Paula Dunning Author

Yesterday, I put up a Christmas tree. I’m not sure why I did that. A stab at normalcy, I suppose, though in fact there’s nothing normal about it. Between our annual winters in Mexico and Christmas with out-of-town kids, it’s been a decade or more since there’s been an actual Christmas tree in the house. And is it normal to share a house with just a largish tree and a cat?

A month or so ago I wrote a poem. Poetry is not my forte, and I won’t embarrass myself by sharing it. But the gist of it was that, even as I tried to prepare myself for what I knew was coming by imagining Jack gone, I knew that when that time actually came, I would be imagining him here.

I've never been good at carefully following world events that don't feel either close to me or earth-shattering. I read the headlines and have a sense of where the action is, but I skim over the details. Of course, I'm often wrong about the global impact what's happening in, say, Nepal or Lithuania, and then I'm scrambling to fill in the background. [ 162 more words ] https://echoriver.ca//ind/2020/09/19/the-boy-from-belarus/

What makes life worth living? For me, that question was the most important take-away from Atul Gawande’s Being Mortala must-read for anyone who is aging or has aging parents. And it’s a question that is increasingly on my mind. According to Gawande, it’s also a question that every physicians should ask patients during end-of-life treatment, when treatments themselves often take a toll, assuming that quantity trumps quality. [ 343 more words ] https://echoriver.ca//12/tough-question-maybe-the-toughest/

It is the summer of 1955, and I am about to have my first experience with a racially diverse world. https://echoriver.ca/pauladunni/index.php//17/summer-1955/

I’m watching the world I know teeter on the edge of disaster. Since there’s nothing I can do but watch and worry, I’m turning my attention to the things I can control. Like the furniture in our little cabin on the lake.