I have been thinking that the title of this column described me, but I don’t hold a candle to my one remaining aunt. She had her 102nd birthday last month. Her memory is remarkable; she recognized me and my son among her numerous offspring, including great grandchildren. Our once enormous family has dwindled, but her son-in-law said, “I’ve done my part, providing her with five grandchildren and a whole lot of great grandchildren.” That’s a true statement – my aunt Rosalind had only one child, but my cousin Janis and her husband have obeyed the biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply, more than any of the others in my family have done.
Everyone calls her my childhood name for her – Roro. She was the youngest of her 11 brothers and sisters; my father was next to the oldest. I, being the youngest of the third generation, was the family pet, at least for the two years until the eventual 14 cousins began to arrive.
I really recommend being the first grandchild, if you can manage it. I was taught everything by my grandparents and young aunts and uncles who were all accustomed to having a little one in the house. Most of the family stories tell how cute and how smart I was.
That second generation and their spouses are all gone now except for Roro, and more than half of the third have bitten the dust, but I am probably going to survive for a long time. My mother was 95, my other two aunts were in their 90s when they died, and my doctors threaten me with living to be 100.
Expecting that, I’m doing all sorts of things I don’t like, in order to postpone the disabilities that I observe in the very old. I’m just old – not very old. I exercise, which I’ve always loathed; I eat sensibly, skipping things I used to love; I read things I don’t particularly like, along with the trashy novels I do like, to keep my mind active. I play Scrabble on the computer, realizing I’m not as good as I used to be, but in the hope of keeping me verbally alive. I write on the computer, hoping my ideas stay relevant in this world.
If I go before that 100th birthday, I’m going to be so irritated about the exercise I did when I hated it, about the sensible diet and the intelligent books I struggled through. Who needed it?
Roro lives now for the past several months in a pleasant nursing home, well attended by the most devoted daughter I have ever seen. I looked at the other residents who looked much older and worse than she did.
I’m sure she never did a day of exercise in her life. The most strenuous thing she ever did was play bridge, and not very good bridge at that.
Here she is at 102, old with her long time memory intact and her short time memory pretty good. Tell me – why am I taking exercises that make my back hurt when my heredity suggests that I’ll be okay if I just live as I like?