Discussion 3: Psychology Homework (Quality Work Only)

Wilma Jane pushed her walker to her place at the head of the table in this, her 89th year. Rail thin at five feet and looking, in the words of her middle-aged nieces and nephews, like “death warmed over,” she hosted a yearly family dinner at her daughter Mary’s house. Mary, divorced with two grown daughters, served until recently as a temporary foster parent for medically fragile infants and young children while they awaited placement in a permanent foster home. Mary’s work with these children, which went on for twenty years, was Wilma Jane’s favorite charity; it was she who provided the money to subsidize Mary’s foster-care operation. As the guests raised their wine glasses in a toast to what the future might bring the family, Wilma Jane’s (slightly) younger brother Bernie muttered something about the despair that came with getting old, knowing that his life was nearing its end and that there was no time left to “find meaning in his life.”