The Popular Front? They knew it well, in its original version. They were then in their twenties, the age of suitors, marriage or the first child. Even more dizzying: these thirty-six people were already born at the beginning of August 1914, when Germany declared war on France. Thirty-five women and one man aged 110 to 114 live today in France.
“Supercentenarians”, the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) calls them in a study published in April – “Living beyond 105: when the improbable becomes reality”. Among the 31,000 current centenarians, the researchers write, “recent years have seen the rise of a new age group, those aged 105 or over, whose number was estimated at nearly 2,000 worldwide as of 1er January 2023.” The class of the greats. In its ranks, “exceeding 110 years remains a rare eventwe read, but its frequency has in turn increased sharply in recent decades.
The first trompe-la-mort of 110 springs and more were spotted in the mid-1960s. “In France, there were five in the 1990s, around ten twenty years ago, around twenty in the 2010s, they are approaching forty now. The progression is exponential, at the same rate as that of centenariansnotes demographer and epidemiologist Jean-Marie Robine. Even if the mortality rate among those over 90 decreases only slightly, in sixty years there will be as many supercentenarians as there are centenarians today. What counts is the number of candidates at the start of the race for longevity.” However, at the starting line, in 2070, INSEE predicts more than 200,000 centenarians.
A rich vocabulary that is delightfully old-fashioned
What is life, once the number 110 is planted on the birthday cake? With Denise Leroy, who will celebrate her 111th birthday on July 3, and six families of supercentenarians (including that of Marie-Rose Tessier, 114 years old, the oldest French person), we entered a strange world. The children are nonagenarians and meet residents their age at the nursing home, visiting their mother. The grandchildren announce themselves on the phone with a disturbing: “I am the granddaughter, I am 72 years old…” The descendants, over four generations, are laboriously counted, avoiding confusing great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.
We hear about President Armand Fallières (1906-1913), the airships of 1914-1918 and the Titanic. Of a lady who has been widowed for eighty-one years (Marie-Rose Tessier), who experienced a “very pleasant period of retirement, in the 1980s”, according to his granddaughter. From a 112-year-old ex-teacher (Aline Blain) installed in the same Vaucluse nursing home as some of her former students over 80 years old. Catholic families who find it difficult to cope with the idea of their daughter dating an atheist. Facial cleansing with brandy, laundry in the river, traveling in a cart… “My mother is a window to the past”appreciates Pierre-Yves Leroy, 76 years old, one of Denise’s four sons.
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