Whoever invented aunts did us all a fine favor. Having your mother’s sister or your father’s available to coddle you can count for a lot when you are growing up and, perhaps, later.

Your uncle’s wife, an aunt by marriage, can and often does, fill the same kin-keeping role. I remember with affection my aunts Grace, Katherine, and Rose, all of whom helped me feel strong ties of kinship.

My aunt Grace, a charming hospitable Southern lady, was married to my uncle Bill for more than 60 years, and lived to see (and delight) four generations of descendants.

The other two aunts by marriage, Katherine and Rose, I knew less well, though I cherished their obvious affection for me. Each of them had one son, cousins whom I liked but lost close contact with in later years.

My father had two sisters. The elder of the two, Margaret, was a nun stationed in western Massachusetts. Her visits were infrequent but welcome to us children. She always came dressed in full habit with another nun as companion, the common practice for religious of her order.  Since she was tall, we called her “Big Auntie,” a descriptive name but also an affectionate one.

My father’s other sister, Mary, was a social worker in New York City. After her death, we found out that, during the years when she visited clients in the tough sections of the city, she had packed a gun in her purse. We had always admired her independence, but this news added a special aura to our memory of her.

But my favorite aunt was another Mary, my mother’s sister who lived with her mother in Peabody. In the days when Sunday automobile rides were a family tradition in middle-class America, our most frequent destination was my grandmother’s house.

Aunt Mary and our grandmother Hannah Barry would make much of us children, shaping our visits into the stuff of family legend. It was this aunt who introduced us to finger bowls for use at the end of dinner. Sometimes, in order to tease her, we would affect to drink out of them rather than use them properly.

As this custom may indicate, Mary lived in the backwash of the Victorian era. Her style of life, as a single lady of fastidious manners, suggested a bygone time. We loved her but could not resist making gentle fun of her even in our young years.

As the eldest, I enjoyed special privileges: being taken to Boston for plays, movies, lunches at Schrafft’s or the Hi-da-way.

Among the shows we went to, I recall the Student Prince, an operetta by Sigmund Romberg, full of sentimental songs. We also went to see Walt Disney’s film Fantasia. Few were then aware of the film’s particular appeal for pot-smokers─something that, in any case, Aunt Mary would not have noticed.

According to family lore, Mary had been disappointed in love and turned down an offer of marriage, an event that I still find poignant. She reportedly spurned an eligible man with a name famous in the city.

Be that as it may, Aunt Mary always enjoyed a wedding─or a funeral, for that matter. Wakes also were for her, as for many of her contemporaries, an important part of the social round.

As I recall, when coming home after a wake she would often talk about the fine appearance of the corpse, often better, she would observe, than he or she had looked when still alive.

My aunt’s room was a place of mystery for me and my brothers and sisters. Mary kept the door closed; only rarely did we catch a glimpse of its contents. These sightings revealed boxes galore pushed under her bed, and other spaces filled with old newspapers and other relics of the past.

After her death, a niece and nephew helped clear out the contents of our aunt’s room: old letters, balls of string, hat boxes, and books from some of which fluttered long-forgotten 20 dollar bills.

Mary enriched my life, as did my grandmother with whom she lived almost her whole life. In many different ways, this aunt made me feel important and gifted, qualities that contributed to my development. In spite of─indeed, perhaps because of─her abundant eccentricities, she was dear to me and enhanced my childhood.

In the light of this tradition, I greatly value seeing the ways in which my two sisters now fulfill the role of aunts. The affection they show our nieces and nephews increases my appreciation of having an extended family.

Their feeling for younger family members younger extends beyond the generation immediately after themselves. My sisters also cherish grandnieces and grandnephews, the beginnings of yet another generation. It gladdens me to see how they reach out to these children and share with them some of our family traditions of love and support.

Yes, aunts count for something. That holds now as it did for me when growing up.

Richard Griffin

Ronald Reagan was not my favorite president, to say the least, but even I was touched by the letter that he wrote ten years ago. In that letter, addressed to the American people, he explained that he had Alzheimer’s disease and had decided to make the fact public.

He did so because good effects had already been produced when he had disclosed news of his own cancer surgeries and his wife Nancy’s breast cancer. Doing so had raised public awareness and moved others to arrange for testing.

Similarly he hoped to promote public awareness of Alzheimer’s and to increase understanding of this disease on the part of those individuals and families affected by it.

