Learning from the final innings

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

As we age, most of us go to more and funerals, and visit more and more house- or institution-bound friends and relatives. A few of the visited don’t remember who we are, but we go to see them anyway to celebrate who they were, and they generally like our company, whoever we are. And sometimes they’ll blurt  out an alarming or amusing anecdote from the past that resolves some old mysteries. Given the age of some of these people, we’re sometimes surprised that they say how fast their lives have gone. “Eighty-two years old, and what happened?!,’’ said one old lady in New Hampshire we met.

I worry that there are so many aging people without close relatives to help look after them, including by such visits.

America still likes to think of itself as a young country, but it’s increasingly a place for the old, and not just in Washington, D.C.

Aging is so quirky. Some people start to seem out of it at age 60; others are sharp to over 100. The brain remains a mystery in so many ways.

 Take a look at the New England Centenarian Study.