I spent several wonderful days with my friend Paul’s family and friends as he celebrated his 80th birthday. There was plenty of good food, great outdoor exercise, and a brewery tour tossed in for good measure. There were several opportunities for vigorous conversations with various combinations of opinionated, tolerant people who listened well and were respectfully willing to explore differing points of view. After the dinner party with...

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I recently had an Archimedian flash of insight into what I’d thought was a contradiction plaguing me and those who know me best. In public I’m outgoing, friendly and know something personal about nearly everybody I greet. But in meetings and social gatherings I’m a wallflower who stiffly sits, is content to listen, and rarely speaks. I have a Michigan State University faculty card from a couple of decades of “teaching” medical ethics and...

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Pondering life’s natural and unnatural twists and turns. Dee, a pharmacy school classmate sixty years ago, recently found me on Facebook. We’ve had fun emailing about old friends and times. I’m hoping to visit her sometime this Spring to be able to talk directly with her and explore more details. Dee was married for a long time to a friend from school. We also talked about Pat, my closest female friend in college. I told her that Pat and I...

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(A grief survival guide) Everything in life is temporary and certain to change. Babies grow and gradually become adults that mature, get old, and eventually die. I love you, you’re perfect, now change, Off-Broadway’s second longest running musical is about the challenges everyone faces while going about the seemingly ordinary business of living their lives and coping as best they can with change. Life’s challenges come in infinite varieties....

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We inherited our DNA and basic human needs from hunter-gatherer ancestors who traveled and cooperated eons ago in search of food and safety. Our basic needs of sleep, food, movement and procreation are the same as theirs. But of course our living circumstances and the challenges we face in successfully aging are very different. Successful aging for them meant helping each other survive and maintain their community as long as they lived. We live...

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One dreary Saturday afternoon in early November my wife of twenty-two years abruptly left and took her family, my entire local intimate support group, with her. I was apoplectic; paralyzed with fear and foreboding. As she packed some things to temporarily move in with friends I took to a Lazy Boy, staring at the deck with birdfeeders and beyond at the woods, hoping to get a grip. After she left she was less than a block away as the crow flies....

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