Don Riesett

GETTING OLD SUCKS! I’m not sure at what age that old saw really starts hitting home. I suppose, like most things in life, it varies by individual. What I know for sure is that, for my nearly 93-year old father-in-law, it’s hitting home right now.

Yesterday, Sande had to put her dad in an assisted living facility—his Alzheimers/Dementia/Parkinsons/And Just Plain Being “Tired & Weak” finally making it too much for his 92-year old wife to handle.

The facility is nice. The staff seems to really care. Sande made the room look great. Many of his favorite things are with him—his comfortable chair, the old movies that he watches over and over (westerns and WW II, mostly), his paintings of a favorite dog, his old Judge Thomas A. Lohm plaque, family photos and retirement caricatures. Everything’s there except him, of course. And I suppose that’s a blessing.

And yet, even though “the Judge” is unable to care for himself now, after a lifetime of caring for his wife and daughters, and the countless scalawags and scoundrels who he either defended or judged, there remains an occasional glimpse of the old boy I first met nearly 30 years ago. »Read More

Occasionally, I cross-pollinate the writings of my drug-addicted adults with those of my equally challenged teens. Last week, I shared with the kids the story of one of my adult group—a woman whose ride on the drug addiction roller coaster has been particularly rough, spanning childhood sexual predation, years of brutal domestic violence, multiple inner demon personalities and, not surprisingly, suicidal tendencies. My objective was not to scare them (not easily done, given their intimate familiarity with such things) but rather to point out that the one thing holding this woman together was the love of her 14-year old dog, which had recently gone missing, thus threatening the woman with yet another disastrous downward spiral. Such is the tenuous nature of recovery.

This woman’s life struggles almost made her drug addiction seem benign. But leave it to one of the teens to remind me that there is nothing benign about drugs. A few excerpts from his essay: »Read More