Since I talked about this a few months ago when I
went on hiatus, I'd like to bring it full circle by posting here that my amazing, force-of-nature, full-of-life mother Shirley Rae Dupree died on Aug. 22, her body finally giving out after a valiant two-year fight against both frontotemporal dementia and ALS.
I'm not anywhere close to a point where I can wax poetic about any of this, except to say that it was a most cruel twist of fate to deprive my mother of the abilities to speak and eat, when there was never a person she didn't want to either talk to or feed (or both). Even in the very late stages of her illness, her smile and excitement when anyone arrived to see her lit up the room, in the same way she had lit up innumerable rooms over the years with her energy and enthusiasm.
Unfortunately, as her brain degenerated it lost any ability to send any signals other than GO-GO-GO, and her body finally gave out, like an engine that had run for way too long with no oil.
There is relief that she is now released from what these diseases did to her, but it is staggering to all of us who knew her that we are going to have to figure out a way to come to terms with the tremendous void she has left behind.
As for JDLand, I'm going to take some time to recover from these past months. I'll send up a flare when I decide what the next chapter will be.