One Hundred

One Hundred

    There's something we like about the number, the two zeros, the longevity, the accomplishment.  Cien, cento (think centennial), sto, a hundred yards, a hundred years, the hundredth anniversary...each somehow triggers something in us, as much as the difference that seems to occur between holding a $20 bill and a $100 bill; something foreign, almost unattainable or magic there, rare, uncommon (to most of us, anyway) and special.  So it was in watching the third highest grossing movie ever in Swedish history, The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out A Window and Disappeared.  My mother often sits next to a 100 year old man in the building where she lives; no name for him (at least to her); he is simply "the 100 year old man."  For her (from her 90 year old viewpoint), it is an endearing term, a term reflecting her admiration at his wit and attention and laughter (he is quite agile and talkative and unlike many of the residents there, able to get along quite handily without the use of canes or walkers).  100 years...quite the accomplishment (and actually, the first such person I've physically met to have reached that age mark).  It's a long time, at least to us humans.  To reach the ripe old age of 80 is a target most of us would be quite happy with (until we're 79 anyway); to hit 90 is a bonus.  And to reach 100...super lucky, the lottery, against all odds.

    But all of this assumes that we are arriving at that 100-year point pretty much the way we are now, that is, in pretty much the same physical and mental state we're experiencing today (for better or worse).  When an ad on one of the shows we were watching appeared, along with its famous actor (Christopher Walken), my wife quickly asked, "what's that actor's name?," a question guaranteed to erase all memory from your brain.  It's as if you're enjoying a song and right in the middle of it someone asks, "who was the lead singer in that group;"  you see the person's face, you know the voice, and poof, just like that it has left the tip of your tongue.  And try as you might, the memory is gone, until someone mentions a key word or part of a name and suddenly, it all floods back.  So for my wife and I, we both locked into the word "Chris" immediately, and there it stopped.  Chris, but Chris who?  It just didn't sound right.  Was it someone else?  We knew the movies he had appeared in (and this was the first time we had both blanked out), but Chris who?  It had to be another name (we eventually checked the Internet about one of his old movies or else we wouldn't have slept).  It was a bit scary for me, so I began quizzing myself about authors on titles I remembered, Perfection of the Morning by Sharon...Sharon B.  Sharon...was it Sharon?  Did the last name begin with B? 

    The next day, all was clear, the names all coming back as if merely playing hide and seek (the author was Sharon Butala); some memories are meant to be lost, and some are meant to be hidden temporarily, as if your brain is on overload and down for "maintenance" for a bit.  So it was a relief for me to have this temporary glitch of sorts; but what if it wasn't?  What if it was merely a preview of more glitches to come, and more often?  In the book On Pluto by Greg O'Brien, who as Amazon puts it is: ...an award-winning investigative reporter, (who) has been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's and is one of those faceless numbers.   Acting on long-term memory and skill coupled with well-developed journalistic grit, O’Brien decided to tackle the disease and his imminent decline by writing frankly about the journey.  As O'Brien met John Joe, another person with his condition in Ireland, he wrote about talking with John Joe in The Huffington Post: "What scares me about this disease," he says over another sip of his pint, "is the loss of memory and the inability to carry a conversation.  The brain just isn't processing; it's stalled.  It's embarrassing.  So I often avoid conversation.  I retreat into myself, and at times deal with rage.  People who know me say, 'He's changed a lot.'"  ...What hasn't changed about John Joe is his heart and his gut Irish humor.  Alzheimer's drives one from the mind to the place of the heart, the soul.  "I may have tears in my eyes," he says, "but I'm not crying out of sorrow.  It's part of what I've been handed.  I was blessed with a good family that gives me strength.  I have no cause for complaint.  I laugh, like you, at how long it takes me to remember." ...I draw the analogy with John Joe, one he relates with, of comparing Alzheimer's with the basement of a house.  "Ever been in a basement doing laundry at night when someone in the kitchen turns the cellar light out?"  I ask him.  "You scream, right, and you throw a few 'F' bombs until someone upstairs turn the light back on.  That's Alzheimer's.  A light goes off, and one goes into rage because it's dark.  At some point, the light goes off forever."

    Having just finished A House of My Own by Sandra Cisneros, I was struck by her many astute memories of her life, her ability to make those memories meaningful to others, an artist at work.  Here are just a few of her many, many observations: (on her father crying on his deathbed, saddened that he "failed" at not leaving each of his children a house) It astonishes me even now to think Father's idea of success was leaving each of his seven kids a house!  Father had given us so much by not giving us much...Necessity.  That's what he gave us.  Necessity taught us to value what we worked for, to recognize others who, like us, didn't have much, to be generous to others because we hadn't had much.  When you haven't had much, you never forget what it feels like.  Compassion.  That's what Father gave us. (on home, having grown up in a rough neighborhood) My mother herding us into the basement before midnight to protect us from the passion of neighbors. A rock, a word, a bullet, a bomb.  Overflow from the Vesuvius called the heart...Is home the place where you feel safe?  What about those whose home isn't safe?  Are they homeless, or is home an ideal just out of reach, like heaven?  Is home something you move toward instead of going back?  Homesickness, then, would be a malaise not for a place left behind in memory, but one remembered in the future. (on loss of friends and family) It occurs to me there's a global conspiracy to keep me in the dark about certain simple truths.  This is in regards to getting older and fatter, and other transmogrifications of aging, like losing your parents.  Did someone forget to tell me or was I not listening?  I ask, "How come nobody told me?" almost on a daily basis...In Mexico they say when someone you love dies, a part of you dies with them.  But they forget to mention that a part of them is born in you, not immediately, I've learned, but eventually, and gradually.  It's an opportunity to be reborn.  When you're in between births, there should be some way to indicate it all.

    Live to be 100, to become the person someone else calls "the 100 year old man?"  Perhaps if I could remember as sharply as Sandra Cisneros, or even to struggle through such memories as Greg O'Brien.  But to have the basement lights out for longer and longer, intolerable to the outside world (yet perhaps exciting to me, now plunged into another world to explore, perhaps content to leave it all behind and be "reborn" in a different reality or form), to have my heart still beating in both worlds and my mind perhaps working only in one, to hear that distant awe of saddened and resigned voices saying "100 years" on one end and perhaps nonchalant voices on the other saying "100 years" as if that age were merely a tiny tick in the cosmos of things and no big deal.  100 years may be a milestone but in the total scheme of things, it may be just a stone, a pebble really, another piece of stardust.  Whether any of us reach that point, we have reached today, right now; this is where we are.  So many memories behind us, so many homes behind us...but memories still ahead, going forward from this point, where we are now.