Dylan Thomas was a great writer who had tremendous admiration for his father, a military man of great stature. Thomas expressed tremendous pain about his father's loss of sight and health in his later years through one of his most famous poems, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night. The first three lines of the poem have a striking resemblance to what I am currently experiencing with my 87-year-old mother, who recently fractured her hip and is in the throes of the biggest battle of her life -- recovering from an injury that has a higher mortality rate than breast cancer, and results in more than one out of four women dying within one year of their injury. The underlying message behind Thomas's poem to his father was to live rather than die, to fight with every last ounce of energy against the dying of the light.

Many people in my generation are experiencing a similar set of circumstances with an aging parent. At some point, many frail older adults give up wanting to live and gently surrender to the forces of gravity and dark nights of the soul. Every step becomes one less tomorrow; every day shorter than the previous one.

Read the entire column at http://www.ncpad.org/567/2506/Mother~~~Do~Not~Go~Gentle~into~that~Good~Night.