with apologies to Nora Ephron, who feels bad about her neck

I feel really bad about my legs. Thay have served me well, and we have had  mutual respect for each other. Only twice did I fall and really hurt them: once on a tennis court, once rushing to get a frozen yogurt cone and tripping over a planter..And, of yes, up the steps frpm the garage to the house at Harmons, helping to clean up the Bloody Mary remains. On July 4th.

They are medium-looking legs; no one ever said "wow. look at them gams", but no one averted their eyes because I had thinny, stick-like legs, either. Or did I wear long skirts or pants to disguise them. They were just my legs and they suited me fine.

Until I hit 91. And it's not as much that they look much worse, but they have mostly stopped working. During the day, with considerable help, I can use the walker for the short 26 steps to the bathroom. It's 26 when I am not shuffling or mincing along, but walking like a real person.On a walker.

At night, that is a different story. Back and forth in the wheel chair! I hate that. And I wish my legs would reconsider our happy, long relationship, and show a little gumption and let me get up and go.

Euthnanized Enthusiasm

In the '60's, when I was in my '40's, we plaintively asked, "Where have all the flowers gone?" Now I am in my '90's. and we are well into the next century, I plaintively ask, "Where has all my enthusiasm gone"?" I am too lethargic by half, and, once a political wonk, I now, hardly, my dears, give a  damn.

I miss getting excited, I miss getting involved, I miss being passioante about something-- about anything. (Even at 91, I miss being passionate about passion, itself.) And all of this, at long last, is what aging is.

The election, tomorrow, would have had me worked up into a fine lather. I definitely have my preferences, but not enough to stay up into the wee hours of the morning. I certainly prefer Strickland to Kasich; I prefer Fisher to DeWine; it may be close ( the Governor, anyhow), but I am not going to want to escape to Canada or Outer Mongolia even if my candidates lose. Even when Ohio State loses.

Maybe it is alright to smother my enthusiasm; maybe, finlly, at my age, I have a little perspective on life.

I liked the other me better; but this is the me I've got.

Time is a terrible thing to waste

This is in the nature of being a confession. (Note: I am even equivocating on the subject matter). So let me just come clean. This is a confession. I have been a lazy bum for almost a week.

For ninety years, I was an industrious little bee, bed-ridden or not. At 91, I caved ( temporarily, I hope) and just laid back and closed my eyes at every available opportunity. I know I am of an age when I can forget chores, and goals, and deadlines, but I have lived too long with a to-do list to be suddenly faced with a blank note bad. It is bad for the mind and worse for the soul.

Last Friday night, after I dozed through Washington Week, I didn't know what to do with myself. My son had sent me a stack of wonderful books for my birthday, and I felt too dumb to start reading them. I'm not talking Proust (I've always been too dumb to really understand him); I'm talking Alter and Remnick; wonderful writers I thoroughly enjoy. So, I firgured I'd watch an old NCIS.

My brother had told me, a few years ago, that these are good episodes to kill an hour. To kill time... ( kill time!) horrors, that is a punishable infraction. It worked, and I fell in love with Mark Harmon, my new friend, " Leroy Jethro Gibbs". It's like pistachio nuts, you know you can't eat just one pistachio nut. If you don't get that, it's because it is an inside joke--Abbie and Gibbs and mine.

Well, I watched an episode I had watched twice before, where the Iranian mother-in-law and Mike, Gibbs' mentor, sit on the same deck and watch their joint grandchild playing with her mother.

Three viewing of that is only one too many--- but here I am, back in the land of the living.

Thank the good Lord. Blessed be.

Tough Love

Who knew that so much love can do you in (temporarily)?

Or that I could tell a lie, continuing to post as Wedeb90)?

I did and I do. Full confession.

My son, Tim and his daughter, Hannah, my youngest grandaughter, came for a pre-birthday celebration on October 14. We ate our version of the city's finest food: Rubino's pizza, City Barbecue, Block's bagels and Bob-bob Evans' chicken and noodles. My twenty year old could be six again, and I could be seventy. Only my digestive system knew for sure, and it said, ""Phyllis, you idiot, act your age, "but I wasn't listening. It was worth the small digestive price I paid.

