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Step by step walk the thousand mile road
Picture of Sig2340
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quote:
Originally posted by RichardC:
An actual photograph of old guys in da Nile:



Technically they are ON denial.





Nice is overrated

"It's every freedom-loving individual's duty to lie to the government."
Airsoftguy, June 29, 2018
 
Posts: 32370 | Location: Loudoun County, Virginia | Registered: May 17, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
They're after my Lucky Charms!
Picture of IrishWind
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Before you know it, they will be posting how inappropriate pool noodles are...


Lord, your ocean is so very large and my divos are so very f****d-up
Dirt Sailors Unite!
 
Posts: 25075 | Location: NoVa | Registered: May 06, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Big Grin
Big Grin
Big Grin





Safety, Situational Awareness and proficiency.



Neck Ties, Hats and ammo brass, Never ,ever touch'em w/o asking first
 
Posts: 55316 | Location: Henry County , Il | Registered: February 10, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Left-Handed,
NOT Left-Winged!
posted Hide Post
My mom is 78 and when she retired a decade ago she was 100% OK with moving from Chicago to Indy to be closer to me and live in an assisted living place. I thought assisted living would help her concentrate on the important things, but it doesn't. Freedom from responsibility for cooking and some of the cleaning doesn't result in that, it results in laziness and zero focus on anything else.

I have zero patience left. Zero. I have been doing damage control for her fuck ups for 20 years. She has lost a shit ton of money making bad decisions that would have not occurred if she just called me first.

And every time she says "your father always said..."

Yeah, my dad had an OPINION in 1965 and that means it's written in stone for eternity no matter what I tell her about reality in the present.

I would have her declared incompetent if the lawyers didn't try to avoid that at all costs. For the last 3 years I am taking care of the finances and she is spending a lot less than her retirement income because I am not letting her give money to every damn solicitation that comes in the mail for some worthless cause or another.

And when I tell her it's OK to need help and I'm the only person that is not trying to steal from her in the world she says "but I'm your mother and I raised you!"

At age 50 I know I can't remember things as quickly as I used to. I know I forget where I put something in the house and have to go find wherever I put it. But I don't try to insist someone came into my house and moved things around either, or that someone "stole" them. I know it is my fault.
 
Posts: 5034 | Location: Indiana | Registered: December 28, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Grandiosity is a sign
of mental illness
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
My mom is 78 and when she retired a decade ago she was 100% OK with moving from Chicago to Indy to be closer to me and live in an assisted living place. I thought assisted living would help her concentrate on the important things, but it doesn't. Freedom from responsibility for cooking and some of the cleaning doesn't result in that, it results in laziness and zero focus on anything else.

I have zero patience left. Zero. I have been doing damage control for her fuck ups for 20 years. She has lost a shit ton of money making bad decisions that would have not occurred if she just called me first.

And every time she says "your father always said..."

Yeah, my dad had an OPINION in 1965 and that means it's written in stone for eternity no matter what I tell her about reality in the present.

I would have her declared incompetent if the lawyers didn't try to avoid that at all costs. For the last 3 years I am taking care of the finances and she is spending a lot less than her retirement income because I am not letting her give money to every damn solicitation that comes in the mail for some worthless cause or another.

And when I tell her it's OK to need help and I'm the only person that is not trying to steal from her in the world she says "but I'm your mother and I raised you!"

At age 50 I know I can't remember things as quickly as I used to. I know I forget where I put something in the house and have to go find wherever I put it. But I don't try to insist someone came into my house and moved things around either, or that someone "stole" them. I know it is my fault.


Hell my father's been like that for close to 50 years now. I don't think it's the chronological age.
 
Posts: 2453 | Location: MO | Registered: March 07, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Master of one hand
pistol shooting
Picture of Hamden106
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
My mom is 78 and when she retired a decade ago she was 100% OK with moving from Chicago to Indy to be closer to me and live in an assisted living place. I thought assisted living would help her concentrate on the important things, but it doesn't. Freedom from responsibility for cooking and some of the cleaning doesn't result in that, it results in laziness and zero focus on anything else.

I have zero patience left. Zero. I have been doing damage control for her fuck ups for 20 years. She has lost a shit ton of money making bad decisions that would have not occurred if she just called me first.

And every time she says "your father always said..."

Yeah, my dad had an OPINION in 1965 and that means it's written in stone for eternity no matter what I tell her about reality in the present.

I would have her declared incompetent if the lawyers didn't try to avoid that at all costs. For the last 3 years I am taking care of the finances and she is spending a lot less than her retirement income because I am not letting her give money to every damn solicitation that comes in the mail for some worthless cause or another.

