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One hundred years go by one day at a time
By Carl Heintze
Last December the man across the street turned 100.
You might think this cause for some celebration, but so far as I could tell, nothing special happened.
In the morning, as on every morning, the 100-year-old man came out of his house pushing his walker. He got into his car with the help of his two home health aides and they drove him to Mass. The 100-year-old man is a good Catholic. He goes to Mass almost every day.
I presume sometimes he also prays for his wife, who died more than a decade ago in her 80s. She was younger than the 100-year-old man, and she died very suddenly.
She went to the hospital for some surgery and came home. She was home for a month or so, and then one day she died. The 100-year-old man didn't tell anybody in the neighborhood. We neighbors didn't know what had happened until one of us went to see the man's wife. Both her bed and her room were empty.
Since then the 100-year-old man has lived alone. Well, not really alone. He's lived with his two home health aides, a brother and a sister who are from a Central American republic. They came to California because of the civil war raging in their homeland.
We neighbors don't know which country they came from because at the time they arrived, several civil wars were under way in Central America.
They cook for the 100-year-old man. They clean house and take out the garbage and do little things around the yard. Otherwise it is hard to tell what goes on with the 100-year-old man.
He has some regular visitors, mostly men, and all, of course, younger than he is. Back a half dozen years or so I used to see him walking early in the morning. He got up early and walked long distances, miles sometimes.
I suppose that may have had something to do with his longevity. He never walked with anyone else, and he walked early enough in the morning so he probably never saw anyone except the newspaper delivery people.
The 100-year-old man also doesn't seem to have any hobbies or diversions.
Even when his wife was alive, they didn't go out much. They did go to Mass almost every day of the week, just as he does now.
So far as I can tell, the 100-year-old man doesn't wear glasses. His use of a walker is a recent addition to his life. Until he was in his late 90s, he walked without the aid of anything. Then he got a cane, and now he is using a walker.
But that's not unusual when you get to be 100. More and more people are getting to the century mark. We have a friend, for instance, whose mother is 102. She still recognizes people, still eats and sleeps well and seems intent on outliving her daughter.
Thinking about the 100-year-old man takes me into new territory, as it does the nation. The number of those with three-digit ages is growing every year.
It's hard to know what to say about this. When one gets to be 100, there aren't many people around you who are 100 too. You can safely assume that if you live that long, first, you'll probably be without a spouse, and secondly, you may well be without children. They may not survive that long.
My neighbor, of course, never had any children. He married his wife after she had passed childbearing age. He seems without relatives. Gradually over the years, the number of visitors to his house has dwindled.
Most of the time he is inside, especially now that he no longer is able to make his early morning walks. I don't think he gets a newspaper. Indeed, when you are 100, the events of the day, the week or even the month probably don't seem that important.
He must have a television set, although I have never seen any certain evidence that he does. If he does, I have no idea what he watches or if he watches anything at all. My guess, without really knowing, is that he must do a lot of just sitting.
In short, I don't know what to make of living 100 years; of having been a boy when there were almost no automobiles; of having lived through two world wars; of watching Santa Clara Valley continually morph into something different, decade after decade.
I have only a few clues as to what being 100 must be like and they come from my grandparents. They lived into their 80s and 90s in a time when hardly anyone lived to be 100. They suffered various handicaps as they grew older: arthritis, strokes, the usual endings of life.
But had they been born a little later, they might well have survived for a full century.
As I think of that, I wonder what's to become of me, their grandchild. Will I live to be 100? If I do, will I live like the 100-year-old man across the street?
It's something to think about.
Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to the Los Gatos Weekly-Times
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
