Happy and content at 72
Happy 72! I don’t know about you, but I never imagined being this old. I don’t know what I thought because my father died at 41 and my mother at 53. Fortunately, my paternal aunts and uncles all lived well into their eighties and nineties. And my PawPaw, my mother's father, died at 94, and her siblings lived into their eighties and nineties as well. Each of them led full and amazingly productive lives until the final bell. They were also not wealthy by any standard, but they were happy and content. Despite growing up very poor and feeling like an outcast, when I look back at my life, I am incredulous. Much has been written about the strength of the eldest, and I think there is something in that. When I was ten years old, my PawPaw gave us a set of World Books, and the world opened up to my imagination. We never had a TV, so we would take one of the encyclopedias and sit down, going through it for hours on end. I still remember one of my siblings asking, “Who has the “S” book?” or w