In One Woman's Lifetime

August 11, 1902. On that day, at the very beginning of the twentieth century, my grandmother, Marjorie Cook Sherman, was born.

She lived well past 47.3 years, the life expectancy for a female at that time, dying last month at the age of 103.

I try to imagine what it would be like to live that long–-what would it be like to wake up and look at a calendar that reads July, 2059? Or, to turn it around, realize that when my grandmother was the same age as me (49), it was the fall of 1951. The Korean war was not history, it was front page news.

When Marjorie Cook came into the world, there were 8,000 cars in the United States. Henry Ford had yet to open up his factory in Detroit. The US population was around 76 million with 45 states, and the world population was 1.65 billion. Theodore Roosevelt had been president for less than a year, taking over when William McKinley died of the bullet wounds inflicted by an assassin in Buffalo, NY. The average salary was $12.98 a week for 59 hours. Forty hour work weeks were a long ways off. The United States Treasury was not yet in debt, but had a positive balance of $46,000,000.

I’m sure the American population of 1902 would be aghast to find out that in the future the national debt would go into the trillions.

It boggles the mind just to think about all the innovations and events Marjorie saw in the course of her lifetime. Women voting, automobiles, movies with sound, World Wars I & II, the Cold War, air travel, television, automatic washing machines, dishwashers, men on the moon, personal computers, the fall of the Soviet Union, the world wide web.

Of course, like most centenarians, Marjorie never thought much about living past 100. She was busy with her life. Growing up in Snahomish WA, she went to teacher’s college and taught first grade. With a sense of adventure, she decided to take a teaching job in the US Territory of Hawaii, where she met a naval officer named Warren Sherman, who was the divorced father of three children.

With the death of Warren’s ex-wife, those three children came to live with the newly married couple. It must have been a challenge, suddenly finding yourself with two stepdaughters and a stepson, ages 9 to 15. My mother was the youngest, and Marjorie won her over with her butterscotch pudding.

Being a stepmother can be a losing proposition no matter how hard you try. It is the mark of a great character when your stepchildren speak highly of you. My mother and her siblings maintained a close relationship with Marjorie throughout her life. Though she never had any children, she was the best grandmother any kid could ask for.

Marjorie was also a breast cancer survivor–for 45 years. In 1960, her doctor found a lump in her breast and insisted she have a mastectomy right away. Proof that even in the 1960s, breast cancer did not have to be a death sentence.

It’s sad to think of a world without my grandmother in it, a woman who loved life and stayed positive and alert well into her last months. But 103 years is long enough for anyone, even Marjorie Cook Sherman. It’s time to rest, now.