One
of the very few disadvantages of living in a senior citizen's community
is the possibility of illness and death is always around.

In
the past few weeks Carmen and her husband have died, Miguel was taken
off life support which means his wife Barbara, who cannot take care of
herself, will be moved into assisted living facilities. The following
day Jerry was taken to the hospital where, the day after that, he had
open heart surgery. Bill is still in rehab and it doesn't look like he
will be coming home soon while Lisa had to go to the hospital twice
this month.

Due
to breathing problems Jon has been in the hospital this week and this
morning Liz, a vivacious, alive, happy, optimistic woman died after
having a lung operation and after having beaten colon cancer the previous month.

                                          

With
all this there was a happy ending today. I received a call around 4:30
PM from a friend telling me that Dot had died from an overdose of pills
that morning. It didn't sound far fetched as she has been fighting macular degeneration and not handling it very well. As usual I went to the breezeway for the
5-5:30 get together expecting that we would talk about Dot and Liz's
dying and there was Dot sitting in
her usual chair laughing. Seems she, too, had heard that she was dead
and found it very funny, especially the part that she had taken an
overdose.

Hopefully gloom and doom will take a vacation for the next few weeks!