Death of a Supercentenarian

The New York Times on Impermanence

An editorial published on August 29, 2006

On Sunday, the oldest woman in the world died at age 116 in an Ecuadorian hospital. Her name was María Esther de Capovilla, and she was born in September 1889. We are all aware that there will be an end to our lives, but Ms. Capovilla’s death is a reminder of how absolute the boundary of human longevity really is.

You may escape all the actuarial fates there are, and yet the body has its own term limits, a point at which the warranty expires and something furls up inside you. The woman who succeeds Ms. Capovilla as the oldest woman on earth is also 116, and the oldest person on record died at 122.

In retrospect, the life of such a very old person becomes a kind of historical timeline, in which personal milestones are laid against the impersonal events of history. (Ms. Capovilla was born the same year as Charlie Chaplin and was married the year the United States entered World War I.) But then there’s always a question lurking in the obituary of a supercentenarian. How did she do it?

This is not the kind of question we ask of the oldest living tree. But there are so many choices lurking in human life, so many ways to live, that you can’t help wondering whether Ms. Capovilla’s life choices are what helped her last so long. Was it her refusal to smoke or drink hard liquor? The waltzing at parties? Or was it just good genes and a large and apparently supportive family?

There is always something a little poignant about the news that the oldest person has died. No matter what kind of life she has lived, it is always eclipsed by the strangely passive fact of having lived so long. No one sets out to be the oldest person alive.

You set out to be happy, prosperous, successful, content. But in time — lots of time — all your intentions fade away, and you become vastly closer to death than you ever were to life. We honor Ms. Capovilla, and we hope never to grow nearly so old.