The View From 100

My father-in-law, George Luchtan, will be a hundred years old tomorrow. My wife and I have been looking after him this past month in Detroit, and I've wondered what it must be like for him at his very advanced old age.

I think of a book by the literary historian Malcolm Cowley, written when he was in his 80s, called The View From 80. In it Cowley quoted a fellow octogenarian as saying, "I feel like a young man who has something the matter with him." I'm 83 myself now, and can relate. My father-in-law, on the other hand, at age 100, has a lot the matter with him, and I doubt he feels like a young man anymore.

Still, he's amazingly alert, though physically and mentally, of course, not the man he once was. He was a fixer, a problem solver, as a young radio repairman in Yakima, Washington, and later as a Ford general foreman in the company's River Rouge plant in metropolitan Detroit. But he isn't able to fix much anymore.

Yet he still reads, mostly technical stuff, stuff he's read before and now comes to as if for the first time. Watches closed-captioned television (factory work damaged his hearing early on, and he's all but deaf now). Still likes the challenge of puzzles, but he seldom figures them out anymore, even those he invented.

He lives now one day at a time, as don't we all, really. When you ask him how he is in the morning, he replies, I'm alive."   

Sleep, I think, is his great pleasure now. He's asleep more than he's awake these days, having dreams (sometimes what he calls nightmares). He sometimes talks in his sleep. He sometimes confuses a particularly vivid dream with reality.

And he doesn't get around much anymore. Except for trips to see his doctor, or whenever we can get out to a restaurant meal, he's confined to the house. Doesn't get much exercise other than the walk from his bedroom to his chair in front of the television, or into a back room where he sits and watches the birds in his back yard. We throw bird seed on the ground to attract the birds.

So how much "quality" does my father-in-law have left in his life? Enough, it seems. He soldiers on. Still sings snatches of old songs, recites poems he memorized as a young man and still remembers. Still notices things, still laughs at some of them. Tells stories out his past, stories of personal triumphs, of problems solved.

He's looked forward to his 100th birthday. There'll be some 20 well-wishers in his house tomorrow, relatives mostly, some old friends who happen still to be alive. It'll be an exciting, tiring day for him, and he'll perhaps be unable to sleep tomorrow night and instead sleep all the next day.

What's next for him, besides the inevitable? We all hope it'll be a return to his house in the Florida Keys, which was severely damaged by Hurricane Irma last September, from which he and his youngest daughter Kathleen, his chief caregiver, had to evacuate, and where she's been this month seeing to the repair of the place. There on Long Key he can sit out on his veranda above a canal, in Florida's warm sun, and watch the birds and the boats going by. Long may he still live. Happy Birthday, George.

Postscript, May 15, 2018. George Luchtan, my father-in-law, passed away today, just two weeks after his 100th birthday. After achieving his goal of reaching 100, he seemed to let go. The evidence is he had a "small" heart attack either just before or just after his birthday; his heart, near the end, was barely functioning. He died at home, in a room from which he could watch the birds in his back yard feeding on the seed his youngest daughter threw on the ground to attract them. Before he lapsed into his final sleep, he said, "I didn't know it would take this long to die." He had a good long life. Rest in peace, George, as I add this picture of you with your daughter, April, my wife of 53 years, on your birthday.