With characteristic optimism the former president then indicated his plans for the future – sharing his life with Nancy and other family members, enjoying  the outdoors, and staying in contact with friends and supporters.

However, he also acknowledged that Alzheimer’s would impose a heavy burden on his family. He especially regretted the effect it would have on his wife. “I only wish there was some way I could spare Nancy from this painful experience,” he wrote in his most moving sentence.

Toward the end of his letter Ronald Reagan indicated both a faith in God and great love for his country along with “eternal optimism for its future.”

The next ten years leading up to his death this month were largely hidden from the public. His wife shielded him from all but family members and their closest friends. Of course, she supervised his care, a program that in the latter stage included confinement to bed and around-the-clock nursing.

Patti Davis, the former president’s daughter, has written a brief article for Time Magazine in which she gives a few more details of her father’s life as of a few months before his death.

Most of the time he was asleep. By that stage, he no longer recognized anyone. To disguise this fact, says Davis, would be to do a disservice to the public. Seeing someone in this situation “rearranges your universe,” she writes, and “it strips away everything but the most important truth: that the soul is alive, even if the mind is faltering.”

The house was peopled largely by women then, the caregivers and Reagan’s wife and daughter. When his sons came to visit, their father seems to have become aware of their presence, but even that is uncertain.

Davis characterizes Alzheimer’s as a long series of “I-don’t-knows.” For her, the time after her father dies will bring many silences and some emptiness. But she believes that the most important things in which her father believed will remain – “echoes, whispers, all those things don’t vanish when a person dies.”

My own reflections on the experience begin with the fact that, as a former president, Ronald Reagan was assured good health care. Unlike so many other Americans, he did not have to worry about what would happen to him in the face of crippling disease. Would that Americans of all ages and conditions shared that security!

Another reflection is inspired by Nancy Reagan, who said, at one point “Ronnie’s long journey has taken him to a distant place.” These poignant words express well the experience of those who come to know the fading of a loved one as the disease progresses to its final stages.

Mrs. Reagan must have gone through what a religious sister who works with Alzheimer sufferers has described: “You want to sit and cry. You know where it’s going and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

But her experience has enabled her to become an advocate for research that will lead someday to a solution. She has pressed for more money devoted to this effort and has argued for the controversial use of stem cells from human embryos for this purpose.

However painful the Alzheimer’s diagnosis may have been, the letter bears witness to Ronald Reagan having been told the truth about his disease early on. His family did not yield to the temptation of shielding him from the facts. That speaks well for them in a situation of growing anguish.

The love with which members of the family treated Reagan is thoroughly admirable. I would add an old fashioned word to describe their devotion to him – reverence. Though they saw his growing deterioration in body and mind, they kept in focus that he remained a human person, deserving of respect and honor.

Both the letter from the father and the article written by the daughter give testimony to a spirituality that impresses me as an indispensable response to Alzheimer’s disease. Though I myself find Davis’s spirituality too vague for comfort, and I take issue with her father’s optimism, I feel glad that they could find some deeper meaning in the trial that the disease brought.

Richard Griffin

My old friend, whom I will call Sarah, has reached age 87. She, I have discovered, is more reliable at predicting the weather than are meteorologists. When we met one recent afternoon, the sky was perfectly blue and the day had become warm and spring-like. It looked for all the world as if the next day would be sunny also.

But no, Sarah told me that rain was on the way.  This she knew, not because of hearing a radio forecast or seeing one on television, but because her bones hurt so much. She knew from the pain in her legs that the next day would be rainy and cold.

When we encountered one another that afternoon, Sarah was walking to the bank. But she had no intention of walking the three blocks home after finishing her business. Her legs hurt too much for that and she would take the bus even for such a short ride.  

Sarah, like almost one-half of Americans over age 65, suffers from arthritis. So do many younger people. Almost twice as many of those with this chronic disease are women rather than men. For the population at large, this disease qualifies as “the nation’s leading cause of disability,” according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Strangely enough, Americans who have lower incomes and less education are more likely to have some form of arthritis. At least, this is what the authoritative National Academy on an Aging Society reports. This source provides no explanation for this phenomenon and I have not found an answer either.

According to this same source, more than twice as many people over age 70 with arthritis need help with the activities of daily living as do those who are free of the disease. They are also much more likely to have spent five or more days in bed in the course of a year.