And when I tell her it's OK to need help and I'm the only person that is not trying to steal from her in the world she says "but I'm your mother and I raised you!"

At age 50 I know I can't remember things as quickly as I used to. I know I forget where I put something in the house and have to go find wherever I put it. But I don't try to insist someone came into my house and moved things around either, or that someone "stole" them. I know it is my fault.


My Mom is 98. I do like above. Need I say more.
This year Mother broke her hip. Got covid at rehab. Went to assisted living June-Sept. Now in a M.I.L. room at daughters. I am going there tomorrow. Have to sell 2 houses to move closer to share the load with 2 kids and family. I have been in charge of Mothers affairs for 10 years. My patience is much less now.



SIGnature
NRA Benefactor CMP Pistol Distinguished
 
Posts: 6451 | Location: Oregon | Registered: September 01, 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Only the strong survive
Picture of 41
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Lefty, you are not alone.
My father had money ($30K) extorted from him by one of the neighbor's father who was a preacher.

They also took him out of the ALF to go see the preacher which was a road trip of 60 miles one way without our permission. He could have had another heart attack.

They have also trespassed on the property and taken plants out of the flower bed.

Another neighbor had a key to the house and stold books, etc.


41
 
Posts: 11896 | Location: Herndon, VA | Registered: June 11, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
With your neighbors I would move. The term, Den of Thieves would seem to apply.
 
Posts: 17697 | Location: Stuck at home | Registered: January 02, 2015Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
I would have her declared incompetent if the lawyers didn't try to avoid that at all costs. For the last 3 years I am taking care of the finances and she is spending a lot less than her retirement income because I am not letting her give money to every damn solicitation that comes in the mail for some worthless cause or another.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Power of attorney is not that hard to obtain. Why are the lawyers avoiding that?
 
Posts: 17697 | Location: Stuck at home | Registered: January 02, 2015Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Eye on the
Silver Lining
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Lefty, that last little bit sounds like dementia. Has there been an assessment by a qualified physician to see how she’s doing?that might help with and lawyer troubles..


__________________________

"Trust, but verify."
 
Posts: 5569 | Registered: October 24, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Only the strong survive
Picture of 41
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
With your neighbors I would move. The term, Den of Thieves would seem to apply.


You sound just like the police. Do your damn job.

While working at General Research in the mid 70's, studies by LEAA showed that people getting away with minor crimes graduated to major crimes.


41
 
Posts: 11896 | Location: Herndon, VA | Registered: June 11, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Just my opinion. Your neighborhood sounds like a step above the hood.
It will not get any better. I am a realist. Good luck on changing the behavior of your neighbors.
Oftentimes the police have the best answers. I doubt the police would investigate your stolen daises or marigolds.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: ZSMICHAEL,
 
Posts: 17697 | Location: Stuck at home | Registered: January 02, 2015Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Only the strong survive
Picture of 41
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No, just people that don't want to get involved. The place will be no better than the people that get involved and do the right thing.

If everybody had an attitude like yours, there would be no place to go.


41
 
Posts: 11896 | Location: Herndon, VA | Registered: June 11, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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^^^^^^^^^^^
Maybe you could start a Neighborhood Facebook page or perhaps a Neighborhood Watch.
 
Posts: 17697 | Location: Stuck at home | Registered: January 02, 2015Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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My Mom had bladder cancer . She contacted one of those Law Firms that was handling a class action suit over one of the drugs she took. She actually got $65k out of it . Pissed it all away and had nothing to show for it .
 
Posts: 4420 | Location: Down in Louisiana . | Registered: February 27, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Picture of schrack
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Not Me, 76 and still active, hold a full time job in a level 5 Prison, after 40 years in the Air Force.
Most of the A F guys are Dead, they were the ones who Retired.
I do not function like a 21 year old and have learned to pace myself.
Have had several things go wrong and not working , but keep going.
My belief has been once you stop being active you loose purpose.I do not work for free like some people and get the shit jobs,
Oh well expect some bad feed back on this one.
Don't care, cause I do what I do for Me!!!!!
 
Posts: 2492 | Location: Delawhere??????????????? | Registered: June 19, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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^^^^^^^^^^^^
Not from me. I know fellow professionals still practicing in their late 70s.
 
Posts: 17697 | Location: Stuck at home | Registered: January 02, 2015Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Not all elderly by any means.

My aunt Nelly died last week at 96 y.o.

She mowed her yard until she was 78.
She bowled in a league until she was 75.

She was the last of 15 aunt's and Uncles.

But she showed none of the denial I spoke if.

When it was time to quit driving , she did, same with mowing the lawn, and when it was time to move in with her daughter , she did that w/o hesitation.

