A Century in Provence
I recently stumbled upon a story about Jeanne Calment, the French woman who dies in 1997 at the extremely ripe old age of 122 years. That makes her the longest living human by almost three years compared to 119-year-old Sarah Knauss of Hollywood Pennsylvania (she died in 1999). That means that Calment has held that record worldwide for twenty-three years. That’s quite an amazing accomplishment in an age when longevity is generally advancing by leaps and bounds due to improved medical science, better nutrition and probably more leisure time and awareness of healthy lifestyles.
It’s even more amazing when you realize that people have been trying to debunk Calment’s claim to Methuselah fame for all of those twenty-three years. She has been called a statistical outlier, but the supporters of her claim say that it is all well documented from her birth certificate onward, there are no life gaps that are unexplainable, she was well-to-do and lived a life that was apparently without much stress or strain since she did not need to work for a living and yet had both that country-French red-wine-drinking, fresh vegetable-eating and high exercise lifestyle going for her that makes it seem that she took good care of herself and did not, as they say, sweat the small stuff.
Funny thing though, when I went to look up the longest-living people, what I found was that besides Calment and Knauss, the next eight record-holders, all of whom are women (of course), all only lived to age 117 years. The top ten oldest men ranged from 116 years to 113 years. Thus, men live on average 3 years less in this supercentenarian cohort. Life expectancy in the U.S. (only numbers 35 on this ranking, with Lebanon just edging us out) is 81.4 and 76.3 (a 5-year spread between the sexes). That means Calment lived 50% longer than the average American woman twenty years later. Impressive.
My mother died in 2017 at the age of 100 years and 144 days or 100.4 years. Statistically in the U.S. that put her in the 99.9827th percentile. That translates into 56.606 Americans that currently have attained centenarian status. I knew getting to 100 was a big deal (at least to Willard Scott and the people at Smuckers), but I never realized how numerically special that made her. I joke about how she did herself and all of us kids that she dragged through the swaps of the developing world a lot of good by eating a lot of dirt to build up her and our immune systems. Indeed, both of my older sisters (69 an 68) are spry as spring chickens. My oldest sister still has her dark hair with nary a grey hair in sight. I have all my hair (though there’s plenty of grey in it and my beard is snow white). Good genes and maybe some of that tropical schmutz make up for lots of bad lifestyle choices along the way.
But let’s go back to Jeanne Calment for a moment. Why is it so shocking that one person who has lived a good life in a longevity-prone place (France ranks number 12 on the hit parade with an average female life expectancy of 85.4 years) can outlive her peers and stick around for 122 years? Is it because she supposedly met VIncent Van Gogh in 1888? Is it because no one wants to believe her and thinks her daughter assumed her identity in 1934 rather than dying of pleurisy? I am not certain how a statistician can declare an outlier as impossible. There have supposedly been 100 billion people who have ever lived on the earth. If the statistics are 0.0173% for centenarians, then that would mean there were somewhere over 10 million who made it to age 100 (I know, not everywhere is the U.S. and lifespan was not that long way back when), but the Methuselah legend (he was Noah’s grandfather) suggests he almost lived 1,000 years. Now that’s an outlier, not 122.
Having watched my mother’s quality of life after age 95 or so, I’m not so sure Methusaleh had such a great deal. Every morning at my ripe old age of 66 I get in the hot tub and soak my bones and joints before starting my day. My mind is active and reasonably agile still, but the body tires out much more quickly. Kim tells me that I now officially have four desks in the house where I can read and write. There is the one in my office (my real desk). There is a rolling TV desk in the living room. I have purchased a lap desk for the deck when I want to catch the afternoon sun. And last, but not least, I have actually bought a plastic desk to use in the hot tub to help insure that my iPad doesn’t go for a swim.
I am in competition with Cecil, our 13-year-old Bichon (in Bichon years that translates to 91 years old). I may have four desks to relax at, but he has five beds to choose from and on most days he spends time in each one of them. I suspect Cecil spends a good 20 out of 24 hours either sleeping or resting very peacefully. I know they say its a dog’s life, but lately he doesn’t even get up in the morning with late-rising Kim and he usually goes into bed by himself an hour or two ahead of us.
We are all forced to think about longevity sooner or later. When we are young we are scared by obligation into buying more life insurance than we might need on the presumption that the worst thing that can happen to us or our family is for us (the bread winner) to die young. As we get into the retirement zone, we all understand that the biggest risk these days in retirement land is that we risk outliving our nest egg and live too long. We are being asked more and more to take on our own longevity risk, which is pretty perverse. Bad enough that our descendants are forced into the position of hiding their hope that we die young enough for them to enjoy our legacy (even if they don’t want us gone, they generally and abstractly do want their money while young enough to enjoy it.). But the new pension efforts being pushed by every corporation and certainly every sovereign nation is to force people to manage their own life retirement needs.
We used to retire at 65 and be lucky if we got 5 years to enjoy the front porch rocking chair. Now we retire at 65 and live another twenty years. Work forty and retire for twenty does not seem like the sort of work/life balance that nature intended for us. I know right now that I haven’t retired, even if I am going to get my first Social Security deposit next month (Wow, I just remembered that!). What I have done is moved my act into a sunnier spot and changed up my work profile. Luckily, I have found other things I can do and am valued for that I can do remotely and at my own pace and time (somewhat). That’s a good productive later-stage next career, not retirement.
I’m still not sure I want to do a Jeanne Calment (not that I think I have the legs for it anyway). A Century in Provence or even a Century in San Diego feels like more than I’m ready to sign up for just yet. We’ll see.