(Elisabeth Muth, seen at her 100th birthday celebration, lives in her own home in Lakewood).
By Judith Graham
KFF
“The future is here,” the e-mail announced. Hilda Jaffe, then 88, was letting her children know she planned to sell the family home in Verona, New Jersey. She’d decided to begin life anew — on her own — in a one-bedroom apartment in New York City.
Fourteen years later, Jaffe, now 102, still lives alone — just a few blocks away from the frenetic flashing lights and crowds that course through Times Square.
She’s the rarest of seniors: A centenarian who is sharp as a tack, carries grocery bags in each hand when she walks back from her local market, and takes city buses to see her physicians or attend a matinee at the Metropolitan Opera.
Jaffe cleans her own house, does her own laundry, manages her own finances, and stays in touch with a far-flung network of family and friends via e-mail, social media, and Zoom. Her son, Richard Jaffe, 78, lives in San Jose, Calif. Her daughter, Barbara Vendriger, 75, lives in Israel.
Jaffe is an extraordinary example of an older adult living by herself and thriving.
On the other side of the country, in Pierce County, is another one. Elisabeth Muth celebrated her 100th birthday Jan. 25. She lives in her own home in the Lakewood area and attributes her longevity to being active her entire life: Hiking, skiing, tennis, riding bikes, walking, gardening, and caring for her home and grandchildren (she has five of them, plus seven grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren, and a great-great-grandson on the way). She also gives credit to healthy eating.
A noteworthy slice of seniors living alone maintain a high degree of well-being. What might account for this, particularly among people in the farthest reaches of old age?
Sofiya Milman is director of Human Longevity Studies at the Institute for Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She studies people known as “super-agers” —95 and older. “As a group, they have a very positive outlook on life” and are notably resilient, she said.
Qualities associated with resilience in older adults include optimism and hopefulness, an ability to adapt to changing circumstances, meaningful relationships, community connections, and physical activity, according to a growing body of research.
That describes Muth. Born in 1925 in Augsburg in Bavarian Germany, she was 8 years old when Hitler’s Nazis came to power. She witnessed the Holocaust when friends and neighbors were apprehended and taken away, never to be seen again. At the age of 10, she was forced to serve in the Hitler Youth and suffered all that fascism brings. Her family was forced apart when her father was deployed to fight in World War II; then her grandmother and little sister were sent to live with a relative in the countryside for safety. Augsburg, with a military aircraft factory and other industrial bases, was a prime target for Allied bombers, and Elisabeth survived air raids too numerous to count, fearing each would be her last. Eventually, a neighbor’s home took a direct hit, killing everyone inside and destroying surrounding buildings, including Elisabeth’s home. From there, she and her mother had to live with strangers in a nearby apartment.
At 17, Elisabeth and her older sister were pressed into government service as telephone operators. She narrowly averted death again when the large communications building where she worked took a direct hit in yet another air raid.
At 22, she married a German maritime engineer. He was often traveling as part of his job in delivering new ships. When their marriage was failing, he invited her to join him on a three-month voyage aboard a tanker, her first time outside of Germany. She has vivid memories of being the only woman on board and the many places she saw, including the Suez Canal.
In 1953, she married a U.S. military member who fought in WWII and the Vietnam War. They left Germany in 1957 and over the years were stationed in many states in the U.S. In the South, knowing nothing about civil rights, segregation and the like, she unknowingly used a blacks bathroom and couldn’t understand why people were so upset. That’s one of the things she learned about America quickly while new to the country and often left alone with her children when her husband was deployed. They were stationed back in Germany again from 1964 to 1970.
Elisabeth lost her husband, Charles, to heart disease when she was 48. She remained a single parent, worked as a bank teller, and later earned two degrees in college.
Many of her friends have passed, so all her remaining friends are younger. She adores her family, friends, and neighbors. She often says the Lord gave her nine lives and she has nearly used them all, said her daughter, Charlene Pagan, who notes that Elisabeth is an inspiration to her family.
“We’re so blessed to have her,” Pagan said.
Meanwhile, in New York City, Jaffe has a different life story but many of the same qualities as Munn, including a “can-do” attitude. She credits her longevity to genetic heritage, luck, and her commitment to “keep moving,” in that order. Asked to describe herself, she responded “pragmatic,” with a clear-eyed view of what she can and can’t do and making adjustments as necessary. She likes being independent and doing things her way. “If a problem comes up, I work it out,” Jaffe said.
There are only 101,000 centenarians in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau. Fifteen percent live independently or operate independently while living with someone, said Thomas Perls, founder and director of the New England Centenarian Study, the largest study of centenarians in the world. (Jaffe is one of 2,500 subjects of the study.)
About 20 percent of centenarians are, like Jaffe, free of physical or cognitive impairments, Perls said. An additional 15 percent have no age-related illnesses such as arthritis or heart disease.
Every day, Jaffe tries to walk 3,000 steps — outside if the weather is good or doing laps in her hallway inside if the weather is bad. Her diet is simple: Bread, cheese, and decaffeinated coffee for breakfast; a sandwich or eggs for lunch; chicken and a vegetable or restaurant leftovers for dinner. She never smoked, doesn’t drink alcohol, and sleeps an average of eight hours each night.
Even more important, Perls said, Jaffe remains engaged with other people. She has subscriptions to the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, and a chamber music series. She participates in online events and regularly visits new exhibits at museums, where she has memberships. She’s in regular contact with family members and friends.
Jaffe also belongs to a book club at her synagogue, serves on the synagogue’s adult education committee, and volunteers as a docent at New York Public Library’s main branch.
“Loneliness is not an issue,” she said.
Jaffe said she doesn’t worry about what comes next. She just lives day to day.
That change in perspective is common in later life, said Laura Carstensen, founding director of Stanford University’s Center on Longevity, who has studied emotional changes that accompany aging for decades.
“Focusing on the present and experiencing the here and now becomes more important to older adults,” said Carstensen. “As does savoring positive things in their lives.”
Carstensen’s research group was the first to show that older adults were more resilient emotionally during the COVID-19 pandemic than young or middle-age adults. “Older people are better able to cope with difficulties” because of skills and perspective gained over the course of a lifetime, and because “when we see our future as shorter, it feels more manageable,” she said.
Jaffe understands facing forward and letting go of the past. Losing her husband, Gerald Jaffe, in 2005 after 63 years of marriage was hard, she admitted, but moving away from New Jersey five years later was easy.
“We had done what we had wanted to do there. I was 88 at that point and so many people were gone. The world had changed,” she said. “I didn’t feel a sense of loss.”
Living in New York, she said, “couldn’t be better.” Her 30-story apartment building “is safe and well maintained. Everything is close by–a market, the pharmacy, restaurants, buses. In a house in New Jersey, I would be isolated.”
“My joke is I’m going to be done in by a bicycle delivery person cutting through the pedestrian crosswalk,” she said, but until that or something else happens, “I live in a state of surprise. Every day is a new day. I don’t take it for granted at all.”
Source: KFF Health News, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health and related issues, contributed to this report.
