Twilight years can be hell. The family vanishes to all corners of the globe, friends and contemporaries die, loneliness increases in proportion to the decrease in physical ability, the pension never enough…

But for some, twilight is more an extension of afternoon sun, and none of us begrudge them a moment of their comfortable retirement. It is, in fact, natural justice.

Man’s life, the elders said, is like a winter bird in flight from one window to another in a warm lighted room. He comes out of darkness, and returns to darkness, and that is all we know. He is like a writer furiously scribbling by the light of a candle which has about reached its end. He may not finish the page before his light is gone, and does not have a match to keep off the darkness for a single extra minute.

Perhaps, an hold heart is like a well-seasoned flute on which 10,000 or more tunes have been played. Possibly, at the flute’s last hurrah, all those tunes are played back so that the instrument, listening to itself, can sort out the golden oldies from the dirges.

The golden oldies, tested by time, can never be disappointed and neither can people when you remember them as golden lads and girls. As said: “It is only with heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye”.

After hearing of the sudden, unexpected death of my best friend, I wondered if friendships are worth bothering with. If love and friendship expose you to being hurt, and make you painfully vulnerable, wouldn’t it be safer to keep yourself free of voluntary attachments?

I finally figured things out. If you could forsake your humanity, turning yourself into a rock indifferent to love, you'd put yourself in a place where even God's grace couldn't help you.

Life when you think of it, is a love story, or a dozen love stories, going on simultaneously.  In the evening of life, we will be judged by love. Life has taught us that love does not consist only in gazing at each other but mainly in looking together in the same direction. It's easier for two people, in advanced age, to look together in the direction of the sunset and evening star if they had started doing such things together as young lovers,

Most of us, we prefer to wear out rather than rust. But if rust it has to be then our companions in the scrapyard matter a lot!