By Wednesday, October 20, when wedeb90 became wedeb91, I thought I was ready for whatever small celebration would come along. Wrong. No one, not even Mother Theresa, could be so overcome with caring and goodwill. Twelve full hours of calls, gifts, flowers, phone calls, Facebook messgaes, e-cards....

After D.G, brought me Guiseppi's spinach lasagna, courtesy of lovely Vesna, I was completely out of steam. Yesterday, I was back to square one, where  Hospice had come in. I was diappointed in myself, and my unforgiving body. I couldn't walk. My legs locked in under me; I needed the wheel chair to get to the bathroom. My hands kept shaking. I could barely talk to my children. I slept almost all day, and then all night, opening my eyes long anough to watch Gray's Anatomy. ( I guess I thought it would make me feel better, to see people in worse shape than I.)

When I woke up this morning, I was fine. Back on the walker, like any good quarter back, staying "in the pocket", instead of hanging on for dear life at a 90 degree angle.

I didn't age 10 years overnight. I feel like the spring chicken I am, and you wil, I hope, be hearing from me as wedeb90 when I might actually be wedeb95.

Blessed be.

My friend, Alice

 In the city where I live, where many of my friends live, there is no reason to identify a person as "my friend". In the ever-shrinking circle of wagons that protect me, no known enemy approaches, and we are all friends. By my age, all those who have no particular interest in me and my well-being, have all dropped away, out of sight.

But after I have called Alice, in Massachusetts, I always explain that I have spoken to "my-friend-Alice". She has only been in Columbus once, and that was Christmas vacation of my freshman year in college. 1938. Not one person who met her then is still alive.

Yesterday, I reached her answering machine. We hadn't talked since I went into Hospice care, and it seemed strange that she wasn't home. Ten minutes later she returned my call: she was still in Rockport, at a house on the beach there. It had been her parents house, where she, her sister and brother- in- law live during the summer. She has her own apartment in town and she is returning there next week.

"How are you"?, I asked, of course. "Well, I'm fine" she answered, except I had to have some surgery on my eye this summer, and so I am just seeing out of one eye, but that's ok"was  her answer.

"My friend, Charlotte from California from kindergarten came to visit", she told me. "I remember Charlotte", I told her, even though we had never met.

"Anything else new?", I queried. "I'm still doing a little counseling on the phone; just a few clients" . She is almost 91 years old, still working. Still of good cheer, a laugh peeking through her voice.

Alice got her MSW after her three boys were fairly grown; her nice, MD husband had died very young, and she has been a working single mother for quite a while. One of her sons became a doctor, too.

Plus, she must still be beautiful; she always was.The last time I saw her was at a college reunion nearly ten years ago, and, mirror, mirror on the wall, she was the fairest of us all. 

And so we touch base, and I feel refreshed and restored.

She is my friend Alice.  I confer the words as a title, which I bestow with respect and love. 

Wede I be

 It suddenly dawned on me that you know that wedeb90, but, for many of my new friends, you know little more about me than that I am in Hospice care, have a bad (but loving) heart and observe life, primarily, from my bed. Which has its benefits, believe it or not.

What you cannot know is: once I was as busy as anybody in town. I truly love my community, and it is much more exceptional than is generally assumed. Quantifiably exceptional. We have the number #1Lbrary in the country and the number #1 Zoo, among other bragging rights.  I have been a lifetime volunteer, and even worked for the Mayor and the city at one time.

I keep referring to my DD, which translates to Designated Daughter, and her nom de plume is D.G. Fulford. Do I have you utterly confused yet? Well, she and I wrote a book together called Designated Daughter, the bonus years with Mom. She describes the last twelve years since she moved home from Nevada to be my ever-ready, ever-steady other half. I contributed my own reactions to her actions, and the book (excuse the commercial) is available in hard back wherever books are sold. Or in your libraries in the many countries where so many of your reside.

All the other clues I drop about me and my lucky life give me, I hope, form and shape. Just know how appreciative I am, and how much your comments mean to me.

My new fall wardrobe

A nip is definnitely in the air, although we are having a few delightfully warm days, every other week or so. But I have to put my mind, and my daughter, on what I need. I day-dream about a new purse, or a pair of shoes; wouldn't an up-to-date blazer be nice? (Or does anyone still wear blazers?)

