My First Advice

So, Abe's been my neighbor for years. He's a good guy who's had a rough patch while taking care of a very sick wife for the last 15 years. It's drained him financially and emotionally and having caretakers in his house 24/7 is "a pain in the ass." So, he spends a lot of time outside of his house. We take walks together and I sit and talk with him and his friend, Frank - both of whom are from the same town in Poland and as Jews had to escape during the war. They ended up in Russia. Frank worked for a short time in Siberia and then was locked away in a Siberian prison for years. Abe worked in Russia and also spent some time in prison. When he got out, he went back to his town to find his parents were both dead and his house razed to the ground. His parents were killed in Auschwitz. He went to Israel where his brother had emigrated and they lived together there for years. It is Abe and Frank who sparked this "life advice from old people" idea for me, as I often sit on the stoop and talk to these guys for hours. Here's the first, and maybe the best, advice I'll get.

Abe, age 90.