Dying at 150: A Valediction
My name is Maria and I’m 150 years old. This will be my last day here, but before I go, I thought I’d share some words about what it’s like to have lived for so long and how it feels to decide that it’s been long enough.
In the summer of 1950, my husband and I joined a clinical trial for what was to be breakthrough anti-ageing treatment. I was 82 at the time, my husband was nearly 85. It wasn’t too long after the war and a profound optimism was permeating society. For those who survived that period of such devastating human atrocities and fear, there was a tremendous hope about the future. I suppose that’s what intrigued us about the idea of living forever. To see such hope manifest. Indeed, it was a time to behold. The collective human spirit, especially when marching forward in unison, is something special. Perhaps there isn’t anything as special. And so it was that we entered the trial hand in hand, hopeful.
It didn’t take long for the effects of the drug to take hold of me, to breathe youth into my bones and muscles and to match my sense of hope with a sense of physical rebirth. But, for my husband this wasn’t so. It was as if whatever new strength was given to me, it was first taken from him. He died shortly after the trial began.
And so there I was, offered a second life but at the expense of the partnership that had made the first one so rich. As I held his hand during the final hours I remembered thinking how long it takes for a flower to bloom but how quickly it wilts. I’ve missed him ever since. And as more and more time has piled on top of that final night I find myself simply missing the nearness of his memory. That it was nearly 70 years ago, a lifetime, when I last felt his lips, feels like some sort of tragedy. Like recalling something so magnificent in feeling, yet so vague in detail — something we humans might call Heaven.
The other twenty or so subjects didn’t make it past five years. And so it was that the trial was called off and by the time we reached the 60’s, the previously felt optimism had all but vanished and we, human beings, were at each other’s throats once again.
On one side justice, on the other oppression — it is the struggle of being alive. That there is a fight to be had is to say there is a life to be led. I see it even now, in what many call a time of peace. At the same time, there is a renewed vigor for endless life and a hope that science may yet deliver it. Let this letter be my warning against such an endeavor.
It’s not that life isn’t beautiful and profound in so many ways. It is. Very much so. It’s that when you have this feeling like you want to live forever, you don’t actually realize how little it has to do with you. What you really desire is to not be left out. To be around for what’s to come, to see and experience as much as you can. I’ve seen much of this world and I can tell you that the seeing isn’t nearly what’s most pleasurable about life. It’s the sharing. To learn and discover is nothing if not followed closely by teaching and sharing. That’s when you really discover. If the internet gave us something wonderful, it’s that it pushes us to elevate beyond the simple accumulation of knowledge.
While there’s so much about the world today that’s built to make things easy, to make everybody feel a little more comfortable, I suggest we should be pushing harder to feel exhausted. For to be exhausted is to be fulfilled.
There’s so much available at our fingertips, perhaps we’ve lost sight of how meaningful depth can be. And while we’re constantly bombarded with new discoveries and technologies that might lead to some great revelation of truth about the human experience, I contend there’s nothing lurking around the corner that’s not already here. The deep questions that humans have been trying to answer throughout my long life are those that today still leave us puzzled. It took me a long time to understand this and that the answers had little to do with knowledge about the world but about the depth and complexity of the people within it.
I’ve been deeply lonely since my son died in 1978, almost 50 years ago. Lonely not in the sense that I haven’t made friends, I’ve made many. But lonely in the sense that nobody else would ever know what I was like before the time they met me. My long youth — I’ll call it youth — was just a series of facts; my experiences, a matter of speculation. But it was through this realization that I learned that meaning is such a small thing and doesn’t require a long history.
My life became a story that invited the imagination of others in order to understand. And what a glorious realization it is to finally understand that the you in your story is but a side character to be distorted and reinvented in the minds of others. That you get to become some sort of mysterious creature, a canvas on which others get to paint on and over time and time again. You become nothing and everything all at once. Meaningful to an endless degree. Imagined and reimagined. This is life. When you understand how little you have to do with it then — and only then — does it appear endless.
Whenever I found myself feeling as if there was nothing left to do, I discovered new possibilities in re-living the same experiences with different characters. I was 145 when I went on my first Tinder date, for example. The young man, 35, thought I was joking and so we met. He was sweet and charming and had much to say about technology, business, travel. His optimism was something I told him to cherish because when you let it go, it runs out fast. At the end of our short time together he told me I was beautiful and he meant it. And I forgot how wonderful it felt to be told such a thing. I remembered being aroused and imagining what it would be like to go to bed together. There was something magical about the experience.
People are the heart and soul of our experiences. I’ve felt it often. And it’s with this not-so-deep insight that I leave you with my final thoughts. Cities, art, entertainment — never let them converge. The seemingly nearness of everything and the endless connectivity to a banal version of the world can be toxic should you elect to stop reinventing it. Living life without being fearless is something to be ashamed of. Never make it your concern to be liked or accepted and never fear somebody reshaping your story through their own interpretation. Let them reimagine you. Let them teach you something new about who you are. Be touched, changed, torn down and built back up. That is to be real. Changing. Your vulnerability is survivable. Always take that leap.
Augment, as much as possible, what you think you already know because you will find out quickly how little you can actually understand by yourself. Embrace the scarcity of life and aim to be exhausted at the end! Don’t just see things but feel them deeply. When you travel stay in one place and meet many people. Touch their history, reinvent it, let yourself be a part of it. Draw instead of taking pictures and you’ll never forget what you see. Whenever you make love, do it as if it will be the last time, because in the end you’ll regret all the passion you withheld.
And finally, never look for ways to elongate your life if it means giving up living. Smoke, drink, dance. Take a drug or two. And scream every chance you get. Be so exhausted that you want to go. Realize the way to overcome your fear of death is to look forward to it, and to look forward to it means to push to the very bottom of everything that’s available to you. Only then will you feel like you haven’t missed out. You can’t die happy if you were never happy to begin with.
I suppose I’ll let that be my last piece of advice but before you dismiss it, let me tell you as I sit here, prepared to go, I feel like maybe I should have done this a long time ago.
Wishing you happiness,
Maria
