octogenarian warriors
Not even Captain Jack Sparrow could have prepared the Somalian pirates for what they encountered when they attempted to storm a luxury cruise liner filled with retired tourists. As the buccaneers pulled alongside the ship and began pelting it with machine-gun fire, the octogenarian warriors used deck furniture to resist and fight off the armed sea robbers.
Eventually, the golden-agers…
next
My dad surpassed the biblical lifespan of 80 years mentioned in Psalm 90:10. But his 84 years was barely 9 percent of the average lifespan of the first 10 generations of humans. Adam lived 930 years. Seth, 912. Enosh, 905. Kenan, 910. Mahalalel, 895. Jared, 962. Enoch, 365. Methuselah, 969. Lamech, 777, and Noah, 950 years (Genesis 5:1-32). These 10…
please excuse me
At the library, I noticed an elderly woman browsing in the large-print book section. She shuffled down the aisles with a walker, stopping frequently to drop a book into her bulging tote bag. Despite less-than- perfect eyesight, limited mobility, and failing strength, she was hauling home a hoard of books! Any one of her limitations would have been an ample…
every sparrow
My mother, so dignified and proper for her entire life, now lay in a hospice bed—held captive by debilitating age. Quivering from mini-strokes and struggling for breath, her deathly condition defied the gorgeous spring day that danced tantalizingly on the other side of the windowpane.
I had already played out this scenario numerous times in my mind. Yet all the…
age of grace
The world’s oldest person, a 115-year-old American woman named Gertrude Baines, died in September 2009. According to the Gerontology Research Group (GRG), the leading authority on “supercentenarians,” the world’s oldest living person now is Kama Chinen, a 114-year-old Japanese woman. The oldest verified person in history was Jeanne Calment who died in 1997 at the age of 122 years and…
