I’ve been thinking about my friend Muriel.  For thirty years, we were the best of friends,
even though she is fourteen years older than I am. We always seemed to be able
to solve each other’s problems.

Over the past few years, she hasn’t done so well. She has lost
her husband of more than fifty years.  I
just heard through a mutual friend that she is having short-term memory
problems, and needs an aide to help her read her mail.

I have a copy of an essay that Muriel wrote about how she
felt about being in her 70’s.   She
started the decade with a white-water rafting trip in the Grand Canyon. But she
was feeling less adventurous as the years went by.  She wrote about how much she enjoyed exercising
and  the memoir-writing classes she taught.  She wrote about losing friends and the looming
“statistical scoreboard.”  But she was
happy.

Now, I am  in my seventies, feeling less immortal, and
wondering what I’ll be like in fourteen years. 
But I am still asking myself, “What Would Muriel Do?