The Poet

The oldest living poet passed away the other day at 117. She wasn't known for poetry, but Maria Branyas Morera left us poetically, when a few days before dying she told her family:

One day I will leave here.
I will not try coffee again,
Or eat yogurt, nor pet my dog.
I will also leave my memories,
My reflections, and I will cease
To exist in this body.
One day I don't know, but it's very close,
This long journey will be over.

Her family posted her sentiments on her X account in her native Catalan language of Spain. Maria passed away in a nursing home in Olot, Spain, from no diminished mental capacity and no chronic illness, but rather pure old age; the oldest living person in the world at the time.

Maria's life incongruously started  started in San Francisco and New Orleans, where her father worked as a journalist. He started a Spanish-language magazine, but when it went bankrupt, the family moved back to Spain when Maria was a young child. Her father passed away from tuberculosis on the voyage back.

The obituary writer Ali Watkins in the NYT tells us in four columns of a 117-year-old life that was basically rather ordinary. Maria married a doctor, lived in Girona, Spain for 40 years, raised three children and stayed home to do it. Maria's daughter Rosa tells us, "she had a quiet life, without work stress." Probably at least one factor contributing to a long life.

Most well written obituaries find a place for the "kicker" at the end, where a final quote from the subject emerges. The writer Pete Hamill famously wrote in a forward to a collection of obituaries, "life is the leading cause of death,"

Mr. Watkins closes the obit with the answer Maria provided when a doctor asked her, "what do you expect from life?"

Maria answered simply: "Death."

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com