My great-grandmother, Virginia Sanderson Adams, passed away a few weeks ago at the age of

111.

Her advanced age placed her in the human longevity category of super centenarium and one of only a few hundred people in the entire world living beyond the age of 110. Grandma Virginia didn't consider a situation

to be anything special. In fact, to some degree, she felt her age was a curse.

At the mention of the blessing of her extraordinary longevity,

she always replied with,

The longer you live, the more loved ones you must grieve for.

I've always found super centenarians fascinating and wish I'd gotten to know my great-great-grandmother

a bit more. She lived on the other side of the country so I had only met her once,

when I was 19 years old and she was 91. I recall embarrassingly little about that visit because at 19 I was too wrapped up in my

own life to think about the significance of hers. Today at 39, when one is much more aware of their own mortality, what wouldn't

I give for the opportunity to pick through the time capsule in her head.

I imagine the stories and the memories that could be sorted through and plucked out of

there that very likely could provide personal accounts of some of the most significant moments of a history long

before pocket cameras and 24-hour news.

My new found interest in my great-great-grandmother's life compelled me to volunteer my

assistance with a careful process of logging, removing, and redistributing the

content of the house she inhabited for 80 years.

I travelled from Pittsburgh to Elko, Nevada, where she had lived with her husband, who was killed

in an accident in a

winter of 1944 as I and other family members sorted through what was essentially a tangible

history of her exceptionally long life.

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