An old friend contacted me, she is planning a luncheon with a bunch of friends towards the end of November. She is now 75 years old, her husband was diagnosed with congestive heart failure this past year. She said when he started his medicines he lost control of his bowel movements and that it was an awful experience for her having to cleanup after him. He just had a knee replacement on one knee so these days she is doing lots of nursing. His kids don't really help, the responsibility is all on my friend. He is lucky he has her. In truth they enjoy the companionship that a relationship brings. She keeps herself sane by meditating and yoga, in fact she teaches yoga in her condo. One tip she has learned is that smiling does a lot to make us happy, she encourages her students to try it often. She imagined she would be free at this time of her life to enjoy more. I told her it's a life stage..toward the end actually. And that there are bumps, challenges in every life stage because that is what life is all about. One of her friends has cancer, one widow has Alzheimers...And we had a good laugh about us being tough survivors and overall good people. We value our long years of friendship, some 35 years.
