At 110 years old, “I’m holding on”: lives of supercentenarians

For her 118th birthday on Friday, Sister André, one of the oldest women in the world, wishes to “die quickly”. In her retirement home in the south of France, she always leaves her door open, in case someone wants to pass a head.

In her room: a single bed, a Virgin and a radio, which she hasn’t listened to for several months. The march of the world worries him too much.

Most of the time she stays waiting, sitting on her wheelchair, her head bent. His blinded eyes are closed. She thinks, she prays, she dozes: we don’t really know.

Sister André, delicate face, alert voice, abyssal memory, always appears in her nun’s clothes, a blue kerchief over her hair.

His day starts early. “At 7 a.m., they get me up, they put me at the table.” Then we take her to the chapel where Lucile Randon, who became Sister André at over 40, never misses the morning service.

“It’s terrible not being able to make a move alone”, annoys this lady who worked until the end of the 70s and who at 100 was still taking care of boarders younger than her.

But she has retained what is most precious to her, the envy of others.

“I’m happy when people come to keep me company, like David. David, he’s charming, do you know him?”, she says mischievously, her hand tied to that of her confidant.

David Tavella, animator in this retirement home in Toulon on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, has also become his press officer, assailed by requests from journalists from all over the world, letters and boxes of chocolates.

Emmanuel Macron, its 18th president, sent the famous old lady handwritten wishes for 2022 ending with a “very respectfully” of circumstance.

Because Lucile Randon, born on February 11, 1904 in Alès (Gard), is the dean of the French and Europeans, and the vice-dean of the world, behind the Japanese Kane Tanaka, 119 years old.

– Up to 122 years old –

Well, probably. Because in these records, it has already happened that even older people come to shake up the data of the scientific base IDL (International Database on Longevity) by making themselves known to the Guinness Book.

When it comes to life expectancy, Japan or the “blue zones”, these isolated regions of Sardinia, Greece or Costa Rica which have a large number of centenarians, are often cited. France less.

Yet it is here, in Provence, land of light and olive trees, that lived Jeanne Calment, the human being who lived the longest in the history of Humanity and whose marital status could be valid. She died at 122 in Arles in 1997.

Also in the South of France lives André Boite, the probable new dean of the French, one of the rare men in the world of “supercentenarians”, that is to say having passed the milestone of 110 years. At 111, he still lives at home in Nice, likes to wear his three-piece suit but prefers to stay away from journalists.

In total, some 30,000 centenarians are now listed in France according to the French Institute of Statistics (Insee) and around forty are over 110 years old. Worldwide, there were half a million centenarians in 2015, according to UN projections, and there could be 25 million in 2100.

But how do they live their longevity?

– “She goes through everything” –

When Hermine Saubion is reminded that she is 110 years old, she replies: “It’s old, it’s not young, I’m holding on”.

The supercentenarian has just woken up from a nap in her wheelchair at the entrance to the restaurant of her retirement home in Banon, a village perched in the middle of the hills dotted with oaks and pines of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence.

Her beautiful face comes alive, a broad smile, her eyes intently staring at her interlocutor. She has no health problems but physical incapacities and severe deafness which isolates her.

She only understands snippets of sentences. But she does not give up life in society here where she has lived for two years. When Annick, another resident, passes by, she calls out to her: “Go ahead, sit down!”

“If she stays alone in one place for too long, she does not fail to shout her disagreement”, confirms Julien Fregni, the host.

For this Marseillaise, who knew a great love before devoting herself to her widowed mother, longevity was never a goal, it happened like that. As for his sister Emilienne, 102 years old, the other centenary of the accommodation establishment for the elderly and dependent people (Ehpad).

Sister André also has no health problems apart from muscle and joint stiffness linked to her immobility and has very few daily treatments, which is undoubtedly “one of her secrets of longevity”, reports her doctor Geneviève Haggai-Driguez. .

She easily survived the Covid-19 which just made her a little tired. “She goes through everything”, “takes over in an absolutely incredible way”, and “when we talk to her, she says: + oh, anyway, I had the Spanish flu +”.

Specialists have also observed that centenarians born before the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 had better resisted Covid than elderly people born after.

Not far away, in Valréas, at the foot of the Barronies of Provence, lives Aline Blain, a 110-year-old former teacher. Authoritarian and gentle at the same time, the “star” of her Ehpad likes to leaf through the weekly Paris Match. “The most important thing for me is the visit of my daughter, the little ones,” she said. At 76, her daughter Monique watches over her almost daily.

If they show resistance, these people of extreme age have seen many of their loved ones disappear, they no longer have anyone with whom to share the memory of their lives.

Aline Blain would like “better that we ignore (her) age”: “It does not please me to be the dean of Vaucluse, in any case, I am no longer old”, she says .

Death, they talk about it, without taboo, it is their daily life.

“We are waiting”, said Hermine, “we are waiting for the end, death, it will happen.”

Sister André also feels ready. “All day alone with your pain, it’s not fun,” she says. But “the good Lord does not hear me, he must be deaf of ears”.

– Passions and coquetry –

Science has still not succeeded in unlocking the secret of this longevity.

“We have no certainty but hypotheses. Longevity goes with economic wealth, democracy or even social democracies, nutritional factors with two major diets: Japanese (fish, vegetables) and the Mediterranean diet”, lists Jean-Marie Robine, demographer and gerontologist.

But “longevity is worth nothing without the right conditions,” he adds.

There are also criteria specific to the person, genes or lack of genes linked to risk factors.

“Jeanne Calment ticked all the boxes of longevity, she had an irreproachable lifestyle. She started smoking at 25 but a small cigarillo a day and drank a finger of port in the evening. She was a lady who passed next to the excesses”, says Catherine Levraud, head of the geriatrics center of the Arles hospital center.

“Faced with the extreme living conditions they experience, the elderly show impressive resilience and we know that optimism is linked to mechanisms of the immune system”, notes Daniela S. Jopp, professor of psychology of aging at the University of Lausanne and at the Swiss research center LIVES.

In her studies of German and American centenarians, the researcher has noted common traits: they are extroverted, charismatic, enjoy social interactions, have passions, are able to maintain a goal in life and develop coping strategies. ‘adaptation.

She may be forgetting one, coquetry: Hermine demands pretty hairstyles like her two little buns, “the devil’s horns”, she jokes. And Aline specifically asks for matching dresses and cardigans.

Because, as Sister André says, the most important thing in life is to “share a great love and not compromise on one’s needs”.

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