Do You Really Want to Live to Be a Hundred?

“Edie” turns 100 at the end of this month. She is not happy about it.

My brother-in-law’s mom is a total character. Twenty years ago, I suspect she was like Grandma Mazur in the Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evanovich. In her youth, she was surely Auntie Mame.

Until recently, Edie had all her wits about her, but she has been complaining most of the decade I have known her, “I don’t know what the hell I’m still doing here.” Then she goes on a monologue grumbling to God, who apparently doesn’t know what He’s doing.

She’s actually in great health, overall, except her teeth are wearing out. She is outliving them. Her 75-year-old son says all the time, “She’s in better shape than I am. I swear; she’ll outlive me.” Teeth, sons—she leaves them in the wake of more longevity than the Energizer Bunny.

Edie has lost nearly all of her extended family, although she is fortunate to have her two adult children nearby. They spend what time they can with her, and she’s in a lovely board and care home that could pass for yours or mine. In fact, it looks a lot better than mine. Her room is spotless, and she loves to show off her trinkets and treasures when we visit. That’s about as excited as she gets about anything these days, although I hear coffee ice cream also gets a rise out of her.

I don’t know—but I suspect—her boredom with life has finally taken its toll, probably more a cause for deterioration than age itself. I can’t remember when she last had something to sink her teeth into, which may be why they are weakening. Sure, she likes seeing her daughter, son, granddaughter, and great-grandkids … but her spark has gone out.

I’ll never forget the day we first met. At the time, my husband and I were living together, not married. That made me suspect for starters. After her grand entrance, Edie took a piercing look at me—a head to toe evaluation. She announced, “My name is Edith. You can call me Edie. I ask a lot of questions. You’ll get used to it.”

Fortunately, I had been warned about her and was braced for her blunt nosiness. I came to be more amused than annoyed by her pointed inquiries; and she became very fond of me. I made sure we did her many kindnesses, always remembering her on birthdays and major holidays. I thought she was a kick in the pants, still do, and can’t help but love her for all her rough edges and downright crusty nature.

This Christmas, though, she wasn’t her old self. She’s starting to slip. “How old am I?” she asked me. Apparently, she asks others family members the same thing all the time.

When I told her she was almost 100, it was as news to her. “I’m gonna be a hundred? I had no idea I was that old. I never thought I’d live that long.”

At first, Edie’s lack of enthusiasm about life was such an antithesis to my own lust for it, I had a hard time accepting her longing for death. She has a plot back East and her funeral arrangements all made. She can’t wait to keep the date. I’ll miss her, but another part of me can’t help but hope she’ll get what she longs for.

Edie is my flip side. I constantly worry that I’ll run out of time before I can do what I really want to do. I don’t mind dying; I just mind doing it before I feel finished. Edie is done.

Over the years, I began to understand and even honor her desire to die, regardless of the fact that, so far, God won’t have it. We’ve chanted all the clichés about how He’s not done with her yet. They are not comforting.

Edie’s eyesight and hearing are fading. This was an eye-opener to me, no pun intended, considering I already have sensory challenges, and I'm forty years younger than Edie. Makes me wonder how I’d fare at 100. Further, it makes me wonder if I even want to belong to the Centenarian Club. A lot of joy went out of Edie’s life along with the ability to read books. The audiocassette player and books on tape we got her didn’t appeal, even before her hearing worsened. I’m sure I’d lose a lot of my spark without the stimulation of constant learning or entertainment.

This story may sound dreary, but I think Edie is telling us something about life. Life without passion is empty. We see people all the time who are physically broken, even mentally or developmentally challenged, but as long as they are doing something they love, they are vital. A hundred would be glorious as long as I still have zest for living and reasonable health. Otherwise, I don’t think so.

Next time I hear the clock’s loud ticking toward a vague Running Out of Time, I’ll remember what I’ve learned from Edie. She has helped me rethink things.

