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Snapshots from Home

For the last two days, UD has been here, helping her aunt settle in. While not quite as opulent as a football facility at the University of Oregon, it’s certainly beautiful and peaceful and full of kind people.

The landscaping is terrific.

butterflybush

All the butterflies are out.
(UD‘s sister took this picture.)

Yesterday afternoon, the director of life enhancement stopped UD while UD was wheeling her aunt around the campus and escorted UD and her aunt to a little concert in a nearby building. A quartet of scruffy amusing fiftyish guys with guitars and drums led the way-oldies in a singalong. UD‘s aunt tapped her toes a bit, and UD belted out Those Were the Days My Friend plus the Beatles and Elvis.

Even the audience members who happened to be awake had very weak voices, so it fell to ol’ UD plus the staff, which circulated among the residents grabbing their hands and swinging them up and down to the beat, to carry off the singalong. It fell to UD and the staff to do the life, never mind the life enhancement.

As in those Roethke lines —

If only I could nudge you from this sleep,
My maimed darling…

UD felt herself a ridiculous impertinent envoy from life, self-deputized to make everyone care whether they lived or died.

Margaret Soltan, August 3, 2013 5:09PM
Posted in: snapshots from home

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2 Responses to “Snapshots from Home”

  1. Van L. Hayhow Says:

    Somehow, this reminds me of Japanese poetry from the 800s. Just beautiful.

  2. University Diaries » Unpacking the Poetry Books Says:

    […] aunt, who loved and wrote poetry, lives, post-stroke, in Brooke Grove. UD has inherited her poetry collection – three boxes of hardbacks which UD‘s cousin […]

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Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
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