Diving for Pearls

Unlocking secret value, choosing love by another's eyes, and a love's labour lost.

In 2019, my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. The decline had come swiftly. A week later, my mom fell and broke her femur bone—the biggest bone in the body. 

She called me at 8:00 a.m. on a Thursday morning while she was lying on the floor of their home in Grand Rapids, MI. When I received the call, I was at my house in Washington (DC), making breakfast and preparing to go to the university to teach my 9:40 a.m. class to about 140 undergraduate students. 

Fortunately, my dad was cognizant enough to call an ambulance right away and ride with my mom to the hospital. But things were about to get choppy.

My mom is my dad’s caretaker, and she was now going to need a lot of caretaking herself. Since I’m an only child, the buck stops at me. I needed to get home fast.