Weekly Update 10/10/26 – 10/16/26 (My Mother's 85th Birthday, Frontotemporal Dementia, Remembering Mom)
This week's Weekly Update is a personal one. My mother passed away on October 15, 2026, her 85th birthday, following a long struggle with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). I reflect on her final days, the unusual coincidence of her passing on her birthday, and the challenges of dealing with grief while continuing with everyday life.
The sky was clear, the air was cool, and the sun would not rise for another hour and a half. It was 5:30 a.m. on October 15, 2026, my mother's 85th birthday, in Ventura, California.
The horoscope column for that day, written by astrologer Madame Clairevoyant, began:
The sun and Jupiter (Libra and Leo respectively) team up to make this an unusually lucky day — but it’s up to you to make the most of it. If you sit around waiting for good things to happen, you’re likely to be disappointed, but if you make a point of being an active participant in your own life, you’ll be rewarded. It’s an ideal time to reach out to people, to make plans for the future, and to ask for what you want. If you move through the world with confidence and optimism, you might be surprised by how often things go your way.
And it completely managed to miss the fact that my mother's life would end that morning, before the sun even came up.
It seems strange to me that people have a much higher likelihood of dying on their birthdays than on most other days.
My mother was a private person, and so I have not shared the events surrounding what she was going through. It has been a painful few years as my mother's health has steadily deteriorated, so her passing was not unexpected and, in many ways, welcome. She suffered (and I do mean suffered) from Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), a progressive neurological disorder similar to Alzheimer's, but one that can also affect behavior and language.
It is the same condition that Bruce Willis and his family have been dealing with since 2023, but his progression seems to have been different from the one my mother experienced, perhaps because of her advanced age. But either way, she's gone, and he's still with us.
My sisters Susan and Connie were both present when she passed. Connie had been visiting from her home in Georgia.
We are still planning what to do next.
That, of course, was the big event of the week and had taken up a lot of my attention as her condition quickly deteriorated throughout the week.
Personally, I have been dealing with waves of grief while I continue to live my life. Things at work have been going well, and I'm working on my office remodel just to keep busy.
I hope all of you are doing well.
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