Doris dropped the F-bomb late last year. She was 98. It landed exactly as intended!
I just got back from a couple of weeks in the far north of Ontario, where we celebrated my mother-in-law’s 99th trip around the sun. She still lives in her own home. She has all her marbles. Every. Single. One. She wears hearing aids now. When the snow comes in under three inches, she’s out shovelling her own driveway. More than three, she’ll let the neighbours handle it.
She is, by any measure, a spitfire.
She’s also completely done with the question: “What’s it like to be 99, Doris?” Her answer, essentially, “How would I know? I’ve never been here before.” A few years ago, I asked what she’d do differently. She didn’t hesitate. “Way less volunteering. Too many people take, and far too few give back.”
Noted.
The longevity recipe, as best I can reverse-engineer it:
Good genes (non-negotiable, sorry). Wholesome food in small quantities. Hot water to drink. No alcohol, ever. Keep moving – especially at minus 50. Believe in God and show up to church. Volunteer anyway, despite what she said above. Love people loudly, in the form of butter tarts, homemade meals, and an endless output of crocheted and knitted goodies. Be kind. Accept the bad with the good. Make friends with people 40 years younger than you. Keep a tight circle. And apparently, save the F-bombs for your late 90s. The timing seems to matter.
How do you stack up? I don’t do well on this list either.
Here’s what actually stops me cold:
Mom was born in 1927. Women had won the right to vote eight years earlier. BUT she wasn’t legally considered a person under Canadian law until she was two years old. The Famous Five won that fight at the Privy Council in 1929.
She was the only one of five local kids who survived appendicitis at around age 15.
She fell in love with and married a Second World War veteran.
She raised three boys. The birth control pill arrived when she was 34. Long after the boys were already here.
She lived in a northern mining town in an era when companies actually built the homes, employed the people, and felt some obligation to both. That compact is gone now.
She was allowed to open her first bank account at 37, and only because she was married. She had to wait until she was 47 for the legal right to get a credit card or take out a loan without a male co-signer. That same year, the Canadian government was just beginning to make noise about equal pay, maternity benefits, and abortion access. The wage gap wouldn’t close to within 15% of men’s earnings for another 30 years of her life.
At 78, she fell in love with her neighbours across the street. Two gay men who were finally, lawfully, allowed to be married. They were overjoyed to be adopted as her newest northern sons. At 98, her peripheral vision had reached the point where driving was no longer safe or legal.
She has taken every single one of these changes in stride. Changes that those of us born later treat as baseline, as obvious, as of course that’s how it is. For her, each one was a shift in the actual architecture of the world she lived in.
I’ll give her eulogy someday. This year, I’m just standing here a little gobsmacked. I have no pithy message today.
Only that I have watched, with my own eyes, what a long life lived well actually looks like. It’s not available to everyone. But it sure beats the alternative.