One of my greatest pleasures during the Covid-19 shutdowns was having the time to indulge in hourlong phone conversations with friends and family whom I could not see in person. Especially uplifting were my biweekly talks with Margaret Shryer, a twice-widowed 94-year-old Minneapolitan.
I met Margaret in Minneapolis in 1963, six months after her first husband was killed by a drunken driver. With four small children to support, this young widow wasted no time getting qualified to teach German to high school students. Margaret and I are kindred spirits who bonded instantly, and despite living half a country apart since 1965, we’ve remained devoted friends now for 58 years.
My conversations with Margaret are substantive and illuminating, covering topics that include politics, poetry, plays and philosophy as well as family pleasures and problems. I relish her wisdom and sage advice. I especially delight in the fact that she seems not to have lost an iota of her youthful brain power. She’s as sharp now as she was when we first met decades ago.
Recent findings about the trajectories of human cognition suggest that if no physical insult, like a stroke, intervenes in the next six years, Margaret is destined to be a cognitively sharp centenarian.
