How do I change what I say?

A few months ago one of my friends mentioned that I am always talking about things related to Alzheimer’s. While I know I spend my days advocating for this disease I did not realize I was that bad. Especially with those I am not trying to convince or influence. Although I appreciate the person telling me, it has really bothered me. I started to give it some thought and tried to understand why and what I could do to change that. Not too long after that my wife made a similar comment, and that really hit home because their comments

My Promises

Editor's note: This piece originally appeared on Karen's personal blog ' Missing Jim' TO FRANCES AND BRAD, MY BEAUTIFUL, LOVING, INTELLIGENT CHILDREN: My promises to you: I promise to try to stay sane through this whole long process. Sometimes I don’t feel like I will be able to, but when I am with you, I know I can. I promise to love you with all of my heart. Loving someone doesn’t mean giving them ice cream and chocolate every day. I promise to love your Dad too, even when he makes me want to pull my hair out and go

For Mom, My Heroine, on Mother’s Day

My mother had a cleft palate. It was fixed when she was three years-old, and you could never tell anything was wrong by looking at her, but it left her with two impediments: her speech and her mother. Because of my mom’s speech impediment, my grandmother told my mom she would probably never get married. Really? Is that the way you bolster your child’s self-confidence? Maybe she thought she was protecting her daughter from the harsh realities of life. To me, it felt like my grandmother was priming my mother for failure. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so judgmental. I mean

Shouting from Mountain Tops

May is a special month for me: Everest and Mother’s Day. The connection is significant. I summited Everest in May and Mother’s Day, well, it is Mother's Day. Ida Arnette, my mom, was the memory keeper for her extended family. With my mom’s eight brothers and sisters, there was a lot to track. Mom did it all while raising two sons, working full time and still finding time to cook amazing holiday dinners and an out-of-this world pecan pie. So the day my mom looked up from her steaming coffee cup and said with a look I will never forget

The Fight of Her Life

As a little girl in what is now North Korea, my mother, Bock Sill, watched as the communist regime dragged away her grandmother to kill her. In the horror, she found strength. She relied on that strength as she fled to South Korea during the Korean War. She used that strength to find a job, meet my father, Tae Hun, and immigrate to the United States to provide a better life for her children. Today, she relies on that strength to care for my father, who has Alzheimer’s disease. Thirty nine years ago, my parents immigrated to the United States