I work in the aging technology business. That means I'm immersed daily in the disconnect between how tech positions itself -- new-fangled and sleek, subtle to the point of invisibility -- and the stated needs of the elderly. Luckily for me, I also have my mother, who just turned 83.

My beloved mother-in-law made her departure from this world last week. Despite all of my writing about aging and illness, I couldn't write about her when it was happening. At 74 and vivacious to the end, she seemed far too young for something this final. Even today, a week later,...

I stand corrected.

Apparently the elderly are everywhere -- at least that's what all my friends now tell me. So why am I not seeing them?

First of all, as I reflected on the "old ladies" of my youth (with the exception of Mrs. Slade, who I...

When I was a kid growing up outside Boston, we ached for snow days, and got a lot of them. But the snow day inevitably started with our parents waking us up early so we could head down the street (unsupervised, of course) and shovel out the little old ladies...

The holidays are upon us. For most of us that means a visit with someone we haven't seen in a while. For me it's a time where my family and friends make an extra effort to see each other, taking stock of the people who mean the most to us,...

By and large I hate aging. The wrinkles under the eyes, the graying hair, the increasingly saggy skin, the ache in the foot that I know will never really get better, being called "ma'am", looking in the rear view mirror of my car and seeing a middle aged woman rather...

Sixty is the new 40 -- isn't it? If you have any doubts, just pick up a copy of any aging magazine and you'll be bombarded with offers to go zip-lining in the Amazonian Rain Forest as soon as your pension kicks in.

Or take a gander at Susan Lucci,...

The hardest part is backing out of the driveway. You'd think, after all these years, that I would have learned to turn the car around the night before, but I think even if I did, I'd still look back. It used to...

My father would be turning 80 just before Father's Day this year. He was never one for Hallmark holidays, and never thought much of Father's Day or his birthday, so we rarely made much of them. Perhaps it was because his 13th birthday was D-Day -- he always maintained that...

In 1957, the average woman had 3.77 children, the first one born at age 24. Let's assume that it took her seven years to have her 3.77 children, so by 32 she had a full house, one whose daily minutia she was likely managing almost singlehandedly as her husband stayed...

I'm worried about my mother. I'm also a little intimidated by her. Anyone out there with me?

She's 81, fit as a fiddle, could run a marathon tomorrow if she had to, routinely beats my 6'3" son at badminton, and takes her daily constitutional at a pace that my 47-year-old...