An apology for being so mean

That last post seems so mean, and I don't feel mean at all. What I feel is anguish and fear. Here are two formerly competent people, proud of their accomplishments, respected in their professions. They were good democrats in the upper- and lower-case sense of the word. They lived their beliefs, fulfilled their own potential and worked to help others do the same. They led blameless, worthy lives. Yet their pleasures in old age are few and their troubles many. I'm scared of what will happen to them as they spiral on down, and I'm scared of what will happen to me as I try to keep them company on the descent, and I'm scared that I will end up in their shoes 20 years from now.

And in order to have Thanksgiving with the family I was born into, I'm missing Thanksgiving with the family I chose, and I feel a little sorry for myself. It was my decision. And I'd do it again. But they live in San Francisco, and I live in New York, and when I am in their world, I am absent from my own. After nearly two weeks' absence, my own life, the one back in New York, seems like a dream, distant, perhaps imagined, and I am desperate to rush back and grab it before it vanishes.