A poem Cassidy wrote in memory of a beloved Coral Tree client, Mary, a Japanese-American woman, who lived in Irvine and passed away in June, 2015 at 90 years old. Mary was buried at Evergreen Cemetery, in Boyle Heights, in East Los Angeles. Evergreen is one of the...
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Cassidy’s Corner | In Our Dotage
As I left the front door this morning, I saw the moonflower folding on its vine. A whiff of regret swept over me for the subtle and seductive scent dissolving, the green sepals forcing that purest white leaf inward. I stopped myself and looked hard at the dying...
Cassidy’s Corner | Home Equals Hope
Home Equals Hope: Edith Macefield's Legacy Sunday, I read an article on the front page of the NYTimes, "House That Wouldn't Budge (or Float Away) Faces a Last Stand." What struck me most in the article was this universal desire to live and die in our own homes. The...
Our Friends | The Song of the Sea Urchin
I was thinking as I ran on the beach this morning about the ephemerality of life, the beauty. I was thinking how much of a distraction beauty is, a wonderful distraction but a distraction that sometimes moves aside. This displacement of beauty can happen with its loss...
Cassidy’s Corner | Children, Roses and the Aged Reflect Their Care
Nearing 90 by William Maxwell Out of the corner of my eye I see my 90th birthday approaching. It is one year and six months away. How long after that will I be the person I am now? I don't yet need a cane but I have a feeling that my table manners have deteriorated....
Cassidy’s Corner | Pope to the Bishop of Brambles
Lexie and Ian knew each other from childhood on the outskirts of Glasgow. Ian was an only child, eager for Lexie’s sisterly advice and culinary tips for his wild bounty of berries: raspberries, brambles, blaeberries and sloes collected from the countryside. Ian...
Wisdom | It Is Beautiful to Be Old! ~ Pope Benedict XVI
Last Saturday, I read these striking words of reminder from the retired Pope in the Our Lady Queen of Angels bulletin. WORDS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI Rome, Monday 12 November 2012 "I come to you as Bishop of Rome, but also as an old man visiting his peers. It...
Cassidy’s Corner | Shortbread and Brawn
My father-in-law liked to read, eat sweets and drink whisky. Most of all he liked to make money. He had an unconscious habit of shaking coins in his hand–a reminder? My mother-in-law used to call him moneybags but that was after they were divorced. Mr. Mac, as I used...
Our Friends | His Strong Toil of Grace
Doug said he didn’t like Shakespeare: “too difficult.” Yet, he quoted Macbeth as he remembered reading every work of Faulkner when he was serving his country in Taiwan in 1967: "A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Towards the end of...
Cassidy’s Corner | The Orchard of My Mother
My mother loved to read and to drive fast. When she crashed her car into the handicapped elevator at the back of the library, she didn’t stop reading but she did decide to stop driving. Wisdom does come with age–she was 84. Two years before on Christmas Eve, we had...