"People act as though this is an achievement, and I suppose it is, sort of. Nobody in my family has lived this long, and I've been lucky. I'm still in pretty good health, no wasting diseases or Alzheimer's, and friends and strangers comment on how young I look, which cues me to cite the three ages of man: Youth, Maturity, and You Look Great."
"When Calment was ninety, a widow with no heirs, she sold her apartment in Arles to a local notaire, with the written agreement that she could continue to live there, by herself, until she died, and he would pay the taxes and give her a monthly stipend of twenty-five hundred francs. Calment was still going strong when the notaire died, in 1995, and his children paid the taxes and the stipend until her death, two years later."
A person marks the hundredth year by keeping a journal and reflects on the oddities of old age: comic forgetfulness alongside gratitude for preserved health. Family history lacks such longevity, so reaching one hundred feels partially like luck. Physical declines prompt self-deprecating humor and a nickname, Feebleman, while a wife nearly three decades younger assumes growing caregiving duties. Rising numbers of centenarians spur medical interest in longer life spans. Jeanne Calment serves as an extreme example, with a sale-and-stipend arrangement that allowed her to live independently into her early twenties beyond a hundred.
Read at The New Yorker
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