Looking forward to the rest of their lives

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, interviews, centenarians

According to a table I once saw in a book on futuristics, I can expect to live about twenty years longer than my father, and his generation can expect to live ten to fifteen years longer than their parents. Both my grandfathers were old, old men by the age of 65. Both died at about 72. My father is 83 (for another month or so), keeping himself busy. He shows no signs of the 5-year decline that typically precedes a "natural" death. I've watched other aged family members as their world narrows toward the end... If I live to be 103, at that time I am likely to have a level of health and general well-being that he enjoys today.

About one American in 9,000 is 100 or older today. That comes to some 40,000; 34,000 women and 6,000 men. The oldest members of the baby boom generation are in their 50s (I am 58). Fifty years from now, there ought to be quite a number of them still living; in all, some three million boomers are expected to live more than 100 years.

Why is this happening? We hear of "life expectancy" being 40 in 1900, in the 20s in Classical times, and in the 70s today. This is the average life span at birth. The main factor is reduced infant mortality. Average (remaining) life expectancy for 20-year-olds hasn't changed nearly so much: from age 60 in classical times, to 75 in 1900, to the late 80s today. Maximum life expectancy (at least since the patriarch Jacob died at age 137) hasn't changed at all; it remains near 120 years.

Actual maximum life span hasn't changed at all in 4,000 years. Rather, the chances of living to older ages has increased, as more and more causes of early death are reduced and eliminated. At one time, smallpox killed one in a thousand; now the virus is effectively extinct. All kinds of infectious diseases have become minor irritants. Most people die of chronic diseases now: vascular disease or cancer. We are increasing health span and eliminating causes of early death. The "population triangle" is becoming a "population rectangle". It is conceivable that one day accidents will be nearly the only cause of premature death, and nearly everyone living to their 90s and beyond.

Is there any special insight to be gained from those who outlived the dangers of the early and middle 20th Century? Any wisdom, anything besides luck (including the luck of the genetic draw) to account for their greater survival?

Six years ago, Neenah Ellis embarked on a project for NPR, to interview people who had lived through the entire Twentieth Century, to get their stories, to present a picture of life as it changed from 1900 to 2000 or so. She got more than she bargained for, lots more.

Her memoir of her experiences with fourteen centenarians, If I Live to be 100: Lessons from the Centenarians, (almost) unflinchingly chronicles the change in her own thinking that resulted. At first, the people she interviewed reinforced a stereotype: feeble, senile, crotchety oldsters who hadn't had much to live for since they were about seventy. Then she met Anna Wilmot.

Here is a lady, widowed for about thirty years, who rows back and forth across a little lake any day it is warm enough—because it is fun, she says. Still able to do much of her own cooking, getting out and about, looking better than many 60-year-olds.

A few others are clearly right up against the limits of their life. Indeed, about half the people she interviewed died within two years of the interview. Yet there was a couple with eighty years of marriage to their credit, and others with seventy or more married years. A woman who married at 98, to a 78-year-old. A centenarian who married shortly after the interview. A professor still tutors students at 103. Tell him the page of the textbook that you are on, and he can just about quote it.

Ms Ellis didn't get nearly as many stories as she'd planned, about life throughout the Century. She got a lot of childhood memories, and a smattering of young married life anecdotes, but the centenarians were mostly forward-looking, living for today and planning the next good thing. Many of them seemed unmoved by the past. It had happened, it was over.

Somewhere along the line, the author experienced a connection she describes as "falling", a kind of flow between her and her new acqaintance. Later, with a 103-year-old evangelist, she experienced it again, and his exhortation to her to think seriously of the end times and the state of her soul made the hair stand up on her nape. She happened on a book about falling in love that spoke of "limbic resonance," and one chapter records her visit with the author.

It seems we all have a powerful means of connecting with another emotionally, getting a "vibe" of someone. Mostly we hide it; the experience is too overpowering for everyday use. Yet a number of these old folks just don't have time for slower means of getting to know you. In their way, they have short shrift for fools: connect now, or forget it. It is not a lack of caring, but a husbanding of resources.

Many of the people she met were generous and hospitable to a fault. Many were caring for people younger than they. A good number were living on their own, needing at most a little housekeeping help. They'd seen two world wars, been through the great depression, retired about the time the Boomers were busy dropping out and getting high, and now have grandkids getting ready to retire...or not.

Centenarians are different. There is a little hook in the actuarial curve. For most people, from the age of 65 onward, half will die between today and the day they'd reach age 85. But for those who live past 85, there is a big dip in death rates. There is another population that tends to live healthy for another 15-20 years, and some go on past 110. As one old gent put it on his 107th birthday (a different source, not this book), "See you all next year. Nobody dies between 107 and 108."

Today Neenah Ellis is different. She was changed by these few years of interviews. Reading her book has passed on some of that change to me.