Maybe I don’t have to feel done before I die. Better to have some mountains to climb, some passions still stirring, and a well-padded To Do List than to be done and have life left over.

~~~

Postcript: Since I wrote this piece in January 2008, Edie finally got her wish. She passed peacefully last spring at the age of 100. This is a tribute to her.

Topical Link: World’s Oldest Woman Turns 115

Photo Credit: WITH AGE COMES WISDOM © Rinderart Dreamstime.com

© Joyce Mason, 2009 – All Rights Reserved

Information Indigestion

Information overload is the new Alzheimer’s. It makes us fuzzy-headed and mentally bloated. It feels like a bellyache in the brain. We stuff ourselves, day and night, at the All You Can Eat Info Buffet. We are glutted with mental stimulation, luring us with its delicious aromas of fun, friendship, news, games, and get-rich schemes. There’s more information to digest in a day than most of us used to swallow in a month, maybe even a year. If someone can invent an Alka-Seltzer for the mind, that genius will be laughing all the way to the bank.

At least once I week, I think I have entered senility early, a prospect that is very worrisome to a baby boomer. The symptoms: I have misplaced yet another important piece of paper or lost track of some file, on- or off-line. I’m constantly asking people to re-send things or tell me something over again. (I know we have a close working relationship when I’m no longer too embarrassed to ask.) I used to track so well. Now I forget names and details. Where did they go?

If the Industrial Revolution changed our lives, the Information Revolution is changing how we live and process data more than any paradigm shift in recorded history. Supposedly, we use only a paltry percentage of our brains. That’s not only embarrassing to me, anymore; it’s a handicap. The need to process more information faster has me doing daily mind aerobics—word games and puzzles to stoke the fire of my synapses. I’m bent on shaking up a few memory cells and leaping around cyberspace more limber and muscular in my gray matter.

Even the brightest people are having a hard time handling the bombardment on all sides by info, info, info. You’ve probably heard the initials TMI. A couple of decades ago, it sadly stood for Three Mile Island and a terrible nuclear disaster. Now when someone says TMI, it means Too Much Information. The meltdown is a state I call Advanced Overwhelm.

We are not losing it. Now that we have computers, which, after all, are modeled after our own brains, the analogy is easy. We have just run out of RAM! (Would someone please put out a missing person’s report on my Random Access Memory?) By the time we’ve lived three or four, much less five to seven decades, the part of our brains that retrieves stored data and makes all the programs work is nearly full. We need an upgrade!

At the rate info is flying into our lives, we have to store and retrieve it at speeds we never have known before. We’re still operating like antiquated 286 computer, that relic clunker we plunked on before we even used a mouse and everyone was on the Internet. Our machines run at gigahertz speeds so fast, our brains can barely fire in the same range. Am I the only one who’s a little creeped out by this? Remember “2001, A Space Odyssey” and how HAL, the computer, attempted to sabotage and take over the mission?

We are now bionic. Computers are extensions of our minds. But we have to let our heads catch up with this break-neck evolution. (Is this why my neck hurts so much, so often?) We are being overwhelmed with voice mail, e-mail, faxes—websites, fancy phones that integrate this entire communications smorgasbord—and, yes, blogs, Tweets, Face Bookings and more! Ah, for the good old days when there was lag time. (Remember letters? Days to arrive and no one expected an answer for a week or two.)

Now that everything is instantaneous, we expect each other to do 100 more things, right now, all at once. All those requests and communiqués in your face … all those senders knowing you got it right away. No wonder we’re stressed out. Truth is, most emergencies—unless you happen to work as a 911 dispatcher—are of our own making. We are so impatient. Sometimes I feel like we’ve regressed back to the toddler stage when it comes to social graces. Gimme, gimme—want it now!

A new and improved high-tech species will only evolve out of the latest revolution if we exercise our minds a lot, lower our expectations a little, and remember what happens when a system tries to do more than it’s built for—it crashes. Before we have a collective nervous breakdown, go meditate and/or do something mindless ... and remember well-rounded people who play as hard as they work are the most creative and productive. And when we get those extra moments to rethink things a little, bear in mind that “information is not knowledge,” one of the great catchphrases of the New Millennium.

Last but not least, if you can’t slow down and simplify … if Advanced Overwhelm gets the best of you, take an Info-Seltzer and call in sick in the morning … then turn off the TV, computer, cell phone, handheld, and all the communications gismos and listen to yourself think. You might be amazed at how this low-tech, retro practice can heighten spirits and your put your brain back in gear!

~~~

Photo Credit: BUBBLING MEDICINE, © Wizdaz Dreamstime.com