One final entry …

This will be the final entry in this blog. As regular readers know, Mrs. R. and I have spent a good deal of time in the hands of the medical profession in the five months since Thanksgiving. She has had a number of issues, including three operations. She faces nothing life threatening, other than the operations themselves, which are always iffy at best.

She was super concerned about the last procedure, so much so that when my two adult children and I came to visit her in her hospital bed for the first time afterwards, she had an enormous grin on her face and she kept repeating, “I’m alive! I’m alive! I’m alive!”

Of course she was alive. August sixth will be out fiftieth wedding anniversary, and she certainly couldn’t miss that.

But I need to devote more time to her and less to my writing pursuits. So I will give up this blog. Growing old, she and I have learned, isn’t for sissies.

Mr. and Mrs. R at the Mendenhall Glacier.

Mr. and Mrs. R at the Mendenhall Glacier.

My thanks to our former leader, Patti Reaves, for her wit, encouragement, and enormous enthusiasm. And my thanks also to our current leader, Sarah Cottrell, who I am sure is more than equal to her challenge.

I first became associated with the Bangor Daily News when I was about ten, and delivered papers in the gloom of many early mornings in Little City and its environs. In those days, John M. O’Connell was the managing editor, and Owen Osborne and Bud Leavitt, who wrote about all things fish and game, and who could hit a golf ball close to three hundred yards, were my favorite sports writers. I was in awe of Spike Webb who would position himself and his clunky Graphlex Speed Graphic under the basket at the old Bangor Auditorium and take action shots of our high school basketball heroes.

At the other end of the spectrum, I have become a BDN blogger. I have unbounded appreciation for all our fellow bloggers. For over a year, I have been blessed to be published alongside some terrific writers and thinkers.

The best of everything to all of you.

—30—

Dave Riley

About Dave Riley

Growing Old Isn’t For Sissies is about aging. It’s stories of how some older people achieve remarkable successes, how some people make the lives of others better, and how all seniors have hurdles to face — maladies, loss of loved ones and more.