She was one of only five truly magnificent people that I have known. In my 66 years





Safety, Situational Awareness and proficiency.



Neck Ties, Hats and ammo brass, Never ,ever touch'em w/o asking first
 
Posts: 55316 | Location: Henry County , Il | Registered: February 10, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Don Was Ill. Six Buddies Reunited 58 Years After Graduation to Help Him.
When friends discovered that a classmate needed help, they responded in the spirit of their all-boys high school motto: ‘Men for Others’
Mike Boylan helps fellow high-school classmate Don Brezinski go through belongings at his home in Paw Paw, Mich., where he wanted to spend the rest of his life.

PAW PAW, Mich.—In recent years, Don Brezinski suffered from a stroke and Covid, spent months in hospitals and rehab centers, and lost his longtime partner. The 75-year-old felt alone and near death—until six of his high school friends banded together to help him.

The former classmates, all in their mid-70s and spread across four states, call themselves Group B for Brezinski. Some hadn’t seen him since they graduated in 1964.

When the men discovered that their high school friend was struggling, they visited him, monitored his care, and ultimately helped him move to the Michigan house that his parents left to him when they died. It’s where he wants to spend the remainder of his life.

“I wouldn’t be here if not for them,” says Dr. Brezinski, who graduated at the top of his class at the all-boys University of Detroit High School, where the motto is “Men for Others.”


Don Brezinski’s call to his alma mater saying he was in poor health and wanted to leave a bequest, sparked a call to fellow 1964 classmates, who came to his aid.
PHOTO: DAVID KASNIC FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Reuniting after decades apart reflects the strength of the bonds forged during formative years. While women are often better at nurturing friendships over longer periods, men are especially adept at picking up where they left off decades ago, says Geoffrey Greif, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work, who has studied men’s friendships.



Such bonds may become even more important as more Americans are growing older alone without partners or children. Many of those people will need to rely on friends, rather than family members, when they need support, according to researchers in the aging field and those who work with older adults.

School friendships
In high school, Dr. Brezinski and the friends who would become Group B came from vastly different backgrounds. Andrzej Tymowski’s Polish parents were prisoners of war in Germany, where he was born. Tom Kavanagh’s dad was a state Supreme Court justice. They became friends volunteering at a youth center, playing intramural sports and working on the school newspaper.

All were smart kids but agree that Dr. Brezinski, who placed second in a state math competition, was the smartest. “He was my lab partner,” says Mike Boylan, an attorney in Detroit. “I would have failed physics if not for him.”

After high school, they largely scattered, attending college, medical school and law school, obtaining doctorates and raising families. Dr. Brezinski received his doctorate in biophysics at the University of California, Berkeley. He split his career between Corning and AT&T, obtained several patents and spent two years traveling around the world. He never married but had a partner of 20 years, and the two of them lived in New Jersey.


Don Brezinski wrote a note to classmate Mike Boylan, who was captain of the cross-country team, in their 1964 senior yearbook.
PHOTO: DAVID KASNIC FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Over the years, Dr. Brezinski attended a few milestone reunions but the friends pretty much went their own ways after. At their 50th in 2014, he sat next to Marc Gallini, a family practitioner who lives in Virginia and is now a member of Group B. They reminisced about their car trip to Dr. Gallini’s parents’ cottage in northern Michigan, where they went to dances in small towns and ran across sand dunes, like Omar Sharif and Peter O’Toole in “Lawrence of Arabia.” Dr. Brezinski, who was shy and studious, calls the trip “transformative.”

“We talked about possibly trying to get together after but we never quite pulled it off,” says Dr. Gallini.

Coming together
In 2020, shortly after the killing of George Floyd, the president of what is now called University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy invited alumni to a Zoom call to discuss race. Afterward, Dr. Tymowski, who obtained a doctorate in political science at Yale University and directed international programs at the American Council of Learned Societies, suggested that interested classmates continue the discussion through monthly Zoom calls.

Dr. Brezinski wasn’t on the calls. Unbeknown to his classmates, he had suffered a stroke, which resulted in aphasia and affected his speech. In August 2021 he was hospitalized with Covid-19, as was his partner who died shortly after. He spent months in treatment before returning to the condo where they had lived. After she died, he had to move out because the home was in her name.

Feeling isolated and near death, this spring he called his high school. He said he wanted to leave a bequest because he valued his education and the emphasis on service to others. He also wanted to connect with former classmates. Officials reached out to Mr. Boylan, who sent a link to Dr. Brezinski inviting him to attend the May 2022 Zoom call.


