Ramblings of a Retired Mind Esther A Move and a Memory Seven years ago, my wife and I left Chicago—the only home we had ever known—and moved to Polson, Montana. Retirement and the pull to be near our daughter and four grandchildren brought us West. Leaving behind friends, family, and the familiar rhythm of city life was no small undertaking. Before the move, I found myself at my parents’ graves, saying a quiet goodbye. I knew they weren’t truly there, but I felt the need to honor their lives and the life I was leaving behind. Graves matter. They are touchstones of existence, proof that a life once was. Too many leave this world without such a marker. The Pull of Genealogy Decades ago, my wife and I became absorbed in genealogy. With much of the older generation already gone, we pieced together names, dates, photographs, and fragments of stories. We visited cemeteries, photographing gravestones as if gathering the last whispers of lives once lived. But some left no trace at...
Ramblings of a Retired Mind: The Samovar A few weeks ago, I opened my laptop and checked my email. My inbox was overflowing with offers—each more ridiculous than the last. One promised free samples , no strings attached—unless you count handing over all your personal information as a string. Another urged me to “sponsor” a lovely young woman fleeing the devastation in Ukraine. Just one click to connect—though if blondes aren’t your thing, brunettes were available too. Two messages later, I was greeted with a miracle product that guaranteed to banish every trace of lime and rust from my toilet. “Never use a toilet brush again!” it proudly proclaimed. Sifting through my inbox felt like panning for gold—only instead of nuggets, I kept pulling up spam and promotional sludge. An Email That Mattered About twenty messages down, I finally found an email from someone I knew: my cousin Alice. Alice is my father’s second cousin—technically my second cousin once removed—and the offic...
Ramblings of a Retired Mind Death Among Us Living With Death, Choosing Life Nothing stirs emotion quite like death. It is the one certainty we all share, yet it arrives without a timetable or warning. We never know when it will come—only that it will. We encounter death constantly. Sometimes it touches our lives directly; other times it reaches us through news headlines and distant tragedies. We witness loss involving strangers and people we love, and the difference between those two experiences is profound. The Distance of Public Tragedy Recent weeks have been filled with reminders of how fragile life can be. Acts of violence driven by hatred, live...
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