The memories stayed with him for so long, and stayed vivid. And it didn't matter to me that he'd already repeated that before. I could hear it forever.
I would not call myself a veteran conspiracy theorist. Or an obsessed one. I pretty much peaked on the whole conspiracy theory thing in the '60s, with the grassy knoll, who really killed JFK, and who ordered the hit on Lee Harvey Oswald.
People love the way they're capable of loving-but that's not always how you want them to love or how you think they should love.
I grew up in this era where your parents' friends were all called aunt and uncle. And then I had an aunt and an aunt. We saw them on holidays and other times. We never talked about it, but I just understood that they were a couple.
My father's body lies in a stone tomb high on a hill. People walk by, pause, think their own thoughts about him and move on, back to their own lives. I can never move on. He is everywhere.
Decades later I would look into my father's eyes and try to reach past the murkiness of Alzheimer's with my words, my apology, hoping that in his heart he heard me and understood.
You have to separate yourself from your parents. You do. In order to find yourself.
I think we can work through a lot of political and international problems, but what really frightens me is what's happening environmentally.
I'm not the angry, rebellious child that I was. You can remain a child for a long time. I certainly did. I was a slow learner.
I thought the best thing that I could do would be to clean up my own act, in terms of whatever .. childhood wounds were left.
Even if the Bush Administration had flung open the gates to stem-cell research years ago, we would not be at the point of offering treatment today. Christopher Reeve would still have been taken from us. But we would be closer.
Loss teaches you to figure things out as they come along.
America had taken my father from me. And over most of the years of his illness, I gradually started feeling this support system from this country who-people grieving along with us.
The most ethical way to deal with an unethical situation would be to simply say: 'We did something wrong.' But nobody in a family like mine would ever respond like this.
And as far as false hope, there is no such thing. There is only hope or the absence of hope - nothing else.
The house I grew up in had large plate-glass windows, which birds frequently crashed into headfirst. My father helped me assemble a bird hospital, consisting of a few shoe boxes, some old rags, and tiny dishes for water and food.
Laura Bush went on national television during the week of my father's funeral and spoke out against embryonic stem cell research, pointing out that where Alzheimer's is concerned, we don't have proof that stem-cell treatment would be effective.
There is a point in the grieving process when you can run away from memories or walk straight toward them.
I don't think it's an accident who our parents are; I believe we choose them. So maybe I chose my parents in order to effect change.
I have a feeling of reverence about my father being in his 80s - a feeling that I want to whisper, take soft steps, not intrude too much. He's like a stately old cathedral to me now.
I'm very comfortable writing in the first person; it dives into the character in a way that's difficult if you're writing in the third person.
When I was a child, our summer days were spent swimming; chlorine in my hair was like perfume to me.