The name “arthritis” is something of a catch-all term for more than 100 different conditions that affect the joints or muscles and other tissues. The two main types are 1) osteoarthritis, an ailment caused by the breakdown of the issue between joints and 2) rheumatoid arthritis that comes from swelling in the joints.

It may be of dubious benefit to pass on the National Academy’s statements about how arthritis sufferers look at life. According to surveys, the latter experience much less satisfaction with life and those over 70 feel pessimistic about their chances of living 10 or 15 more years.

These gloomy research results suggest the importance of managing arthritis better. And for that Marian Hannan, a researcher at Hebrew Rehabilitation Center for Aged’s Research and Training Institute has some tips to offer:

1. Exercise can help to increase joint range of motion, strength and flexibility.
2. Rest, along with relaxation techniques, stress reduction, and biofeedback may ease pain.
3. Weight control looking to reduce pressure on joints can make a difference in symptoms.
4. Acupuncture and other non-traditional remedies may prove important elements in treatment.

Dr. Hannan also advises shifting your focus away from disabilities to abilities and looking for support systems within your extended family, circles of friends, and others.

The editors of the Harvard Health Letter also offer advice based on both research and practice. They offer much valuable information and provide the following upbeat appraisal of what can be done for those who suffer from this disease, with special attention to prevention:

“Specialized exercises and lifestyle changes can help anyone with arthritis live a more active and pain-free life. In terms of prevention, no sure-fire program advice exists. But you and your physician can slow the progression with a timely diagnosis and by beginning treatment right away. You can improve your day-to-day life through a combination of sensible exercise and work routines, physical therapy, weight reduction, and by making some minor modifications in your home.”

The Harvard editors summarize their hopeful approach: “Millions of people live with arthritis. Medical research, new drugs, improvements in surgical treatment, and an active role in the control and treatment of your condition can help you be one of the growing number of arthritis patients who live well.”

As a person thus far spared the pains of arthritis, I do not speak with much authority on the subject. However, I do sympathize with Sarah and other friends who must cope with it all the time. This friend lives alone and it must be hard for her to deal with the pain and general discomfort. I like to think that she can rely on support from her family and friends.

Being able to predict tomorrow’s weather is a skill better acquired in a science course than through the pain in one’s bones. I hope Sarah and others like her find relief with the passing of a rainy April.

Richard Griffin

Not just once but twice I voted for Adlai Stevenson for president. The vote in 1952 was the first I ever cast, having then attained the age of 24 and 21 being then the legal voting age. My hope was to see the former governor of Illinois elected to lead our nation.

Unlike the majority of Americans, I did not like Ike for that office even though I admired him for his military leadership in World War II. As a new politician Ike seemed to me bland and uninspiring compared to Adlai with his gift for dynamic speech.

But do I really remember what Adlai sounded like? Is it possible that I allowed myself to be swept away by rhetoric not nearly so solid as I recall? After all, as a first time voter in the election of 1952 perhaps I was overly impressionable.

To refresh my memory of what Adlai sounded like almost fifty years ago, I have been listening to excerpts from his campaign speeches. They are preserved on an undated RCA recording called “Adlai Stevenson Speaks,” with editing and narration by James Fleming.

These speeches were delivered in the first of his two campaigns, that of 1952. You would never know merely from listening to them that they were prelude to an electoral disaster. However, Stevenson himself later wrote that, at a certain point in the campaign, he turned away from the country’s problems and “tried to stir deeper waters and talked more philosophically.”

Listening almost fifty years later, I feel gratified to discover just how moving Adlai’s speeches really were. He was indeed a very effective orator, surely among the best the contest for the presidency has produced over the past century at least. You do not hear from him any “ers” or other verbal hesitations. He speaks boldly and confidently as a person in command of his material and connected to his audience. His language sparkles with arresting and colorful similes and other phrases. A master of the rhetorical question and other classical devices, Adlai knows how to build to an effective climax.

Even more important, he thinks big. The scope of his ideas, his unabashed idealism, his grasp of history – all give power to his speech-making. So does the ways he balances or contrasts phrases and ideas. Contrary to expectation, I feel roused even now by his words almost the way I did so long ago. He may have proven a loser at the polls but he was certainly a winner at the podium.