It's all make believe, this coversation between me and me; I really need new nightgowns. I have one flannel gown that was mistakenly put in the dryer after the first wearing, so if you look at the too short sleeves, you might think the wearer is a growing girl. That is, until you look at the arms themselves. They scream "old woman".

So, my really fine DD ( have I said often enough what a good daughter she is?) went up to the mall and began the search.She found only four in my size, and brought them to me so I could choose two. It was easy: the two extra small, from one store,  fit;  the plain small from the other store were too tight.


So I am happy with my new fall wardrobe: pink. to match my pink room, (foolishly girlish, I'm afraid), a room no self-respecting man would live in. But no man except my family enters, anyhow. And the only man I really want to enter has been gone twelve long years.


The other gown is white, with a bluish-gray design, with red cardinals, the official bird of the state of Ohio. That's my scarlet and gray football nightgown. How very, very well-dressed I will be every Saturday.


And she brought me a box of gingersnaps, too.


Blessed be.

Really, really who am I?

 A few weeks ago, my daughter was sick; she ached all over, especially her shoulder. She tried holistic medicine, and then main-stream medicine: x-rays, blood work up, EKG. As she continued to feel under the weather, I felt more and more helpless. I could not even go the few miles to her house, and there was not one thing I could do once I got there.  (Needless to say, she is well again, or I wouldn't even be writing this.)

I am extremely lucky to have care-givers in times of crisis. Rosie is the laughing, happy girl from Jamaica, who has been in the United States, on her own, since she was eighteen. She is educated in the hospitality industry and has worked at Disney in Orlando and the Westin Hotel. While working there, and during the times she works for me, she graduated from college with a  degree in the management of medical recocods.  Her mommy, in Montego Bay, calls her at least once a day.

Tall and beautiful Lise came from Rwanda.She worked at Delphi in Dayton for a few years, and when they went belly-up, she was able (it's a long story, with a long series of pitfalls) to get her tuition paid at a  nursing school in Columbus. In a few months, she will be an LPN. She would like to continue on for her RN, but that is one tough road..... Her parents call her every day,  and after she talks to her siblings, she is homesick.

As I fall asleep at night, I think about Mrs. Gardner in Jamaica and Mrs. Urejani in Rwanda.We are thousand of miles apart; we have never met. But I know that, at their very core we are the same people. We are mothers.  Make that a capital M.

What passes for exitement

 It was around 5:30 p.m., and, as usual, the heighborhood was quiet; the weather was clear, my dinner was started in my old electric overn, and ---poof, with no warning, the electricity went off.The small, little sound that I heard and ignored, was, of course, the sound of a blown transmitter. I can't evn count the number of times this has happened to me in my 90 years.

We have had outages that lasted so long we had to empty our refrigerators and freezers. We have had outagea so severe water pipes froze and I styed at a motel for two nights. I used to even enjoy the outages when dinner was in the oven, and I could say to Bob, "Good, let's go out to dinner".

Bu this was my first outage, stuck in an electric bed and unable to go anywhere. The house would get cold, but I have extra blankets. The food -in the oven wouldn't cook but the food in the fridge was still available; jellied consomme, sour cream, and sliced turkey for a sandwich. The only real concern was the electric bed ,which was frozen in the sitting position.But, c'm on, Phyllis, I thought, we have other beds.

Suddenly, just as quietly as it went out, the lights came on and the electricity was back.

But the cable was out, too; no phone, no TV.Then I remembered an old analog TV we had.. and I had gotten a converter for that. Just for  an"emergency" like this, I guess. So I watched CBS, which is my Tuesday night channel of choice, with a new" NCIS" and  "The Good Wife,"

As I went to sleep at 11, the regular TV had set itself to the correct time. I didn't even try my cell phone to call my landline.

So how would I react if there actually was some excitement? I'll let you know if it ever happens!

Legally Legal

The other day, I discovered that my handicapped parking permit had expired in July. Not that it should matter, because I am going no where--no where, at all.

 But what if I did need to go to a doctor in an emergency, which I won't, because I am in Hospice. But, really-- what if?  And my daughter found a handicap space,  she got me in the wheel chair, and we had no permit and .....

