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Mary celebrated her 90th birthday in April. A retired bookkeeper, Mary has worked for small companies in the trucking and steel industries and co-owned a locksmith business with her former husband. An avid gardener, theatre-goer, and active neighbour, Mary stays in touch with family and friends ranging from Ukraine to Nanaimo. Mary’s niece, Cathy, submitted an article on Mary’s extraordinary life to Maclean’s magazine.

Can you share with us a little bit about your journey with aging?

It snuck up on me without even me noticing that I was getting older. I just feel the same, and I just couldn't believe when I reached my 90th birthday. For one thing, I didn't think that I’d live this long. Like all of a sudden, I was 90. I couldn't believe it. The neighbours would be running down the street saying, ‘Oh, don't do that, Mary, that’s too hard.’ I’m up in the ladder cutting down vines. I mean, I'm having fun.

What is your personal approach to healthy aging?

My cardiologist encouraged me to be active and remain active. I was lucky enough to live through complications from an emergency heart bypass at age 70. I was in the hospital for two months. After that great illness, I thought that I would possibly live maybe two years as a semi-invalid. Oh, boy, was I wrong! So don't ask me how I reached 90. After all that I don't know myself, and I don't care. I've been able to do what I want to do. I love gardening. I figure I've been granted 21 years. I’m very, very lucky. I'm certainly not going to complain about the little ups and downs.

Why are connections to friends and family so important?

I made it a point to get to know all my neighbors on the block. I have a nice friendship with them all. I've got a wonderful neighbor on one side, and I had number wonderful neighbors on the other side. I got to know all the kids growing up on the street, when they were babies, and I saw them just learning how to walk on the sidewalk. Now they're getting married and having babies of their own. I've been very, very lucky with my neighbors. I feel as if I’m a part of the neighborhood, and that, I think, is the old-fashioned way.

A lot of my friends died early. Well, not really early, but a lot of them are gone now. But I’ve still got quite a few left. I have a friend that just died, and her and I have been friends for 85 years. And I’m still very close to her children and grandchildren; and I’m going to miss her terribly. And I have kept up with the girls I worked with back in the 1950s – there were nine of us that met for lunch a few times a year. I keep in touch with all of my friends and family. I’ve got a friend in Victoria that I’ve been friends with since the 1960s. I'm still friends with the university students that lived with me for three years. I had a neighbor from the Ukraine. We speak on the phone. We don't see each other that often but we keep in touch. I’m very fortunate. I don't know whether it's because I’m interested in people; I like to  know what's happening. So, I’m very fortunate that way.

Any particular mantra on aging and living well?

I think a person's life is what you make of it. You can sit there and whine about the little things that go wrong, or the big things that go wrong. You can sit there and wring your hands over your mistakes. And I've made plenty. But do you have to sort of say, well, this has happened you what you did was the wrong decision. And you pick up the pieces and you keep on going.

I mean, they've made a bad decision, you've made a bad decision – you have to live with it. But you can sit there and nurse it and whine over it, but it's how you end with it. I sometimes think that I must have a very tough streak in me. You know, no matter what happens, I sort of survive.

How has resilience factored into your life?

I never thought of it that way, but I've got the ability to bounce back no matter what – either the ability, or I'm too stupid to think I made a fool of myself. What happened? I can't change anything in my life, even if there’s a few things that I would have done differently.

I went through a period of alcoholism, and I had friends through that. I became very active when I quit drinking. One morning I got up and I thought ‘that was my last drink,’ and I haven't had a drink in 50 years. I used to go to the local jail, speak at meetings. I've met all kinds of people there. Alcoholism doesn’t pick and choose. You know, I had a lot of friends there, and there’s one or two that I still keep in touch with. It is an illness you know, and you have to make up your mind that you’re going to quit. But no one can do it for you. You have to.

Any final thoughts?

It’s all just a little bump in the road of life. I think I'm still even lucky no matter what happens. And I'm still on the right side of the graph.