Just a few years ago, I was half as old as Aunt Bennie of Cheshire in west Massachusetts was when she died last weekend. Looking at her at age 115--laughing, playing the piano, enjoying rides and parties, joking, walking--I think 'I'm a child, a beginner.' My worst fears of what's next for me may come true, but not necessarily; I could be like her--a shining example of joi-de-vivre till she died in her sleep in a Williamstown nursing home. She acknowledged on her 109th that all things come to an end, and so five years later her life did, though she could have carried on.
I'm too late, I know, but I'd like express my admiration for some of the few things I know about you. A photo of you in your twenties shows you were a looker and in a recent picture, granting the inevitable changes wrought by the many decades since, the lineaments of the same person can be discerned, and anyway, the wit suggested in that old picture just as quick.
Born in Cheshire when it was even more remote than it is now, you moved to Washington, DC, to work on the war effort--the First World War. You only moved back here in '07.
You were married for 50 years, and your husband, whom you've called your one and only love, died in 1975, nearly 40 years ago--that is, you've been a widow as long as I have managed to be married! In short, your story stretches the spans of human life. Never a mother, a fact to which you attribute, in part, your longevity--'no fuss, no muss'--there are still generations of your family who host your birthday parties, along with a host of friends from the town and the care facility.
You said on your last Facebook post: 'You have asked about secrets to longevity. I have a lot of friends, always have, and I love them all very much. They just keep dying on me. So, I make new ones every day.' Then you added, to whom it's not clear, Thank you.'
Talking to a colleague, I learned she's my age, her birthday a couple of months ago, and still very active. (I confess I hadn't guessed or bothered to speculate.) We talked about how the horizons of the possible for the old are expanding steadily. It's as if a new stage of human existence is being charted out these days, as if getting to California, a new continent were heaving itself up out of the ocean extending the country goodness knows how far out west, a new Lemuria. Once, at our age, we would have thought ourselves exceptional to be a healthy and engaged as we are. (Pace all those who gravestones I've read in old burying grounds recording ages well into the seventies and eighties.) Now our cohort is in terra nova.
Of course, anything can happen, but what you show me, Aunt Bennie, is that vivacity and high spirits need not inevitably wane, that it's possible for us to enjoy being alive well into our second century. And perhaps the heart of the secret is the habit of simply appreciating things, and especially other people.
To be positive, and to have my wits about me sufficiently to surprise, along with some mobility and dexterity, is a now even more reasonable aspiration. To have well-wishers with whom to chat (what must our contributions to conversation seem to someone in your vantage point?), better and better.
I hope also, God-in-love, that from now to then, I remain open to you, and the world. Guard my unguardedness.
I'm too late, I know, but I'd like express my admiration for some of the few things I know about you. A photo of you in your twenties shows you were a looker and in a recent picture, granting the inevitable changes wrought by the many decades since, the lineaments of the same person can be discerned, and anyway, the wit suggested in that old picture just as quick.
Born in Cheshire when it was even more remote than it is now, you moved to Washington, DC, to work on the war effort--the First World War. You only moved back here in '07.
You were married for 50 years, and your husband, whom you've called your one and only love, died in 1975, nearly 40 years ago--that is, you've been a widow as long as I have managed to be married! In short, your story stretches the spans of human life. Never a mother, a fact to which you attribute, in part, your longevity--'no fuss, no muss'--there are still generations of your family who host your birthday parties, along with a host of friends from the town and the care facility.
You said on your last Facebook post: 'You have asked about secrets to longevity. I have a lot of friends, always have, and I love them all very much. They just keep dying on me. So, I make new ones every day.' Then you added, to whom it's not clear, Thank you.'
Talking to a colleague, I learned she's my age, her birthday a couple of months ago, and still very active. (I confess I hadn't guessed or bothered to speculate.) We talked about how the horizons of the possible for the old are expanding steadily. It's as if a new stage of human existence is being charted out these days, as if getting to California, a new continent were heaving itself up out of the ocean extending the country goodness knows how far out west, a new Lemuria. Once, at our age, we would have thought ourselves exceptional to be a healthy and engaged as we are. (Pace all those who gravestones I've read in old burying grounds recording ages well into the seventies and eighties.) Now our cohort is in terra nova.
Of course, anything can happen, but what you show me, Aunt Bennie, is that vivacity and high spirits need not inevitably wane, that it's possible for us to enjoy being alive well into our second century. And perhaps the heart of the secret is the habit of simply appreciating things, and especially other people.
To be positive, and to have my wits about me sufficiently to surprise, along with some mobility and dexterity, is a now even more reasonable aspiration. To have well-wishers with whom to chat (what must our contributions to conversation seem to someone in your vantage point?), better and better.
I hope also, God-in-love, that from now to then, I remain open to you, and the world. Guard my unguardedness.
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