On Longevity
From the Introduction to “Poetry a Centenarian Remembers” by this book’s writer.
Thomas Perls, an expert on ageing, said, “Centenarians disprove the perception that the older you get, the sicker you get. They teach us that the older you get, the healthier you’ve been.” Recent research on dementia shows that there’s a reduction world-wide as people lead better lives and look after their health. Further, in July, 2015 research was published by Otago University about different rates of ageing among young people, the first of its kind. Researchers followed 1000 people born in 1974, recorded their state of mental and physical health at the ages of 26, 32 and 38. They found quite large differences in the rates of ageing of people, unrelated to their actual years. Clearly nature gives some people a short life and some such as Thelma an inordinately long one, over 20 years above the average life expectancy for women
in New Zealand. More and more of those ancients also have a good quality of life.
These days it is not uncommon to live till well over 80, and people generally expect and hope for that. Then there’s seriously old, over 90, where we’d wish to feel at least healthy and certainly in possession of our faculties. Nowadays there’s another group, one that’s increasing in number, the over-100s. How do you get to be seriously old and comfortable? How do people get into their 11th decade? Some people can do all the right things and flop off the perch at 50. Others can do all the wrong things and still get into their 90s.
I heard recently about a Spanish vintner, Antonio Garcia, who imbibed four bottles of red wine a day, albeit with food at lunchtime and dinnertime. However, for most people 30 units a day would be life threatening; for the old wine-maker it was life enhancing because he managed to live to 107. He was probably also a winner in life’s genetic lottery. Owning a vineyard would have given him easy access to the vino, but the lifestyle would have been a big factor: hard work, fresh air and probably less stress; a social network and good local market food – all constants in communities of the long-liveds in Okinawa, Sardinia, Greece and other places with many ancients. Factors that they all have in common are close social ties, keeping active, eating healthy food and drinking wine, which would surely be a contributer to life-giving joie de vivre.
“I hope you’re not writing this for all over New Zealand to see … a kind of memoir of Thelma Mildred McLean! – My brothers called me Milly; I hated that!”
In this book there’s no great revelation about Thelma’s longevity, except what comes across in the interesting stories she tells about her life, spoken with vitality. She knows that she has been granted a long life, and is grateful she still feels well and comfortable. She is able to go for daily walks, does a crossword every morning, notices things going on around her, and makes lucid, witty comments. She reads, plays cards, enjoys visitors, converses easily, especially when her hearing aid is in place! I’ve heard that a contributer to longevity is not having to deal with the stresses and strains of life because a person has had the good fortune of others taking care of humdrum things. An example of this is the world’s oldest person – Jeanne Calment was 122 when she died, never having to work, living a life of leisure. (See “Jeanne Calment” in Notes in the centenarian book). If one aspect of Thelma’s life contributed to her longevity perhaps it was that she’s had a good life and been well looked after – there were three older brothers. Thelma’s daughter said, “She’s never had to mow the lawns, that kind of thing. There was always a maid or helper.”
However attractive it may be to think there’s a way to living long, in the end it’s most likely in the genes, in your stars, the luck of the draw – no major right or wrong way to stretch out your life. We may come “trailing clouds of glory” with an allocated amount of energy and use it up at different rates. I think it’s to do with joie de vivre, having a spirited and joyous attitude to life, leading a good life. That would certainly be Thelma.
In New Zealand as of 2011, there were between 400 and 500 centenarians. In early 2016, three of them were in Winara Resthome in Waikanae (the oldest is 102); three in Parklands, Waikanae (the oldest, 103), and three 99-year-olds at Seven Oaks in Paraparaumu, due to turn one hundred this year. In May, 2016, Thelma will join a much smaller group aged over 105 – there are fewer than 40 in New Zealand.
On life
I wonder if we can ever get used to the ending of the natural life of family members or friends, something not easy if connections are deep and we have just a couple of close relatives. Thelma has survived all her ten siblings. She would say, “Bill is no longer with us … at least, I think not. Oh, certainly not! He was older than me!”
It’s great to find a personal strength to adapt and carry on. Funerals are tough though, unless like my father, you can enjoy them. He was an old farmer from the rolling hills south of Edinburgh, Thelma’s contemporary, but he departed this world almost 30 years ago. At funerals he loved meeting old friends over glasses of whisky. He would arrive home and say, “Now, that was a grand funeral!”
Rae Dobson, Thelma’s oldest daughter, is over 80. Rae visits Thelma three or four times a week, making sure that she’s well looked after and has all the essentials such as crackers, cheese and a cask of Country Medium white wine for her substantial mealtime glass. Rae told me that it was wonderful for her mother to have a conversation with someone different, to take her out of herself. It has been my privilege to share poems with her.
“Your visits make me sparkle.”
Thelma herself said about being very old: “I’m lucky; I can eat and I have few physical problems. I had a sensible mother, you see, she fed us well. I don’t remember yesterday but I pretend that I do; it’s my way of coping. We get by in that fashion; we can moan away but it does no good – people listen to me but it’s in one ear out the other. I’m over 100. I know because I was born in 1911 and I remember seeing the soldiers go off to war in 1914.”
Perhaps living a long life has no secrets, no special conditions, no magic modus operandi, but in talking with Thelma, there is one thing I have noticed – there’s a spirit, an enjoyment of life, a desire to keep going. In addition, in Thelma’s case, there’s a huge appreciation of poetry and people. In fact, at the time of writing this, only a few weeks before her 105th birthday, the pleasure she derives from poetry and doing the daily crossword is as deep as ever.
Graham Bathgate, May, 2016
(You can read many of Thelma’s favourite poems and conversation around them in the fascinating book, “Poetry a Centenarian Remembers” by yours truly of Fine Line Press.)