Here’s one of the things I love about kids: their openness to making new friends. Throw two young simpatico souls together, and within minutes they’ll be carrying on as if they first bonded in utero.

I’m not sure when that changes. By adulthood, most of us are understandably guarded about adding to our circle. We’re barely keeping up with the people who are already in our lives. No room at the Friendship Inn, thank you very much.

There’s some wisdom in this, of course. Much of adult life requires choosing the things — and most importantly the people — who matter most to us. But I worry sometimes about the cost of closing ourselves off to new people, new experiences.

Not too long ago, I attended a dinner party where two 80-something men showed us how it’s done. At the last minute my friend, Teri Rizvi, invited my father since her Dad was coming over, too.

The evening turned out to be a contrast of generations between the two older men and three teenagers. No surprise that the kids formed an instant friendship. The surprise was that the older men — my Dad, Eric McCarty, and Teri’s father, Fred Krimm of Vandalia — did the same thing. The Cincinnati Reds game was on TV, giving them a conversational safety net, yet they began talking intimately about weighty matters ranging from their war experiences to how to cope with the loss of a spouse. The two Army veterans spoke the language of World War II generation, sharing tales of what they were doing on Pearl Harbor Day. My Dad is a WWII veteran who served in the Philippines after the war, while Fred served in the Korean War.

But maybe their instant rapport wasn’t so remarkable after all; both men were big-hearted, gregarious souls still living active lives. My Dad travels extensively and creates beautiful furniture in his woodworking shop. He nurtures close friendships and maintains a social calendar that would seem exhausting to many of my peers.

Fred still worked every morning at the Airline Dairy Creme in Vandalia he founded nearly 50 years ago. His daughter, Nancy Suther, now runs the business, but Fred still ordered the buns, kept the books, and, in Teri’s words, “barked out orders from the comfort of his chair.” He enthusiastically supported new business concepts, such as Thursday night summer classic car cruise-ins. Fred was so well-known around town that he earned the nickname “the Godfather of Vandalia,” though there was much more of Jimmy Stewart than Marlon Brando about him. He traveled religiously to Lebanon on Saturdays to do off-site betting. “Going to work,” he called it.

Both men, in other words, provided striking examples of living full lives even when you’re 80 or beyond, even when you’ve lost your wife after a half-century of marriage. Both stepped up to the plate as loving caregivers during an extended illness. After losing a spouse, my Dad told Fred, “You just go on. You have no choice.” But it strikes me that they did have a choice — and they made the best and the toughest one. Even in the early miasma of grief, they made the often difficult decision to step outside the front door and continue to live.

They were rewarded with lives that were rich, fun and rewarding by any measure. Watching them, it struck me that I envied their lives, their freedom to do what they wanted, at an age when I once would have considered virtually irrelevant. It made me bristle at the phrase, “Well, at least he lived a full life,” as if the death of an older person is somehow a discounted form of grief. “Yes!” I’m tempted to retort. “That’s why we wanted him to keep living it!”

Yet there is something to be said for living life on your own terms to the very end. And that’s what Fred did. He died suddenly of congestive heart failure on July 20, less than two weeks after we saw him. It was a shock, and it made me terribly sad that I won’t see this friendly, kind-hearted man again. I can only imagine the grief of his four children and six grandchildren with whom he loved to banter.

I’m so grateful that I could spend that one last evening together. As Teri wrote, “It was a special moment that illuminated my father’s life. The man did not know a stranger. He created bonds instantly, and he was loyal to his family and friends.”

It’s hard to think of a better epitaph. Yet I think of my dear friend’s words as more of a tribute to his life.

How lucky we both are to have Dads who have lived every day as if it counted — and who taught us that it’s never too late to make a friend.