One of the deadly sins to me, is to use a space to which you are not entitled; interpreted broadly, it is fair to say that I value integrity above all other virtues. And so for good measure, I contacted the Ohio Bureau of Motor vehicles. (Permit division).

(They answer their phone, which is more than I can say for their drivers' liscence division. Mine is due to renew on October 20, and because there is no circumstance in the world to get me behind the wheel, I do need a valid ID, I suppose.)

Back to the permit people. I gave them the id# on the card, and explained that I was sure I had had the request  to my doctor before July rolled around, and that he had returned it. Needless to say, I was a little preoccpied at the time. They had no record of this, so they will send me a new request form. Don't hold your breath, it will be sent in two to three weeks time.

P.S. I reached Susan Hospice on Friday afternoon and the table was delivered at 7:00 p.m. It's working great.

My Space

It is not that I am being crowded out by people, or that I feel I deserve more space than I have;  I have a whole bed to myself...even a whole room.

 I am being hedged in by my communication devices: the bed control, the tv control, the phone, the laptop, the thesaurus, magazines, books, a little pile of papers that need tending to, a small baggie with my compact and lipstick...

I am having a hard time thinking, let alone writing. If my house has not always been impeccably clean, it was always neat. Clutter drove me crazy. (Only one of our children inherited the "neatness" gene; the other two thrive in disarray,) I still have a lot I want to say, but by the time I get the correct device in my surrounding (bed)scape, I want to pick up the magazine at hand, instead.

I was talking( complaining) to my Designated Daughter about this, when we both remembered a table Hospice had lent Bob, with a leg that slides under the bed and the table top can be moved over or beside the bed.

I just called Sue, my awesome nurse, and one will be delivered to me! 

 I probably won't write any more often, but I will be much more comfortable doing it.

The worst words

A number of years ago, when the grandchildren were in their teens, we were talking about some long-forgotten subject, that caused me to comment: "you know what I think are the four worst words in the English language: " I think you should.'" It gets under my skin for anyone to think he/she knows better than the person to whom they are speaking, what the person should do. What is wrong with "Would it be a good idea?" or "what if you try x or y".

A grandson spoke up to add that his worst words were "shut up". He hadn't heard it at home, I'm sure. Those words were also verboten in our house. It was a contemporary, with bad manners. And then another grandchild added, "I think the worst words are ' you dirty liar'".

Which lead us all to the worst sentence: "I think you should shut up, you dirty liar," a families' words of wisdom that is exactly what the family does not believe.

I think it is a kind of funny anecdote, worth blogging about. I'm sure every family has words they choose  to live by, by not using them.

And I need to push the "dislike" button for one of my "heard on TV" phrases. There are weather men, when referring to an area, say "And that's where the tornado touched down at." Edwin Newman, we miss you.

Thank you, again and again, for your kind reponses to my BBC video. I wish I could answer each and everyone. I think I shoud--- but I cannot, But I have read and relish every single one. You are eloquent and kind... and there a quite a few of you! 

Setting the bar

All of you wonderful readers have mde me realize that. even though I was assuming that I was writing for my own amusement and pleasure, there are people all over the world who now will search out this simple little blog.

And my thoughts and my fingers and my sense of humor are kind of freezing up, even though it is a beautiful day in my neighborhood. I am distracted by the men, pounding and cutting and repairing the deck across the way. A huge tree fell across the deck, not last Thursday, when we had ten tornados touch down in Ohio, near, but not on, us. This accident happened in an earlier circular high wind, and it looks as if it almost took out not only their deck, but a beautiful sculpture in the yard by Alfred Tibor, who survived the Nazi death camps and made the horror of them live on with the anguish of his stylized figures.

I do not want to disappoint you. Even more, I do not want to disppoint myself with careless writing; I have already inserted and erased commas all over the place. I will read this over and decide whether I just have the late Sunday afternoon blahs, or whether I need another day to get over myself.

These two days have been a lot for a 90 year old blogger to comprhend. But she knows enough to realize that such a miracle as the BBC has wrought happens pretty infrequently.

Next blog, I think I will try to trace back to the beginning, how this all began. We may have to go back to Adam and Eve.

On being overwhelmed

To all of you who saw the BBC post of this 90 year old blogger and took the time to write me from all over the world: I, from whose mouth and fingers words usually pour out, I am nigh on to speechless.Thank you, thank you everyone. 

