In 1981, I was a member of the California Commission on Aging.
Looking back, I find it ironic that, with a couple of exceptions,
everyone on the commission was in their 40s. We thought we knew a lot
about aging, which was, in retrospect, just plain naïve. The two people
in their 60s were seemingly token ‘oldsters’, lending their gray hair
to our committee.

One
of the things I thought I knew was that everyone, including the old, is
afraid to die. As I began to speak with hundreds