A nod to the Hart family singers of Wise, Virginia. Your fight for souls is a lifelong battle and worth the eternal cost.

Thanks to healthcare workers everywhere – I envy the moments when your customers/clients/patients look at you and smile with an inner beauty of infinite love and understanding beyond words.

In the near future my wife’s family faces the decision of who lives where and/or with whom.

The recurring thematic element around which decisions revolve: loneliness.

Other issues, too personal for worldwide broadcast, produce gravitational effects.

I can imagine where the likely spot the roundhouse will likely stop but courtesy and the fact I am not the primary decisionmaker on this one prevent my scoring the discord here.

You can’t say that on television.

Real life prevails.

I put myself in other’s shoes.

I see routines involving both familiar and unfamiliar faces.

As energy and activity decrease, larger gaps develop between routines as they decline in number.

The gaps become more and more difficult to ignore.

Hours feel like days.

Houses turn into echo chambers returning one’s solo voice to oneself.

And then?

How much time is left?

One’s remaining days of relatively easy mobility is a primary concern.

If one’s hometown friends and church family cannot fill the gaps occupied by loneliness, questions arise:

What are one’s options and are former dismissed possibilities more palatable and maybe preferred?

Could the biweekly housekeeper/friend be convinced to stay as a daily companion/homecare worker?

If not, who in the out-of-town family could provide the best care to one while one is also not being a burden financially and emotionally?

How does one insist that access to every family member at any time is of utmost importance?

Who has the best mothering instinct without being smothering and overprotective?

Whoever has legal precedence makes the final decision, no matter how the emotions will proceed.

What is loneliness without celebrity like?

When everybody wants you, what person(s) do you want to be with, all things not being equal?

I don’t have kids so how can I say what I would say if I did?