Thus he says of Communist infiltration: “We must not burn down the barn to kill the rats.” Defining patriotism he says it is “not the fear of something, it is the love of something.” Despite talking realistically about the nation’s problems, he remains upbeat about its prospects.

I had forgotten how humorous Adlai could be. “Man does not live by words alone,” he tells a crowd, “despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.” For people in Los Angeles he recalls a speech by one of his mentors, Colonel Frank Knox: “He made a much better speech than I am making today. I ought to know. I wrote both of them.” In Lincolnesque style he tells of a church that was looking for a new minister. The parishioners wanted someone who was not too liberal, not too conservative. They wanted “just someone mediocre.”

These speeches are sprinkled with arresting quotations. One from La Rochefoucauld catches the attention of this aging writer: “The old begin to complain of the conduct of the young when they are no longer able to set a bad example.”

Sometimes Adlai speaks frankly about his fellow citizens’ attitudes and behavior. “Whose fault is it that we get what we deserve in government?” he asks one group. “Your public servants often serve you better than your apathy and indifference deserve,” he tells another. No wonder that some of the applause on the recording comes across as muted.

He sees himself as an educator of his fellow citizens and does not hesitate to use imperatives. “Just remember who you are – you are Americans,” he charges the audience and the nation. “This is our heritage, this is our glory.”

These quotations may be enough to reaffirm the wisdom of some readers of this book that they did not vote for Stevenson. Perhaps he seems too much the egghead he was accused of being at that time. But my native orneriness does not allow me to repent of casting not one, but two votes for Adlai.

I still hear him as a leader committed to idealism in the great American tradition. Sure, he might have made an ineffective president; maybe the nation did need Eisenhower at that period in history. But I liked Adlai and believed in him enough to regret that he never had the chance to lead us in the White House.

Richard Griffin

A 71 year-old man and his wife come to see an elder-law attorney. The client was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.  As a result, he is retiring at the end of this year.  His wife is 13 years younger and still working. They have a house and modest savings.

Fortunately, he has a long-term care insurance policy, but it is limited to five years of coverage.  As of now, the husband needs no assistance.  He and his wife are considering selling their house and moving to a condominium more suited to him once the Parkinson’s becomes more disabling.

The attorney advises him to transfer the house and all of their savings (other than the husband's IRA) into his wife's name.  She will revise her estate plan, which currently gives everything to her husband, to leave their assets in trust for him in the event she dies first.  

The trust will be under her will, which is a safe harbor in the Medicaid rules.  He can qualify for Medicaid once his insurance runs out and be a beneficiary of the trust, but the trust funds would not have to be spent down. The lawyer also advises the clients to execute durable powers of attorney and health care proxies.

This slightly edited case study comes from Harry Margolis, one of the premier attorneys specializing in elder-law. Recently I visited his Copley Square offices in order to discover new developments in the practice of law on behalf of older people.

Margolis is one of some 5,000 attorneys across the United States who specialize in elder-law. Massachusetts alone has 600 of them.

Not every elder-law attorney can offer the view from Margolis’ office. As we talked about his work, I looked out on the beautiful cityscape below. Trinity Church, the Boston Public Library, the Sheraton Hotel, all shone in the afternoon sun, some of the scene mirrored in the soaring John Hancock Building.

The brief case study of the man with Parkinson’s and his much younger wife calls attention to the complexities of health-care planning. The advice given by this lawyer takes into special account an important change in federal law that took effect last year. As of 2006, it has become harder to qualify for Medicaid.

Previously, if you had children you were allowed to give them half of your assets and then spend down the other half by paying for care. Now, however, you can’t give anything away until five years after applying for Medicaid.

The effect of this law is to encourage people to give away their assets earlier. These days, Margolis encourages parents to give their children money well before the time when the older generation might need nursing home care. That, he observes, is contrary to the advice that he used to give

Nowadays he also frequently advises people to buy long-term care insurance. This he does with greater confidence than formerly, for two reasons. First, the policies are better than they used to be and, second, as noted, it is more difficult to qualify for Medicaid.

Fortunately for  planners, there is now a greater variety of ways to pay for care. For those with low incomes, the adult foster care program may prove a valuable resource. In one model, if you are eligible for Medicaid, you can move into someone’s house and the state will pay your caretaker.

In other instances, family members can be paid to take care of you. If an adult child, for instance, were to care for both parents, he or she would receive two levels of tax-free pay.

