Tag: family
member name: dianne j.
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August 08, 2007 09:46 AM EDT --
Written March 4, 2004
My mother’s mother (Nana) came to live with us when my father went to jail. I was seven. Nana had a house back in Peabody, but no means of support. Mum thought she could use . . .
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February 14, 2008 04:16 PM EST --
This is the second of a 3-part series about my life at 35 Archbold Road. This part, although chronologically all over the place, provides background that I thought was needed before Part . . .
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September 13, 2007 08:10 AM EDT --
My first memories of coffee are as a child. When I would ask my mother for coffee (to make me feel grown up), she would make "gray coffee" — a mixture of cream and sugar with a little coffee . . .
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August 30, 2007 02:12 PM EDT --
As my due date approached, I was both elated and exhausted. Elated because, after three miscarriages (and five years), I was finally going to have the baby I wanted so badly. Exhausted because I was the . . .
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September 20, 2007 10:22 AM EDT --
When I was in fourth grade, my mother got fed up with the Catholic school we were attending. She hadn’t been happy with the previous Catholic school either. Religion was taught by fear and intimidation. . . .
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October 03, 2007 01:54 PM EDT --
I have never used Gather as a forum for ranting, but today I am so angry, I have to let it out somewhere. The longer my mother spends in a nursing home, the more experience I have with the Medicaid system, . . .
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July 11, 2007 09:11 PM EDT --
Funerals are for the Living
Written July 11, 2007
When I was young, I hated funerals. My first experience with the death of a loved one came when my grandmother (my Sito) died the day after my 13th birthday. . . .
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August 01, 2007 12:15 PM EDT --
Carol is my sister — my older sister. She is exactly nine days older than my older brother. I always wanted an older sister and when I was 17, I finally got one.
I met Carol at Western Michigan . . .
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September 01, 2007 10:59 AM EDT --
It was late September. I had just returned from vacation when the phone call came. A friend and I had visited Seattle, then flown to Juneau to catch an 11-day cruise back to Seattle, stopping all along . . .
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September 04, 2007 10:09 AM EDT --
As I sit here in my living room, empty but for this one chair and small folding table at which I work, the words of that song keep running through my head. "Closing time. Time for you to go out . . .
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September 19, 2007 10:58 AM EDT --
I graduated from college in 1967. I didn’t graduate until December because I changed majors in my senior year. I had been studying to be a social worker, but part of my epiphany was realizing that . . .
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September 27, 2007 08:53 AM EDT --
Today is Rose's 50th birthday. She is in Rome GA to go the Southern Women Writers Conference at Berry College, where she will read one of her stories today. I thought I would take this opportunity . . .
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March 16, 2008 11:55 AM EDT --
The very first memoir piece I wrote was for an assignment in the very first memoir-writing class I took. We were told to write about our childhood home. And thus began my career as an amateur memoir writer. . . .
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September 07, 2007 10:33 AM EDT --
Note: This is a companion piece to another I posted a couple of weeks ago (Home Sweet Hovel). I have spent the last two weeks trying to find good "after" pictures of the house. But with two moves . . .
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June 20, 2007 09:49 AM EDT --
Mum
There is no question that my mother is more responsible for the person I am than any other. As a child, I adored her. She was everything I was not, but wanted to be. I think many people envied . . .
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September 25, 2007 03:43 PM EDT --
Jane died Saturday night. Esther and Scott died last week. Three in one week. My heart aches.
If you have a loved one in a nursing home and you visit often, you can’t help but make friends with . . .
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December 11, 2007 02:18 PM EST --
I am far too busy right now to write anything new about Christmas, so I thought I'd post this tidbit about the frustrations of Christmas decorating that I wrote a couple of years ago. Anyone who . . .
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January 25, 2008 09:50 PM EST --
Last June, we took my mother on a cruise on the Michigan Princess, a faux paddle wheel steamboat that toodles up and down the Grand River (past our house as a matter of fact). We also took three of . . .
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August 29, 2007 05:05 PM EDT --
Lansing, Michigan
I was born in Massachusetts. My mother returned to her home town to have her first three children — and stayed a few months each time. So, although my birth certificate . . .
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April 16, 2009 03:03 AM EDT --
Easter celebrations in my family are second only to Christmas. For most of my life, I haven’t participated in these festivities because I always lived far away. If I came home for the holidays, it . . .
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