Unforgettable

I DON’T remember having been with so many nonagenarians in one room. The occasion was the 90th birthday of a family friend, Hilda Sian Presbiterio, which was mainly a clan reunion of four generations.

The youngest was 6-year-old Brandon, Tita Hilda’s great-grandson who flew in with his parents from Bacolod. I wasn’t a relative, and was attending in behalf of my mother, who had been one of Tita Hilda’s best friends back, way back before World War II, in St. Scholastica’s. So at one point I ended up on one table which was more of an alumni homecoming of nonagenarians, which made me feel like a youngster.

The pretensions to youth were not contrived though.   These nonagenarians were all, in our Filipino super-extended family system, titas. Foreigners have always commented to me how amazed they are with the way we keep in touch with friends, sometimes all the way back from kindergarten.  What I’ve seen through the years is that the closest friends become family, becoming titos and titas (uncles and aunts) to the next generation, which is why the young ones (even when no longer young) end up going to their parties and reunions.

So, here at the birthday party cum reunion was Tita Auria Mateo Dy, who together with Tita Hilda and my mother formed a barkada that spanned several decades. There were two others, Corazon Mateo and Nena Apacible, who I was meeting for the first time.

These were the survivors, and they were doing well. Tita Corazon, described by her classmates as their era’s “dancing queen,” turned out to be a pianist as well, and played two pieces with much élan. No, she was not asked to dance, but I did remember how several years back my mother was busy for several weeks preparing for the ruby reunion of their batch, mainly to attend dance rehearsals, complete with dance instructors.

I used to be, well, I still am suspicious about these dance instructors, but when I wear my hat as a medical anthropologist, I appreciate them more as therapists who help keep our elderly young, and fit.

St. Scho, San Beda

There was one more nonagenarian at that party, who wasn’t from St. Scholastica. This was the composer Josefino Cenizal, hale and hearty at 96.  Some readers might have recognized the name right away, given that he composed such a range of popular Filipino songs, from “Ang Pipit” to “Ang Pasko ay Sumapit.”

How did Tito Pepe end up at the party? Now that’s a whole story in itself. I used to think St. Scho students were paired off with La Salle because of the geographical proximity. Tito Pepe was from San Beda, but had somehow found his way to St. Scholastica, to try to court a young student. It helped that he knew Tita Hilda’s brothers and cousins. Tita Hilda, who wrote her memoirs “A Journey into the Past,” writes:

“Pepe had a magnetic personality. His charming smile was particularly reserved for our sister-in-charge, Sister Camilla.  So, he was always welcomed by Sister Camilla who mistook him as my cousin and allowed him to visit me.”

So smitten was this San Bedan by Tita Hilda that he composed a song for her: “Hindi Kita Malimot” (I will never forget you). Indeed, Tito Pepe never forgot Tita Hilda, and what better proof than showing up at her 90th birthday celebration. . . and playing, on the piano, “Hindi Kita Malimot,” with the audience singing along: “Hindi kita malimot, ala-ala kita.  Hindi kita malimot, minamahal kita.”

I thought the song was particularly touching, and poignant, at a reunion of nonagenarians, where so much of the talk was about becoming forgetful. And yet, the reunion did show that we will remember, even in our 90s.

Tita Hilda was not well, and I did not want to upset her further by saying goodbye, so I slipped away very quietly, preferring that she remember how my 6-year-old son, who had become a kind of adopted grandchild for her, had given her the biggest bear hug he could when we got to the party.

Track and field

Preparing for this article I wanted to check the spelling for nonagenarian and ended up with a Google link to a fascinating article about something called the Masters Track Championships, which are track and field competitions for older trackers. “Older” here means over 35, going up into the 60s, 70s and 80s, then tapers off to include a few in their 90s, and even “one or two over 100.”  Look up “The Incredible Flying Nonagenarian,” focusing on Olga Kotelko, who is 91 and holds several records including that for the world indoor shot-put for women 90 and over. She also did 100 meters in 23.95 seconds, faster than some of the finalists in the 80- to 84-year-old category.

The article includes reviews of studies that do show a deterioration in our physical capabilities with age, but goes on to show that there are many elderly people, like Kotelko, who are challenging the assumption that there’s nothing we can do. I could relate, reading about how Kotelko had to concentrate on her family and her work as a teacher much of her life, then she began to play softball after retiring at 63. It didn’t end there. At 77, she began to do track and field, doing the gym three days a week for up to three hours at a time with pushups, sit-ups and more. She might not compete in the coming Masters Track events, waiting to enter the 95-plus age category!

I got sidetracked reading about Kotelko and the Masters Track Championship because I was preparing a paper for a conference at St. Luke’s Hospital on the role of the social sciences in neurology, in particular for the elderly. So much of medical research looks at the sick, and that is important, but when it comes to geriatrics, we need to look as well at the healthy and the fit, to try to understand how they’ve kept that way. We know that health, especially in later years, is a function of genetics and physiology, which the biomedical people can handle. But the other variables of diet, lifestyle (including physical activity, whether ballroom dancing or track and field), the natural environment and, most importantly I feel, social networks.

Bring out the karaoke, the dancing instructors, the stationary bikes and treadmills, but most importantly, ring in cheer with the company of good friends who can truly say, even with Alzheimer’s, “Hindi Kita Malimot.”