Members of ‘Group B,’ who graduated from high school together in 1964 and came together to help classmate Don Brezinski, recently met on a call.
PHOTO: MICHAEL BOYLAN
“We were stunned,” says Mr. Boylan. Dr. Brezinski appeared distressed, describing with some difficulty because of the aphasia what had happened to him over the past year.

Afterward, Mr. Boylan reached out to others to see what they could do. Five, including some who had their own medical issues such as cancer and heart problems, stepped up to help.

“How can we say we are ‘Men for Others’ if we have a friend who needs help and we don’t help him?” says Dr. Tymowski, referring to the school motto.

Rallying to help
Dr. Tymowski, who lives in New York, took a train to Dr. Brezinski’s condo that he had been sharing with his partner in New Jersey and was joined by classmate Mike Reichel, a retired doctor, who says he had had a heart attack 10 weeks earlier.

The condo was cluttered. Dr. Brezinski had difficulty walking. “I had immediate concerns about his physical and mental well-being,” says Dr. Reichel, who drove in from Virginia. Still, his friend Dr. Brezinski recited the opening lines of the “Odyssey” in Greek, drawing parallels to his own journeys.

Dr. Brezinski said he wanted to go back to Michigan and live in his parents’ ranch house in Paw Paw, where they had retired. He had visited them frequently and lived with them in their later years, providing care. Knowing Dr. Brezinski would need help, Dr. Tymowski made several return trips and found a housekeeper, who cleaned the condo he had been living in, packed boxes and drove him to doctors’ appointments.


Mike Boylan holds the door for Don Brezinski after a meal at a restaurant in Paw Paw, where Dr. Brezinski now lives.
PHOTO: DAVID KASNIC FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Dr. Brezinski developed a bone infection in his foot, requiring surgery and a month of intravenous antibiotics. Mr. Kavanagh, an attorney who was president of the Class of 1964, talked with lawyers in New Jersey to forestall eviction from the condo.

Dr. Gallini, who still had his medical practice in Virginia, conferred with doctors in New Jersey. He and Dr. Reichel have access to their friend’s electronic medical records so they can monitor his care.



Tom Ricke, a former reporter and communications executive, joined the efforts, making hourlong phone calls to Dr. Brezinski several times a week and updating others. Mr. Ricke could relate to his classmate’s feelings of depression in ways the others couldn’t, having spent years in treatment for bipolar disorder. Mr. Ricke chronicled his mental illness, which he says cost him his job and marriage, in a self-published book, “Lucky to Be Alive,” which Dr. Brezinski recently read.


Don Brezinski’s graduation portrait hangs prominently in the living room of the home he inherited from his parents in Paw Paw, Mich.
PHOTO: DAVID KASNIC FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
“He was the only one who could understand,” says Dr. Brezinski.

While Dr. Brezinski recuperated from surgery, people in his soon-to-be hometown of Paw Paw, prepared the long vacant and neglected ranch house for his return. Leading those efforts was a local attorney, Harold Schuitmaker, who did estate work for Dr. Brezinski’s parents and had met Dr. Brezinski over the years. Mr. Schuitmaker, some of his staff and their family members filled dumpsters with old carpet and mattress and found repairmen and people to wash the walls.

Mr. Schuitmaker says he tells Dr. Brezinski, “You know, everyone cares about you.”


Lawyer Harold Schuitmaker and his staff organized cleanup and repair efforts to get Don Brezinski’s house ready for his return.
PHOTO: DAVID KASNIC FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
In October, Mr. Boylan drove to New Jersey and brought Dr. Brezinski to his home in Paw Paw. Inside, Dr. Brezinski’s graduation picture hangs in a large frame above the credenza. On a recent day, he and Mr. Boylan paged through their senior yearbook, looking at pictures from sock hops and homecoming and reading notes written to each other.

Group B members want to maintain the rekindled relationship. Mr. Ricke plans to visit near Thanksgiving. Dr. Gallini contacted local doctors, to see if one could take Dr. Brezinski as a new patient. They recently had a group Zoom call with Dr. Brezinski, their first with him back home.

“We’re old,” says Mr. Boylan. “I would hope someone would help me, too. I’m paying it forward in some way.”

Dr. Brezinski’s parents are buried at St. Mary Cemetery in Paw Paw, just off a tree-lined lane. He will likely be buried there, too, he says.

“I’ve had a great life,” he says. “I’m at the end of my Odyssey.”

LINK: https://www.wsj.com/articles/d...6?mod=hp_featst_pos4
 
Posts: 17697 | Location: Stuck at home | Registered: January 02, 2015Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I thought Bendable would enjoy this story. Wish I could have copied the pics of the guys it added a lot to the narrative.
 
Posts: 17697 | Location: Stuck at home | Registered: January 02, 2015Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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