Ron Kokish Archives – Page 3 of 3

Mature Content: Whose life is it, anyway? — Third and final part

by Raleigh Burleigh September 21, 2022November 17, 2023

By Ron Kokish “A time to love and a time to die” … Ecclesiastes 3:2 At 85, my father was failing badly enough for his doctor to insist he stop driving. A few months later I called and casually asked how he was feeling. “Fine, physically,” he replied, “but life is hell when you don’t […]

Columns, Opinion, Uncategorized

Mature Content: Whose death is it, anyway? Part II

by Raleigh Burleigh August 24, 2022November 17, 2023

By Ron Kokish Freedom means having options throughout our lives, including the time during which we are dying. Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) increases our options. Unfortunately, it was not yet legally available in the 1980s, when my friend Dorothy’s father, Michael, died of cancer; so, Michael had no legal option for obtaining prescribed medication […]

Columns, Opinion, Uncategorized

Mature Content: Whose death is it, anyway?

by Raleigh Burleigh July 20, 2022November 17, 2023

By Ron Kokish Charlie was 10 the day he came home from school to find his father Hugo dead in their Montreal living room, an empty whiskey glass on the table and a cigarette still smoldering between two fingers. Hugo’s decision to overdose was tragic and understandable. Fleeing the Third Reich with his wife in […]

Opinion, Uncategorized

Aging today: Playing a strong hand

by Raleigh Burleigh March 16, 2022November 17, 2023

By Ron Kokish When it comes to aging, America has changed. Thanks mostly to a reduction in childhood mortality, more than 80% of Americans born in 1957 lived to be 65 this year. At over 54 million, the 65+ group is now almost 17% of the country. In contrast, in 1940, when the first Social […]

Columns, Opinion, Uncategorized

A miracle in the Bronx

by Will Grandbois December 23, 2021November 17, 2023

Of course there’s a Santa Claus. I saw him up close in the Bronx, in 1959, in the employee bathroom at Alexander’s Department Store. We stood silently, as men do at adjoining urinals, finished our business and returned to our work: he to the Children’s Department on the second floor, I to Women’s Blouses and […]

Columns, Opinion, Uncategorized

Mature Content: Not-so-special needs

by Raleigh Burleigh September 15, 2021November 17, 2023

The Carbondale (AARP) Age-Friendly Community Initiative (CAFCI) works to help make Carbondale friendlier for people of all ages. Sue Zislis, a retired physical therapist, is a member of Senior Matters’ Board of Directors and CAFCI’s steering committee. Promoting Universal Design principles has been a rewarding part of her career. –Ron Kokish for CAFCI Mom’s stamina, […]

Columns, Uncategorized

Having enough is the new ‘having it all’

by Nicolette Toussaint December 10, 2020November 17, 2023

Recently, my friend Jessi Hempel, a nationally-known journalist, asked Facebook friends how they felt about “having it all” in this time of COVID-19. Cosmo editor Helen Gurley Brown used that phrase to title her 1982 memoire, and at the height of my career, it seemed something to strive for. But even then, my girlfriends had […]