And thanks to Daniel Sieberg and his crew for such sensitive editing... and for wanting to come to Columbus to meet DG and me in the first place.

I knew that the media's reach was far and wide --but the speed in which I got comments from all over the world was incredible.

With gratitude to all of you. May the days ahead be good for all of you. I send my best wishes.

walking on Hospice Air

This morning, D.G. and I were invited to be guests on All Sides with Ann Fisher. D.G. went to the studio, and I joined the conversation on the phone. If talking about Hospice and end of life issues can be a blast, this one was.

Ann is a very knowledgeable and gracious host, and her interview with Drs. Morrison and Jackson that preceeded us was a treasure trove of information that had to have been helpful to all those listening. D.G. and I were just ourselves, overflowing with gratitude for all of our experiences with Hospice Care.  And to Ann for affording us the opportunity to tell her listeners what Hospice does to give a family peace of mind, a sense of calm, and the knowledge that help from nurses is but a phone call away, 24/7.

I'm about to take a nap-- after all, those of us in the public eye :-) need to get our rest. But first, I want to post this on my Facebook page--if only to beat D.G. to the draw!

And I learned a medical term for what drove me to the end-of-life conversation: it's called "intractable nausea."

the moving finger writes, and having writ moves on...

My Uncle Harry used to quote that phrase, which I have since learned is from the Rubyyat of Omar Khyyam (thanks Google). I have no recollection of why or when Uncle Harry said it, but I thought it was both out of the blue and out of context. As I had the urge to write a wedeb90blogspot today, those words become exactly apporopriate, and I understand them. I have been writing--something, anything-- for years, and I can no more stop writing than I can breathing, which, thanks to all the good care I am geting, I seem to continue to do, successfully.

I think what prompted this blog was looking over some of the 70 blogs I have posted since December, 2009. Why did Sir Edmund Hillary climb Mount Everest, a reporter asked.  "Because it was there," Hillary replied. And that is the simple answer as to why I am a blogger : the blogger dashboard is there in front of me, bare, and the moving finger writes.

My blogs, and my Designated Daughters blogs, are going public (in her case, puiblic-er, she's on Womens" Day blog spot three times a week). We are going to be on Ann Fisher's show on Tuesday, August 31 in the 11:00 a.m. hour,on WOSU radio when the subject will be Hospice care. I know two physicians will be talking from 11:20 to 11:40. and then D.G. and I will be heard, she in the studio, me, at home, in bed.

We are experienced in the subject. Bob was in Hospice care for three months beforr he died; I was in once before, and I "graduated" with the help of a wonderful  physical therapist.  This time, I am in as long as the afore-mentioned-heart keeps beating. And I am at its mercey--- and in the hands of the Lord.

It's not the heat. it's my stupidity

It is really hot and muggy; Ohio at it's summer worst. Plus, I hate, hate, hate air-conditioning. But how callous and unfeeling of me to complain. There are hundreds of people out there who have no air-conditioning to turn on. Our brave troupes are sweltering in Afghanistan. It is terrible enough that our brave troupes are in Afghanistan at all.

I'm up to my old self, again; bitching about circumstances I have no right to bitch about, and then feeling guilty. If all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players, what is my role? Cranky old dame? Normal for 90? Or just aching for a spell of lovely weather?

That's it! I am aching for a lovely, breezy, 75 degree afternoon with the chance to veg-out on the deck with a wonderful book. (The last wonderful book I read was the Imperectionists. It was so good I read it twice.)

That breezy afternoon ain't gonna' happen. I faithfully watch our TV weatherman, who looks to be about 19 years old, and I am so unamused at his boyish enthusiasms that I pay scant attention, primarily because he loves to talk about rain; chances of, possible storms, or pop-up showers, even SEVERE weather, (run to the basement) . Ha.

I am more than aware that parts of the country have had devestating storms and floods. I support the Red Cross when they ask for help. Here we are: back to cranky 90.

Yesterday was nice, mid-morning, so I was wheel chaired out to the front driveway, in my pink nightgown and looked at my newly weeded  (?) front yard. Outside, in my nightgown! This is what I have come to? Phyllis Harmon Greene, who was known to wear gloves and hose and even an occasional St. John.

