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Note: I hope you will join me at noon Sunday, October 12, for a hike in Elk Mountain Park followed by a light dinner at my cottage. Please let me know if you will be able to attend and I will send you further details.
”Make new friends, but keep the old
One is silver and the other gold.” Brownie Scout Song
Some 60 years ago, I vividly remember singing this song with my Brownie Troop, Troop 281, specifically. Mrs. Hardwick and Mrs. Moore were our scout leaders. (Geez – I hope I get to see Carol Hardwick and Leslie Moore next year at our 50th high school reunion.)
Two years ago, I took the class “New Challenges for Women Over 60,” presented by the Academy for Life Long Learning at their former Denver campus. The class was given by 82-year-old Elinor Miller Greenberg, PhD., a nationally renowned expert on women’s issues.
I learned many important things in that class, including how important friends are during the later third of life! The #1 thing I learned from her is the slogan, “Always say ‘yes’, when someone asks you to do something.”
This information was so helpful to me because the two areas I had put the most energy towards in my life no longer needed my energy: my professional career and my role as mother. True, my grandchildren are the delight of my life and I spend as much time as possible with them; but, that time is very small compared to the amount of time I gave their parents and to my profession.
An excellent role-model for me as an older woman was my late mother-in-law, Mary Verhey. Her husband died unexpectedly one October night and her two children and grandchildren lived hundreds of miles away. Well, for the next 20+ years of her life (she lived to be almost 100!); she had the time of her life. She proudly said, “After Ben died, I quit dying my hair and making homemade bread for him!” She got involved in her church, her community and her senior center. She expanded her circle of friends, including many women my age. She went on trips and became close to many of the families of her friends. Once, when I visited her in Minnesota, we had a “girls’ night out!” What fun we had. She continued to grow a large vegetable garden and shovel her own walks well into her 90s! She never became a bitter old lady. In the end, all of her 13 brothers and sisters preceded her in death and many peers who were born before 1940. But, she still had lots, and lots of friends who mourned her passing.
I know Mary had to let go of some of her friendships when they no longer were positive for her. She would tell me how much it hurt and how angry she was at times.
A couple of years ago, I was shocked when I realized that a friend I had had for many years had gone down a very different path in her life and that we basically kept in touch out of habit. Melody Beattie, one of my all-time favorite authors, talks about the importance of letting go of relationships that just don’t work for us anymore and how important it is to fill our lives with beneficial relationships. She taught me it was OK to let go of this friend.
The past two years I have met some marvelous new friends in a writing group, golf leagues, yoga classes, new neighborhoods, support groups, and a trip to Ireland this spring. Some of these friends are older and some younger than me.
Two weeks ago, I had a marvelous example of how important it is to make new friends and keep the old. Tuesday, I went to Grand Junction to play in the Tiara Rado Ladies Golf League I have been playing in this summer. Normally, I go back to Denver after the game is over; but this time, I wanted to stay on the Western Slope to attend with my cousin Kathleen Michels the Grand Junction Symphony Saturday night opening performance in their new home, the newly restored 1923 Avalon Theater. This gave me a couple of days to travel to the Four-Corners area of Colorado and see my new friend I had roomed with in Ireland watercolorist Jan Wright and to visit during the drive there with my long-time Grand Junction friend Jeanne Finch, who was accompanying me to see her son and daughter-in-law who live is this area. I have known Jeanne for 34 years and Jan for 4 months.
The benefits of friends is aptly put in the ending of the “Make New Friends” song –
“Here is my hand, and here is the other
Let’s put them together and we have each other.”