How best to benefit from home ownership is another area for legal counsel. Reverse mortgages, says Margolis, are sometimes appropriate. However, compared to some other possibilities, “it’s an expensive way to borrow money.”

Frequently, a home equity loan makes more sense. This lawyer judges it a good idea at least to open up a line of credit, even if you don’t actually draw on it.

One variety of the latter approach is a home equity loan that remains private, perhaps among family members. In this arrangement, an affluent grandson, for example, might lend the money. With careful documentation, this choice might prove beneficial for both parties.

A new instrument favored by Margolis is the family protection trust. Rather than giving money outright to your children, you put it in a trust for their benefit. This device can protect them from their creditors. It can also guard the money if they get divorced and, if the child dies, the funds stay in trust for the grandchildren rather than a spouse.

For those older people who worry about adult children or grandchildren with disabilities, family protection trusts can prove especially helpful.

If you seek more information about elder-law, I recommend the electronic newsletter that Harry Margolis sends out. One can sign up for it without charge at Margolis.com. You can also find a nation-wide list of elder-law lawyers by consulting NAELA.com.

Richard Griffin

On June 6, 1944, better known as D Day, a young Benedictine monk named Paul looked up to the skies and out to the Solent that leads to the English Channel, where he saw the greatest invasion force of ships and planes ever assembled. From his vantage point, Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight, he witnessed a show of modern military force that could not have contrasted more sharply with the ancient peace of monastic life..

At that point, this young man seemed highly unlikely to figure in a love story that would carry him far beyond monastery walls and eventually to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he now lives. Paul was the name he had taken in religious life and has kept ever since. But his original name was Jeffrey, and last year, when he published a memoir of his life’s journey, he called it Jeffrey’s Story. .

His becoming a monk when still a boy was largely driven by his mother. She was an Englishwoman who had separated from her husband; she brought up her only son to be a priest, to the exclusion of all other vocational choices.

A bizarre photograph reproduced on the cover of the book shows the author, at perhaps six years old, dressed in a chasuble and the other vestments of a Catholic priest, his right hand raised in blessing. His mother also arranged to have the boy receive letters “from Jesus,” ghostwritten by Carmelite nuns whom she knew.

Jeffrey’s father, Fernand Meyvaert, was Belgian, a merchant marine sailor. After the death of the boy's mother in 1938, his father wanted him to become a Belgian citizen and therefore give up his cherished British passport. The young boy, terrified, fled to England.

Fernand died at sea in 1942, much to his son’s bitter regret later on. He dedicates his book to “the father I so wish I had known better.”

Paul stayed in the monastery for twenty-five years, committed to a life of prayer and increasingly distinguished scholarly work. But during much of this time, he suffered tension and fatigue that, in retrospect, might have raised doubts about the genuineness of his vocation to that life and to the priesthood.

In 1957, he met an American woman, Ann Freeman, a young scholar specializing in medieval history. Ann made several visits to the Isle of Wight and Quarr monastery where she discussed her research with Paul.

Over a ten-year period, they exchanged some sixty letters, at first focused on scholarly issues but gradually becoming more personal. Looking at the letters he wrote to Ann when he was a monk, the author remarks that by the end of 1963, “a note of deep affection becomes discernible.”

Of course, he felt torn between his monastic commitment to God and his growing attachment to Ann. She also felt this tension because of her respect for the life he had chosen.

In his memoir, Paul describes how it felt: “There is a chasm between thoughts on the one hand, thoughts that I must stay on the right path, and feelings and emotions on the other.”  

Gradually, however, they were to understand their love as compatible with the religious ideals they professed. Both came to see how their intense personal feelings for one another could be reconciled with the ideals to which Paul had been committed for a quarter century.

In his latter years at Quarr, Paul enjoyed the good fortune of having as abbot a compassionate man who interpreted monastic rules humanely. Dom Aelred Sillem recognized Paul’s dilemma and enabled him to leave the monastery at a crucial time.

That happened in 1965 when the abbot approved Paul traveling to London so that he could see Ann, a reunion that─contrary to the abbot’s expectation─led to the couple’s traveling together to the United States and later marrying.

Given Paul's unfamiliarity with the “real world” and the short time between his departure from the monastery and coming together with Ann, their chances of becoming happily married might have appeared slight. Yet, their enduring love has held and brought them much happiness. Of their relationship Ann has written: “We grow closer and closer together in deepening oneness.”

