As I’ve grown older I’ve been forced to deal with a lot of things I had rather not even know about: Medicare, bifocals, white hair, and stiff joints, to name only a few of my less than favorite things. And of course there is the accelerating loss of friends and loved ones.

When I first read the play, Grace and Glorie, I responded to the story very personally. Not only because one of the characters was an old person - I will not use the silly term “senior” – but because the play presented two people, each of whom need help; who need another human person to get them through difficult though different transitions in their lives.

In the process of evolution, we humans have not lost the competitive drive we share with all living things: the fight for food, procreation, etc. Humans have developed a survival method, however, which most other species don’t have. That method is our ability to help one another, to cooperate, to support one another in times of need, stress, and danger, as well as times of building and achievement. In our modern society the help we give each other tends more and more to be institutional help. Our needs are met, if they are met, by strangers rather than family or friends.

In Grace and Glorie, Hospice brings two women – strangers - together. As you may know, Hospice is a “worldwide organization of professionals and volunteers committed to improving end-of-life care.” Its goal is “to improve the quality of a patient’s last days by providing care and emotional support to the patient and loved ones…” Although brought together by this organization, the two people in this play, as unlikely as the prospects appear at first, achieve an understanding, a friendship which transcends the institutional and affords each of them the courage she needs to face her life’s challenges. The help we need - and we all do need help at some time in our lives -can come, it seems, from unexpected sources and in surprisingly inspiring ways.