Will the Circle Be Unbroken?

Will the circle be unbroken, By and by, Lord, by and by. There's a better home awaiting Far beyond the starry sky.             -old hymn, sung by Doc Watson On December 23, 1999, as I was beginning to interview people for a new book on death and dying, my wife, Ida, died. She had been my companion for sixty years.

She was eighty-seven. A few months later a friend of mine, disturbed by my occasional despondency, burst out, "For chrissake, you've had sixty great years with her!" Ida had lived seventeen years beyond her traditionally allotted three score and ten, though on occasion I'd heard her murmur in surprise, "Why do I still feel like a girl?" They were roller-coaster years we shared, after I first spotted her, in a maroon smock, in 1937. She was a social worker during most of those tumultuous years: the Great Depression, World War II, ...