Now That Hes Gone

life, she has had more than her share of heartbreak—including seven miscarriages. Rather than dwell on all these losses, she instead focuses on the one daughter who survived and who has become a source of great support and help since Ellen's husband died. She's also suffered a stroke that has slowed her down some, but she says with a twinkle in her eye that she will be back to 100 percent before you know it.
    “Concentrate on what you have, not on what you've lost,” she advises. “You have to take the time and make the effort to stretch outside your comfort zone. You can't wait for the phone to ring. Eventually, people give up on you.”
    Ellen certainly does not sit and wait for the phone to ring. If anything, she keeps other people's phones ringing. She is the leader and organizer of a group of women, all in their 80's, who are very much alive, passionate and involved. Some of them work, some of them date, and all of them make it a point to celebrate every good occasion. “Hey, at my age, you don't know how many more good things you'll have to celebrate. If one of us has a grandson who graduates from college on the other side of the country, that's reason enough for a party. So we have one.”
    Ellen fills every moment of every day. She bounds out of bed in the morning and hits the floor running. She spends time on her many hobbies: painting, writing poetry, knitting and interior design. She's active in political, social and charitable organizations. She entertains constantly—too much, her daughter says—so her day is often filled with shopping, planning and preparing for guests. A key ingredient of Ellen's successful life is her insatiable interest in people. She fills her home—and her life—with all kinds of people, asking them about their work, their families, their hopes and dreams.
    “If you want your life to be full,” she says, “you simply must focus on others, learn about them, get interested in them. If not, well that's a recipe for being alone and lonely.”
    Ellen told me that most of the women she's known have the attitude that whether you're happy or not depends on what happens to you. Not true, she says. “To have a happy, successful life, you must make a decision to do so.” She goes on to point out that this is a decision she and her friends make again and again, every day.
“Your intention must be accompanied by action.”
    Rhoda, a client of mine, is a woman who has come to the same conclusions that Ellen has, though by a completely different route. Her story is the stuff that Hollywood movies are made of.
    Born in Czechoslovakia in the early 1920's, Rhoda was the eldest of three girls in a progressive-thinking Jewish family. Unlike most men at the time, Rhoda's father believed his daughters should have a strong education. He felt that if his daughters had a profession, that would serve as his “dowry” for them when it came time for them to be married. While in secondary school, at the age of 17, Rhoda met David, a fellow student, and fell in love. They soon married, but again, unlike most other girls at the time, she finished her university education rather than quitting and starting to have children.
    By the time Rhoda finished her degree, World War II had begun and life got very bad for everyone in Czechoslovakia, especially the Jews. Her parents and her husband were taken to Auschwitz, where Jews were being gassed to death by the thousands. Based on the rumors about what went on there, she never expected to see her loved ones again. She had to find a way to survive. With the help of some neighbors, Rhoda and her two sisters were able to obtain some false papers so they could live as Christians. Thus they began leading secret lives. So as to not draw attention to themselves, they worked at menial jobs even though they had university educations. Rhoda worked in a perfume factory, putting labels on bottles and trying not to be noticed.
    Even so, one day Nazi soldiers came to her door, arrested her and took her to a local prison. There they tortured her with electric shocks, demanding that she confess to being a member of the Resistance underground, as they suspected. She knew that “confessing” would only give the Nazis a reason to execute her, so she kept quiet, suffered and endured. She eventually bribed her way out of the prison using a pair of diamond earrings that she had sewed into the lining of her underwear.
    After the war ended, Rhoda got a job assisting