This month marks both the occasion of my mother’s birthday (she would have turned 84 on May 7th) and, of course, Mother’s Day – the first Mother’s Day in living memory that I didn’t send my Mom a card and flowers. That’s because she died this year on February 21st. Last month, she missed the birthdays of her first child (me) and her first grandchild (my own son Ben) – but since the cruel diagnosis of vascular dementia invaded her brain cells some time ago, she’d long been unable to keep track of things like family birthdays anymore.
As Christopher Buckley wrote in his memoir, Losing Mum and Pup, when the last of your parents dies, you are an orphan:
“But you also lose the true keeper of your memories, your triumphs, your losses. Your mother is a scrapbook for all your enthusiasms. She is the one who validates and the one who shames, and when she’s gone, you are alone in a terrible way.” (more…)
A recent study of over 200,000 Australians suggests that you might want to stand up if you happen to be sitting down right now. This study
Audiences for my women’s heart health presentations are mostly female, but sometimes women will bring along their hubbies, too. One such man came up to speak to me following one of my recent public talks. He told me in quite a stern tone that he thought all this focus on women and heart disease was “far too negative!” What I should concentrate on instead, he advised me, was the more positive fact that women live longer than men do.
It’s that time again, when navel-gazing pundits everywhere compile their 
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