I sit here today with Ms. Kramer, the famous golden cockatiel, fiddling with copious notes for future columns and film reviews. I turned 92 this month and I’m busier and thinner than I was in Hollywood.

Youngest daughter is on the iPhone.

Those girls feel guilty about leaving me alone without my beloved, their mother, in the wild spaces of Waterville, Maine, where I’ve lived and written for 40 years.

Alone? I’m not alone. I have two young lady friends who have adopted the old man, who come and take my trash down my driveway, check my basement for rainwater, and set my mouse traps for me.

I have a brilliant lawyer, a friend of 40 years, who has coffee with me once a week and is leading me through the legal forest of keeping me and my daughters safe. His wife is making wonderful pea soup for me as we speak.

Oh yeah, the newspaper articles.

Yesterday, the youngest of my daughters emailed me this article from a guest column by Judith Graham in The Washington Post.

There will be more from The New York and Los Angeles Times. Yes, they plan to quiz me on them weekly.

Journalist Judith Graham writes how “older men’s connections often wither when they’re on their own.”

Is that me? I am clearly “on my own.” As regular readers, you know the details.

I have managed to have taken the off ramp from “wither” and parked my life in your daily paper. But this article comes along when I face another Sunday of blank space. I grab it.

Judith writes that “men should invest in their “social fitness” in addition to their physical fitness to broaden their connections, so an expert says.”

Now, of the “old men” she writes of, none are as old as I am, and they all look at least 10 years older than I do. And, I hasten to add, they are all retired. Not good. Retirement is fraught with danger.

Miss Graham speaks of 66-year-old South Carolina physician Paul Rousseau who decided to retire, as two of my doctors have.

“It was a difficult and emotionally fraught transition, like falling out of a tree. I didn’t know what I was going to do, where I was going to go,” he said.

I agree, it’s a rocky, lonely drift down the trouble waters. I am happy to acknowledge that I “know what I’m going to do, and where I’m going to go.” Luckily, I have a job every week t0 provide material to my employer.

This Paul was 66 when he retired. I was an actor before I came here to write. Actors hold on way past 66. I give you Clint Eastwood at 94, Mel Brooks (97), Carol Burnett (91), William Shatner (93), Rita Moreno (92), and Robert Wagner (94), all working in their 90s.

I have neighbor friends younger than I who recently have lost their mates, and yes, going from being two to being one is jarring and leaves scars.

Well, I have Ms. Kramer to feed and shopping to do for supper. The sheets needing changing. It will require walking and lifting to do, and my 92-year-old legs are ready to go.

The iPhone is ringing. Excuse me.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.