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Just after I was named auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles (LA), Archbishop Gomez, my new boss, told me to get the Waze app for my iPhone.
He explained that it was a splendid way to navigate the often impossible LA traffic. I followed his instructions and have indeed used the app on practically a daily basis since my arrival on the West Coast.
Q I am concerned about my mother. She is in her early 80s and has enjoyed relatively good health.
She has a little arthritis but does not let that stop her from doing most everything she wants to do.
Since my father died several years ago, she has been living in an apartment complex for older adults. She has friends and seems to enjoy many of the social activities offered by the apartment management.
My concern is that lately when I visit she seems sad. For lack of a better term, she seems to have lost her “spark.”
I tried to talk to her about the upcoming holidays and she said we could discuss it later. This is a woman who used to begin Christmas shopping in July! I ask her what is going on but she dismisses the question.
I don’t know how to help her. Do you have any ideas? (From a daughter in Dodgeville)
Q I am concerned about my mother. She is in her early 80s and has enjoyed relatively good health.
She has a little arthritis but does not let that stop her from doing most everything she wants to do.
Since my father died several years ago, she has been living in an apartment complex for older adults. She has friends and seems to enjoy many of the social activities offered by the apartment management.
My concern is that lately when I visit she seems sad. For lack of a better term, she seems to have lost her “spark.”
I tried to talk to her about the upcoming holidays and she said we could discuss it later. This is a woman who used to begin Christmas shopping in July! I ask her what is going on but she dismisses the question.
I don’t know how to help her. Do you have any ideas? (From a daughter in Dodgeville)
MADISON — The Madison Area Chapter of The Compassionate Friends is having their 17th annual Worldwide Candle Lighting Service on Sunday, Dec. 8, at St. Peter Catholic Church, 5001 N. Sherman Ave. (across from Cherokee Country Club), at 6 p.m. The Compassionate Friends is a support group for parents who have lost a child/children.
As soon as I heard my wife burst out the bathroom door that sunny spring day, I knew she was pregnant. I hadn’t yet opened my eyes but I didn’t need to. Her footsteps told me everything.
My wife didn’t have any particular reason to believe she was pregnant. But after a couple years of praying for a second child, I’d grown accustomed to Laura taking random pregnancy tests — hoping against hope that somehow that second pink line would appear. This time it did.
The days ahead were as joyful as any we’d experienced in our life together. We beamed when friends who knew of our struggle with secondary infertility congratulated us and we devoured all the fetal development materials we could find, eager to mark every last milestone in our baby’s nascent life.
