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It’s 2 a.m. Margaret, who has gotten up for the third time that night to go to the bathroom, drags her walker across the hardwood floor and crawls back into the king-sized bed that she shares with Barbara and her beau, Fixup. This is not a ménage à trois but an end-of-life arrangement. We spend our last days leaning against a row of pillows and tucked under a thick comforter. There’s a stack of all our books — our reading tastes are very different, a place for Margaret’s wine and chocolate, Fixup’s sleep-apnea machine and mask, which makes him look like...

Early in our careers as journalists, we discovered that we both loved writing about family business, and each wanted to write a book on the subject. We agreed to join forces to make the project more realistic.  We knew each other but not well, so we needed a big dose of hope to believe that we’d get along writing together, sometimes in close quarters. We also hoped our sample chapter and outline would appeal to a literary agent and eventually to a publisher who would give us a go-ahead and generous advance.    All our hopes became reality when the...

Margaret’s mother Bea was an elegant, classy lady who left her family many wise lessons before she died three years ago. Barbara was the lucky recipient of some of the advice by way of her working with Margaret for so many years. One nugget she shared has remained deeply engrained in both our brains: always to err on the side of being inclusive rather than exclusive, when possible. “Invite the extra person or people or couples. Don’t leave anyone out on purpose,” she’d say. “It can be so hurtful.” The ironic part of this lesson is that she rarely entertained...

We trade recommendations back and forth like baseball cards from our childhood. “Do you have a great dentist?” “Could you recommend the person who colors your hair?” “Have you been to Portugal and, if so, would you recommend going there? We’ve heard Lisbon is gorgeous. Where should we stay?” In fact, these days it seems that everyone has become a professional critic whether through conversation or online. Consider all the sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor where you can leave your comments for strangers and businesses to read. It’s so easy to ask someone for a suggestion or an opinion,...

We both found ourselves suddenly single after many years of being part of a couple. And as singles, there were many times that we felt shut out from the vast protective umbrella that used to be our social lives.  But once alone, we were surprised that several couples inadvertently excluded us from evenings out and in their homes and clubs. It’s not because they are uncaring or malevolent. Some just don’t think to do so because they don’t know what it’s like to walk in “single-only shoes.” At the basis of this might be the struggle with how to fit...