I don't think I appreciated 80 enough.

On being a (Hospice) patient

I am in Hospice Care, at home, in my own bed and it is weird, unreal, surreal, but REAL. I finally know that the root of my evil is a failing heart with its fibrillations and pacemakers and old valves. They, or it, has a right. It's 90 years old, for heaven sakes.

After a miserable month of retching and nausea that made me moan like the tennis Williams sisters' serving, my doctor could not prescribe for me, without actually seeing me. I knew I could not go to his office. Our son Tim found a way. He secured an impressive  private ambulance service who maneuvered their way down my terrifying driveway. DG rode with the driver, Tim followed. They took me to a pre-arranged examining room, the IV was set-up and waiting, the EKG was done, blood drawn, a thorough end-of-life talk ( no death panel, this) and by the time the ambulance got me home, I was enrolled in Hospice.  

My New Yorker magazine ( August 2 issue) arrived the next day, and although I had not felt like reading for weeks, I was drawn in by the cover. There was this little old person, pedalling all alone on a yellow road, through a lovely forest. The rider had to be me; I was on the road to eternity. When I looked at the table of contents, I found an Annals of Medicine article, "Letting Go", a scholarly, well-documented argument in favor of Hospice care, written by Atul Gawande , Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. I am likely reading more into this than it is, I know, but it felt absolutely cosmic to me.

That night, I fell into the first real sleep I had had in over a month, not drug-induced, just good old-fashioned sleep-sleep. The crickets, the katydids, the cicadas were singing a musical, a magical surround-sound  outaide my bedroom window. I was at peace with myself, with our hard-won decision. I am in the hands of the Lord.

How I spent Fathers' Day

To be honest, I have not been feeling all that good this week, and it was with trepidation that I went to sleep last night, wondering if I could go to the cemetery with DG today.

I woke up feeling better than I have. and so off we went to Greenlawn.  The day was beautiful, the sky was blue, and aside from missing a turn or two on the way to section 41, we arrived with Bob's favorite day lilies in hand. DG placed them on the overgrown headstone. The whole place is unkempt, but still beautiful, with the huge trees and the birds and God's blue skies. We sat in the car together, then, and rememberd DG's Dad, and we cried because we think he would be pleased to see how well we are doing.

Then we drove around to the other side of the section, and we put day lilies on my Dad's head stone.  He has been gone since 1938.  Still, he is always in my thoughts. He was, to my children "the real Al Harmon"; as much as they and I adored Al Harmon Jr., they are still respectful and loving to a man they never knew. There have two Al Harmons since my brother; we have Rocky, Al III and Weiler, Al IV. And I think it is appropriate to include Alex Ruben, named for Molly's Dad.

We stopped for Starbucks on the way home, and visited with each other some more...

A perfectly wonderful day. I wish the same to all your parents out there. 

I don't have time to edit this.  The Pebble Beach golf tournament has just come on.  It's kind of ironic that I am rooting so hard for Tiger, who doesn't seem to have been a wonderful father, but his Dad was so important in his life, and in his skill , that it is fitting that I salute all fathers everywhere, including, of course, the fabulous fathers, Bob and Tim Greene.

The need to know

I have always been a policy wonk; long before there was such a descriptive word. I read every paragraph James Reston wrote, and corresponded daily, by letter, to the Eisenhower White House. (Oh, that Ike; he must have had his mind on Kay Summersby; he never responded to my letters. I thought-- and I still do-- that the better informed a citizenry, the better the country would become.

Wrong! wrong!

Now, I am ready to throw in the towel. Everyone has what they consider an informed position, and everyone feels a need to write about it. There are paid pundits and self-promoting folks who use Jack Cafferty, for instance, to get their two-cent worth of "wisdom" out to the public.

Have a certain point of view, and you will find a newspaper, a radio station, a news channel to give you access... and validity and visibility. We are drowning in words. (Believe me, I love words, I'm a writer.) Just don't use the words foolishly; use them so they are useful , not full of hot air.

I was not going to blog today, but this morning, as I tried to digest the Dispatch and the New York Times, I had my a -ha moment. I just don't give a damn. It seems incredible but no one is credible anymore.

I may spend my days idly watching soap operas, eating boxes of bon-bons as the world turns.