The World Wide Webb and its instant library, WEB MD and the monthly accounting of abnormalities that impact us, coupled with my love of research has made me a shade tree guru of geriatrics. Frequently I am asked if I am a medical doctor to which I reply ‘no’ . I quickly remember my mother after attending my graduation  where I received my doctorate, being asked,  “what kind of doctor is he?” to which she replied, “he is one that doesn’t do anything.” This being said, I find myself making inferences and observations without adequate information and even prescribing …….. However……….

It is my observation that a strange phenomenon occurs to most married couples that I have labeled ‘the wall.’ Somewhere between the child’s first tooth and the youngest daughter’s graduation they lose each other. It is like a tangled ball of string with stubborn knots. There is a slow unraveling.

Sometimes the wife lays awake at night trying to figure out who she is while the husband lays beside her snoring like a hibernating bear completely oblivious the winter of their lives is approaching. Slowly, the wall between them rises, cemented by the mortar of indifference.

Rapidly the couple try to find themselves. The wife enrolls in a course of her liking and the husband begins to have meetings with the ‘fellows.’ Inside, each is complaining about the insensitivity of the other. Each has begun to climb inside a ‘tomb’ and love begins to die.

When love dies, it is not in a moment of angry battle, nor when fiery bodies lose their heat. It lies exhausted at the bottom of a wall it could not scale.

A man was walking in a wilderness. He became lost and was unable to find his way out. Another man met him. “Sir, I am lost, can you show me the way out of this wilderness?” “No said the stranger, “I cannot show you the way out of the wilderness, but maybe if If walk with you, we can find it together.”