EDITOR’S CORNER
Warning: Don’t read this column if you’re depressed. I’m not particularly depressed and it was no barrel of laughs to write either.
And it should have been. The (London) Daily Mirror last week had a story about Koku Istamulova. She may be the oldest person on record.
Koku’s passport says she was born June 1, 1889, which means she turns 129 next week, if....
Why all the “ifs?” The governing body making the claim for Koku’s age is an arm of the Russian government which says all her records have been destroyed. Not the best, or most trustworthy, source.
She lives in the Caucasus, an area which has a reputation for extreme longevity.
But what ought to be a joyous recollection of an amazing life, full of incredible memories is, well, here’s what Koku says about it:
“I have not had a single happy day in my life...I am tired. Long life is not God’s gift for me, but a punishment.”
A little context is in order. Koku is a native of Chechnya, one of the unhappiest places on earth.
In her early youth Chechnya was under strict Muslim influence. “I My granny beat me because my neck was visible,” she recalled.
Not many people can make this statement, but Koku says there was a little more freedom after the communists took over.
It didn’t last. Koku remembers “scary” Nazi tanks rumbling through during World War II. So, after the war, Stalin deported the entire Chechin nation to Kazakhstan and Siberia, accusing Chechins of “Nazi collaboration.”
Including Koku. “When in exile—we were in Siberia, too—we felt how the Kazakhs hated us.”
She returned to Chechnya. All her children died. She survived two brutal wars with Russia. It was in the second of these wars when officials say all her records were lost.
“Looking back at my unhappy life, I wish I had died when I was young,” she said. “I did not have time for rest or entertainment.”
How unbearably sad.
Koku made me think of two things. One is all the funerals I’ve been to in the last 18 months or so, good people who did not live anywhere near Koku’s age.
The other is J.R.R. Tolkein, author of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.”
Tolkein was a devout Catholic. Something about his books has always puzzled me. In his universe humans were granted the “gift” of death while elves had the “curse” of pretty much eternal life.
What does that mean?
Tolkein’s humans, after they died, went to an in-between place called the Halls of Mandos—where elves stayed forever—then went somewhere else.
Was that a recognition some lives could be, well, like Koku’s, and something better awaits them/us?
Somehow that made me feel not better, but different, about attending all those funerals.
A happy, fulfilled, love-filled life lived for 90 or 70, or even 50, years just may trump a miserable one lived for 129.
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