Other Side of 50

Next week we begin the heart-wrenching steps to place my father in a skilled-nursing facility in New Hampshire. Parkinson’s disease has taken its toll on him and on my mother, his caregiver. I am thankful this day was so long in coming— over 20 years from the date of his diagnosis—but still too soon for [...]

Today, widowed persons make up fully one-third of the U.S. population age 65 and older. The vast majority of them are women. Women are more likely than men to be widowed for two reasons. First, women live longer than men. And second, women tend to marry older men, although the gap has been narrowing. For [...]

QUESTION: I am in need of finding a new doctor. Do you have any suggestions about how to go about this search other than asking friends about the doctors they use? ANSWER: There are many reasons for someone to be looking for a new doctor. It could be because of dissatisfaction with the current doctor, [...]

Rituals are as old as humankind, and they transform over time as our culture changes. Consider the days when girls were considered the property of their fathers. Marriage was less about love than it was a business transaction—the father giving his daughter to another man and the man promising to support her. We still see [...]

I recently heard about a Twitter meme called #firstsevenjobs. A meme, if you don’t know, is an activity or image spread rapidly by internet users. The objective with this particular meme is to list your first seven jobs, starting from the first time you received pay from someone other than your parents. Some of the [...]

Certain charitable organizations are even more vital today than they were 20 years ago. For example, brain disorder nonprofits like the Alzheimer’s Association orAutism Speaks are serving a much larger percentage of the population today than when they were founded. Whether the originators of these organizations were visionary or were simply responding to a need [...]

My cocker spaniel, Rolo, has gradually lost most of his eyesight. When I’m in the kitchen, he stares intently at my feet because his vision is so poor. If I walk toward the refrigerator or the pantry he knows there might be a treat for him. I’m thankful no humans stare that closely at my [...]

Paid vacations, sick leave, health insurance and retirement plans are benefits companies commonly offer their employees. But, as part of their commitment to corporate philanthropy, many employers offer another benefit that is frequently overlooked: a matching gift program designed to support the nonprofits their employees are passionate about. Today, one-third of all employees in America [...]

On a recent trip home to New Hampshire I felt the yin and yang of family caregiving or, more specifically, the interconnected and sometimes opposing forces of the local family caregiver and the long-distance ones. While my mother is the primary caregiver for my father, my sister Carla, who lives less than 5 miles from [...]

Last week my sister asked me for a gift idea for a friend who was turning 50. As I began to brainstorm with her, my thoughts turned to how a person might feel on the occasion of a milestone birthday, whether it be 50, 60, 70, 80 or beyond. Do milestone birthdays change the way [...]