What Would Muriel Do?
June 27, 2010
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?