Contemplating on Iida Karolina

Great-grandmother (‘mummu’) Iida Karolina’s story (written in 2013)

Introduction

The concept of aging has changed very much in the last twenty years or since the world has woken up to the fact that in a little while, in 2020, it is predicted that 27 people out of 100 in the world population will be over 65 and only 13 people will be under 18. Suddenly aging has become a huge issue creating never before thought about problems as well as opportunities.

 “...for in the old person that we must become, we refuse to recognize ourselves. ‘Of all realities [old age] is perhaps that of which we retain a purely abstract notion longest in our lives,’ says Proust with great accuracy. All men are mortal: they reflect upon this fact. A great many of them become old: almost none ever foresees this state before it is upon him. Nothing should be more expected than old age: nothing is more unforeseen.” (Simone de Beauvoir)

Most people are introduced to the notion of aging naturally in their family. There is a grandmother and a grandfather or some other older relative who talks about aging and becoming old. We can follow their aging process in fromt of our eyes. People’s concept of aging and being old varies so much that it is hard to pin when the old age is creeping upon you other than through experiencing it yourself. The most active way of looking at aging most probably comes from each individual in saying that ‘you are as old as you feel or think’.

 “TO LEARN THAT ONE IS OLD is a long, complex, and painful experience. Each decade the circle of the Great Fatigue narrows around us, restricting the intensity and endurance of our activities.” (G Stanley Hall)

I come from the Finnish background where for decades the life expectancy for the population has been one of the highest in the world. It is no surprise then that I would have many relatives who have lived long and healthy lives.

This is a story of my great-grandmother Iida, who was born in 1874 in Kangasala, Finland and who for a decade, during the 1960’s and the 1970’s, was the oldest person in Lapland and the second oldest person in Finland until her passing away in 1979.  When I was born, she was already in her 80’s and thinking that since her husband had died, she would follow. Except that she survived him for 27 years.

In the late 1960’s, when Iida-mummu was in her late 90’s, a Lapland sculptor decided to depict the different ages of human life and chose my mummu to represent The Old Age.  She was cast in bronze to portray the concept of old age or what an old person would look like at the time.

Past her 95^th birthday, she told my mom that she would move to live with us because all the people in her retirement home "were so old." It did not matter that she was the oldest. And so, she became to share our lives and a room with my then teen-age sister.


Looking at her life from the knowledge what science has found about aging in the last five years, it can only be said that she had great youthful physical and mental gene expression her entire life. At the age of 104 and 10 months, she died healthy. In fact she caused a problem for the doctors as there was nothing to put into her death certificate. They had to invent a reason for her passing away because in the medical field there was no concept of dying of ‘old age’.

She surprised the medical practitioners many times over during her life, particularly during her 90’s by successfully climbing apple trees to collect the harvest. While running at the age of 92, she broke her angle and it healed as if she would have been a young person.

She was a great storyteller and enjoyed talking about her youth and the life during the 19^th Century. She had seen the electricity brought to Tampere, has witnessed the first bicycle and the first car in Finland. She thought walking was great fun.

She had also witnessed the wonders of the world, like the world’s smallest person coming to Tampere. She believed the great folk stories and recited them as true events. She was a great believer in the universal suffragist movement and supported women’s education opportunities.  

References: 
DE BEAUVOIR, S. 1970. Old Age, Penguin Books.
HALL, S. G. 1922. Senescence: The last half of Life, New York, Appleton.