“I remind you, your parent isn’t actively dying.” The woman in charge of the assisted living facility where my mother resides spoke crisply as if intending to discourage my request for a visit. I wasn’t discouraged.  By now, I’d lost patience with the medical parsing of wor

I met a friend for coffee at a neighborhood shop last week. We hadn’t gotten together for some time and I’d missed our chats. The minute she walked through the door I could see the malaise that hung about her. Outwardly, she looked well. Her hair was recently trimmed and she was s