Age is not a destination

Life is not a series of accomplishments or failures, threaded together like beads on a string. It is eating fresh tomatoes from a garden, juice trailing down the elbow. It is sitting before an elder with the intention of listening deeply. It is making eye contact with people we love, and the joy of deep breaths and the little moments between.

Not all of us will reach 100 years old, but there are ways we can make our lives more positive, healthier, and have stronger relationships. Intergenerational conversations are a huge part of that — especially, in some circumstances, with elders outside our families of origin. Earlier this year, I sat down with 14 centenarians at celebratory luncheons in Drexel Hill and Lansdale, and in a 99-year-old’s living room in West Chester.

My colleagues and I set up a backdrop with a brown, wrinkled sheet and bright lights in the rooms adjacent to each celebration. Montgomery County’s had an Elvis impersonator. Delco’s had an impressive cake with loopy, golden icing. Amid the festivities, these centenarians took time to share their stories with us. We asked each elder the same set of questions about love, change, and meaning; you can watch videos of their responses at inquirer.com/centenarians.

Many of their families have been Inquirer subscribers for their entire lives. During an interview with 101-year-old Newton Brown Meade, we discussed his love of tennis, which began in the 1930s on the tennis courts at Hunting Park and continues to this day. When we concluded, Meade gently grasped my hand and kissed it. The sense of gratitude and relief was palpable. We made it. A century is time enough for celebration.

Of course, age is not a destination. I don’t know if I will make it to 100 years old. None of us do. I write this in the days before my 32nd birthday, barely a third of the way somewhere. And isn’t death an alchemy of luck and mystery? Weeks after we interviewed him in his home, Charles Malloy died at age 99. When I was emailing family members to check facts for this feature, Philomena Liberkowski’s daughter told me she’d died at home on Aug. 20, just shy of her 104th birthday.

When we met in April, Malloy was soft-spoken and gentle. The one thing I remember most about his interview is not the Purple Heart he earned in World War II or his stories of growing up in an orphanage in the Northeast, but the abundant love he had for his wife, and how he said the trick to making it to 100 is to “keep breathing.”

Liberkowski was jubilant, and from the first breath made me smile. She was so proud of her children and quick to joke about her age. “It could be 100. Who cares? I’m here today. I’m not worried.”

Such is the risk and the reward of time.

Shortly after conducting these interviews, I was felled by a tick-borne illness, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, that gave me hours of emptiness as I let the doxycycline work its magic. As a former collegiate athlete who swims three times a week and ran the New York City and Boston Marathons, being compelled to commit to inactivity as part of my recovery at first felt like a punishment. Soon enough, though, I learned to get out of my own way in order to return to health. Rest does not come easily to me. Two months of enforced stillness changed me in ways I am still unraveling: A rededication to slow. A compassion for myself that feels tender and new. A willingness to hand some things over to God and the great unknown. A deep appreciation for the way wind ruffles the feathers of treetops. There is strength in stillness. There is strength in surrendering to that which is beyond our own control.

Late in the summer, when I finally had enough energy to travel to see my grandfather again, we sat in the garden of his assisted living facility next to a garden box of basil. With his left hand, the one the stroke didn’t debilitate, he threw a ball for my dog, Luna, over and over again. The next day, I broke him out to get to the sea. I couldn’t lift him into his wheelchair on my own, but I found a spot with his favorite takeout (fish-and-chips) and drove us to a place where we could stare at the waves. I parked where we weren’t supposed to, in front of a big sign that said no. We were unbothered for about half an hour until a man with an official-looking car and hat came to ask why I was so flagrantly disobeying the rules.

“This is my grandfather,” I said. “He’s in assisted living, and I busted him out to eat fish-and-chips with a view.” He softened and let us continue unbothered. The sky turned pink, then blue.

Before the stroke, my grandfather was verbose. After his stroke, he doesn’t talk much. Sometimes the slowness is hard. I miss when he would bury me in the sand. I miss the way his stories would never end. I even miss him telling the same stories about my childhood over and over again. Once, at a swim meet, I was so excited to see him that I waved at every stroke of backstroke, hardly caring about my time.

Looking at his hands as I wipe off the residue of dinner, I am certain of one thing: I am a beautiful combination of every single one of my ancestors, and the people who have loved me — as are you. I take the best parts and leave behind what needs to be left behind.

When we summon the voices of our elders, both chosen family and biological, we remember not only who we are, but where we are going. I am convinced, as the generation of my grandparents passes, that I want to be a mother. I don’t know exactly how or when that will happen, only that the love I carry with me from that generation needs to have somewhere to go.

Recording and listening to these 14 interviews with some of the oldest living Pennsylvanians has changed me, too. It makes me strive for the mundane. I want ease and peace and family and meaning and travel and faith and simplicity. I want to have the presence of mind, at the beginning and middle and end of my life, to stare at the ocean or a tomato and know that this moment, this bead on this string, is exactly where I am meant to be. And to some degree, don’t we all?

Caroline Merrill, the oldest centenarian we spoke to, will turn 110 on Oct. 29. She perhaps put it best: “I love every moment. So I’m very happy,” Merrill said. “Just don’t worry. I don’t worry. I turn it over to the Lord.”

Listening and relistening to the simplicity of this wisdom, I could hear something within me unwind.

Is there a story you’d like to share about an elder in your life, and what you’ve learned from them? Let us know by emailing letters@inquirer.com and include “centenarian” in the subject line.