Similarly, Paul’s prospects of professional success appeared limited. However, though without even a college degree, he went on to a remarkable scholarly career, and served as director of the Medieval Academy of America for ten years. His wife, too, has had similar success as a scholar and they have collaborated on various projects and raised a beloved daughter.

Now in his 85th year, Paul Meyvaert looks back with gratitude to the way his life has turned out. Referring to the father whom he knew too little, he writes:  “I like to think that many of the qualities that make up my temperament, a temperament that has enabled, and still enables me, to live a deeply committed and affectionate family life, as well as a productive scholarly life, I owe to the genes my father has bequeathed me.”

Richard Griffin

Catherine, a neighbor encountered at a local restaurant, was obviously not feeling at the top of her game. At age 85, she appeared before us for the first time holding a cane, an instrument needed to help keep her balance. As she moved unsteadily toward the table where her husband, their niece, and she would sit, she muttered back at us: “Old age is the pits.”

Her sentiments, though far from original, shook something in me. Of late I have been experiencing some unexpected physical distress myself. Who could have expected a long dormant wisdom tooth to become infected at this stage of life? And why did that oral stirring lead to other irritating complications?

I t is not so much any single problem that gets to you but, as Catherine’s complaint implies, a succession of things. My age peers and those older than I often feel themselves caught in a irreversible sequence of ailments impossible to escape. If only I had not taken that fall, they think, or suffered that allergic reaction, things would be much better for me now.

Old age is indeed the pits for a whole lot of people. However, this simple statement does not get at the full range of later life. Being who we are is much more complicated than that. Along with the suffering of bodily existence there often comes the growth of a different perspective.

Surely Catherine herself takes a more nuanced approach to life than any one statement can convey. Even as she walked away, I could detect something jaunty behind her complaint. While expressing distaste for the small humiliations of advancing age, her smile suggested that she finds something appropriately ridiculous about the whole thing. At the risk of reading too much into a single gesture, I judged her to be looking at life in a larger perspective.

Catherine, I suspect, knows how later life, with all of its physical trials, is a time for appreciating the rich complexity of existence. Wife of a minister, mother to ten sons and daughters, she has done a lot of living. Her years have taken her through uncountable experiences that have left their mark. Probably she spends much time in her eighties laying hold of this richness that lies in the events of her earlier life and their meaning.

Like so many others, Catherine most likely sees later life as a favorable time for taking care of her soul. She would probably embrace the advice of  the writer Elizabeth Lesser: “We should cherish those moments when we have an awareness of our life being something more than it appears to be.”

This spiritual reality is what I feel strongly every time I get together with friends for meditation. They are older men and women with long experience of the spiritual life and people familiar with the various religious traditions of the world. They have learned how to draw on this wealth to enrich their daily lives.

Members of our prayer group are not strangers to suffering either. One of our number is currently living through a severe test of memory deficits. His courageous response to this problem inspires me and others in the group. The loving support given him by his wife moves us all: just last week he said of her, “She is my memory.”

For these companions of mine, the life of the spirit remains the central reality of later life. That is why we meditate together sitting in silence before a lighted candle and waiting upon the stirrings of the spirit within us. Nothing dramatic happens but we come away from the experience feeling peace, or strength, or interior light.

But spiritual exercises do not always produce such reassuring feelings. Suffering happens there too. Some people, as they attempt to reach for meaning, taste bitterness. The dark night of the soul is not reserved only for the great mystics of the religious traditions. Everyone serious about spiritual life encounters times of inner dryness and temptations to lose heart.

In the face of an uncertain future, we keep returning to hope. People committed to the spiritual life have no special understanding of why we suffer. The “pits” are something we all have to encounter sooner or later. But perhaps it makes some difference how we see our life.

If we envision it as a spiritual journey, our life takes on a meaning that can help place the pits in a perspective. Admittedly, those sufferings remain both unwelcome and not fully understood but at least they can yield some meaning.

As Henri Nouwen, one of my favorite gurus, once wrote: “Aging is the turning of the wheel, the gradual fulfillment of the life cycle in which receiving matures in giving and living makes dying worthwhile. Aging does not need to be hidden or denied, but can be understood, affirmed, and experienced as a process of growth by which the mystery of life is gradually revealed to us.”

Richard Griffin