Everyone needs an older friend like Sylvia. I often think it’s something the doctor should prescribe alongside HRT to combat the midlife angst and hormonal havoc of these busy, middle years – when half our life is already behind us and we’re looking for a steady compass to direct us north and navigate us through the knotty years ahead.
Sylvia died a few weeks ago after just turning 90; I am 51. We met about six years ago on a course about death and grief at our local synagogue not long after I’d lost my titan of a mother to a cruel blood disease, and my husband and I were separating.
I was not in
