There’s a ten­den­cy in soci­ety to treat old­er peo­ple, espe­cial­ly old­er women, as if they are invis­i­ble and irrel­e­vant. In The Wis­dom Whis­per­ers, Melin­da Blau describes the many friend­ships she has delib­er­ate­ly sought out with women some­times twen­ty-to-thir­ty years old­er than her­self. The book cen­ters nine friend­ships she has fos­tered, some of which endured many years. 

There’s Hen­ri­et­ta, a legal­ly blind woman who lives to nine­ty-nine. She and Blau become pen pals, and as Blau learns more about her friend’s life, she is struck by her fierce inde­pen­dence, her courage in the face of adver­si­ty, and her con­tin­ued creativity. 

Zel­da lives to 104 and plays ten­nis until age nine­ty-nine, walk­ing miles a day and active­ly strik­ing up new friend­ships. ​“She makes aging look joy­ful,” Blau writes. ​“She does her schtick — sto­ries, say­ings, poems, dirty jokes — and nev­er dis­ap­points.” Zel­da is the life of the par­ty, a woman who demon­strates that get­ting old is no rea­son to stop hav­ing fun or liv­ing an active life.

Marge, anoth­er friend who lives to 104, teach­es Blau about finan­cial lit­er­a­cy. The infir­mi­ties and indig­ni­ties that come with aging are daunt­ing in ways that few of us younger folk want to dwell on for long. But for Blau, Marge high­lights the unsung advan­tages of get­ting old­er, assuag­ing Blau’s fear of those indig­ni­ties and the depen­dence they will ulti­mate­ly demand. 

Her friend Sylvia, who lives to nine­ty-sev­en, ​“sparkles with enthu­si­asm about life and tries nev­er to miss a cul­tur­al event.” Blau con­sid­ers her a role mod­el for stay­ing cur­rent and engaged. And Elyss, who is still alive at the time of pub­lish­ing, is smart, obser­vant, car­ing, and active. ​“She is qui­et­ly and com­pe­tent­ly aging, still in charge of her own life,” Blau writes. 

The women Blau describes are spe­cial because they are her cho­sen friends and are con­fronting aging with courage, inde­pen­dence, and a refusal to give in. But Blau’s sub­tex­tu­al mes­sage in The Wis­dom Whis­per­ers is essen­tial­ly that women of this cal­iber are in our midst, and we would do well to try to get to know them rather than avoid them because of their advanced years. They have many life lessons to offer us, she points out, and the heartache of watch­ing them suc­cumb to increas­ing infir­mi­ty pales in com­par­i­son to the joy of learn­ing from them. They show us the path that lies ahead, if we our­selves are for­tu­nate enough to grow old, and how to deal with the process of aging with­out let­ting it crush the human spirit.