyes and she’s fully present and clear, but you know that with each step, the fog may be swirling or lifting, but evening is steadily advancing.

Still, we really did have a great time. One of the gifts we got mom was a big puzzle made from a picture of all of us at my daughter Katie’s wedding two years ago. She helped put the puzzle together with my wife, daughter and sister, but her focus ebbed and flowed. They left the last three pieces for mom to put in, completing the puzzle, and she loved that.

We played a game of Christmas-themed charades that had us laughing ourselves to tears. (To get the flavor of the game, you can go to the old picture of mom and me on my site, Martinsimpsonwriting.com. Yes, she’s wearing a party hat and I’m wearing a turkey hat, and it wasn’t anybody’s birthday, or Thanksgiving. I have no explanation.)

At one point Karen drew the card, “The ghost of Christmas yet to come,” and she chose to do a Yeti impersonation to get to “yet.” (She got up on her toes and did a lumbering walk that was half Frankenstein and half Joe Biden, if he had better posture and longer arms.) And my daughter got it!

At one point I drew “Holiday Inn,” an old Christmas movie that nobody else had heard of. So I was reduced to trying to act out a mid-range hotel chain that has nothing to do with Christmas. (Nobody got it.) Later I got “Away in a Manger” and for some reason started by indicating it was five words. When they finally got that one and pointed out that it is actually four words, I counted again, then pointed out that I’m a hilarious genius, not a math genius.

Once when it was mom’s turn, she was laughing so hard that she had to go to the bathroom before looking at her card. Did I already mention that I am basically a child? Because I looked at mom’s card – “snowball fight” – and told everyone to yell it out as soon as she started to do anything.

She came back from the bathroom, looked at her card, then put it back down. As soon as she started to cup her hands together, we all yelled in unison, “Snowball fight!!”

And she looked as shocked as she had been when she momentarily thought I had stashed a mistress in my bed in the guest room at Christmastime!

We’re back home now, and looking forward to a new year more than I have in quite a while. I’m still so relieved and grateful for the election results, and I hope that you are too.

Happy New Year!