News — Advice

Dear Amy: My daughter is disabled. She is unable to do much for herself, and needs an aide to help her with everything — including going to the gym. She loves going, but needs help getting onto/out of the equipment, and cleaning the equipment after use. The aide never uses the equipment; she is there solely to assist my daughter. The gym, however, wants to charge my daughter an extra fee for bringing “a guest.” This gym is part of a national chain. Several of their (very young) employees said that they must charge a fee for the aide for...

The truth is that your love has always been my hazmat suit, surrounding me, engulfing, protecting me from unseen horrors in the world around us. Funny thing about “last times” — we rarely know when exactly the last time we do anything will be. Sure, sometimes we can gauge it by the inevitable: the last time I will walk in this school, the last time I will sit at this desk, or the last time I kiss my mother goodbye. Those last times we see coming, and if we’re smart enough, we make the most of the moment, memorializing it...