Now that I'm back with my trusty QWERTY keyboard, I can resume blogging. For the last few days, other than checking email, the AZERTY keys at our relatives' home allowed hunting and pecking, not much more. We've been in France, in the lovely Anjou region north of the Loire, where my wife's Aunt Marguerite - "Tante Guite" - has just celebrated her centenary.
Tante Guite had, until very recently, been living at home, a little rented row house in a slate mining suburb of Angers. She'd been able to do so mostly because of a pretty good (extraordinary, when compared to the American system) medico-social support system, which included a hot meal brought to her daily, health visits for essential treatment and medications, and an emergency link "hot button."
Now that she's no longer able to get around without a wheelchair, she's in a public/private retirement home adjacent to the Loire. Wednesday's birthday party brought a few local journalists and dignitaries, and of course family members from France (and us). Tante Guite, bless her, still loves reading, so there were additions to her library, which is mostly history of her native Brittany and the Anjou, where she spent equal halves of her long life.
Tante Guite, who's also been a widow for half her life, grew up as World War I was devastating more distant parts of northern and eastern France. Her village in Brittany was not spared, nor was her family; the "Monument aux Morts" in her village includes the name of her uncle, killed in the first weeks of the war somewhere in Belgium. Tante Guite, a schoolgirl at the time, remembers soldiers coming home, and of course the Armistice and 14 July celebrations afterward, when the triumphant French Army was considered invincible. She was a wife and mother when Brittany was occupied by the Germans in WW II, and enthralls her audience with details on life under foreign occupation.
At the retirement home, she is among the most lucid in a group that is mostly ladies - all younger than her. France is grappling with an aging population, though its tradition of social solidarity gives it flexibility that is sometimes hard to come by in societies like the US. The home's staff of nurses, aides, and others are civil servants. Tante Guite's relatively modest survivor's pension and other benefits go toward her upkeep, and she is expected to deplete her life's savings. Eventually, her children (the law even extends responsibility to grandchildren) will be expected to make up the difference.
Seeing Tante Guite and her fellow residents at the home gave us all food for thought on extreme old age. Our hosts and favorite French cousins, Marie-Josee and Michel, live in a cozy house a few kilometers away from Tante Guite, but know that they won't always be able to negotiate the stairs or semi-rural living. We live in an apartment in Brussels, but will always have to deal with the oddities of expatriation (different health insurance systems, different currencies, etc.). And wherever we are, at least one of us will always be a foreigner. Tante Guite, who has survived wars, occupation, widowhood, and privation has managed to stay dignified at her advanced age. Who could ask for anything more?