Protecting from the pain and loss that comes with all of life, preserving beauty for just a little while longer. These are the tasks of every caregiver.

Memories from birthdays past are a gift to ME as we celebrate again today.

Holding tight to the past is not a strategy that brings peace. I learned an important lesson from a caregiver friend.

Before I could ask her, my friend volunteered to solve the problem I couldn’t figure out how to handle. God answered my prayer when I hadn’t even prayed it!

Maybe you can use the advice from the magazine article I should have read several years ago: “The ultimate guide to building resilience so you can bounce back from tough times.”

Our nurturing weekend with friends has become an annual tradition. But when will it be time for us to give it up?

I’ll count it as a blessing that one gift of caregiving is seeing life with clearer perspective.

“It’s easy to stay in denial,” I admitted to him with quivering voice when he gave us the test results that day. And it’s still easy. Even easier, I’m deciding, to be in denial about being in denial.

Not only do most Americans worship success, but they are also haunted by failure. What does this mean for the caregiver when his world is reduced to helping someone survive?

If a picture can be worth a thousand words, maybe several pictures can take the place of the 750 or so I write here every Wednesday. Snapshots from a summer visit here . . .

Along with the tears have come several smiles. Even living with Alzheimer’s, I’m learning to nurture a sense of humor.

I never would have imagined the unparalleled rugged splendor comprising this corner of the Canadian Rockies. And I never would have planned to see it without Evelyn.

For the sake of memory, I want to share here a couple of the unbidden tributes to Evelyn that have come from readers of this blog.

“There’s no future in going down the ‘if-only’ rabbit hole,” she told me. And now, years later, I’m coming to understand what good advice that was.

Amid all the hubbub about abortion in the national conversation today, I’ve made a decision about myself and several others I know. Caregivers are pro-life.

As I’ve taken up the duties my wife handled without fanfare, I’m almost overwhelmed with how much I took for granted.

“I want to go see my parents,” she says, and I grieve a little, because the home she’s seeking just is not there.

How do you pray when you’re caring for someone with a progressive, debilitating disease? How do you pray for someone else facing a diagnosis that offers little hope? And, really, why pray at all?

No one wants to be less-than. No one wants to need help. But I’m learning that’s a mindset I just need to put behind me.

Report on a wonderful weekend: I’m learning to celebrate the glad while not denying the sad.