“Order, tranquility, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets;” might these be a string of virtues that the Stoics strove to obtain in Classical Greece and Rome?
No, not quite. They were entries in the list of all the things that have contributed to Maria Branyas Morera’s long life of 117 years of age, along with “good connection with family and friends, lots of positivity, and staying away from toxic people.”
The (how about this for a word) ondecagenarian was the oldest person alive until she passed away at her nursing home in Catalonia, Spain on August 19th, having lived to meet 11 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.
Unlike many alive today, Morera saw the advent of mass communication as a positive, because it allowed her to keep in touch with people located across distances she long ago lost the ability to cover, and also share her knowledge with the world.
With the help of her daughter, she was particularly fond of taking to Twitter, now X, to share her pearls of wisdom grown over a long and prosperous life.
In many cases, these involve how she managed to live so long, which certainly never involved not taking risks or avoiding danger. Born in San Francisco, USA to immigrants from Catalonia who came over on a boat, she was 8 years old when she returned with her mother to her ancestral home where she lived ever after.
Her father died of tuberculosis contracted on the voyage to America, but his daughter survived the crossing in reverse via the Azores as a way to avoid the guns of the First World War. She survived the Spanish Civil War, the Spanish Flu, both World Wars, and briefly became the world’s oldest COVID-19 survivor when she contracted the virus at 113 years old.
On the first day of 2023, she tweeted: “Life is not eternal for anyone… At my age, a new year is a gift, a humble celebration, a new adventure, a beautiful journey, a moment of happiness. Let’s enjoy life together.”
Her opnions are not all sunshine and rainbows with a glass of wine, however. For example, on July 9th, 2023, she warned that the rising rates of dementia in Western society isn’t just a challenge to public health, but to the very fabric of society.
“The great heritage of the old is the world of memory. We are our memories,” she tweeted. In an interview with the the Observer, she said that the pandemic revealed that the elderly are society’s outcast and forgotten.
Morera also felt that today the emphasis on money and material possessions was too great, and it worried her in general.
On August 20th, her family tweeted that she had passed away in her sleep, adding that she told them shortly before her death: “I don’t know when, but very soon this long journey will come to an end. Death will find me worn down from having lived so much, but I want it to find me smiling, free, and satisfied.”
