The French reputation for looking after their elderly relatives took a hit in 2003. In a short fortnight, over 12,000 pensioners died from extreme heat. It was, in effect, a cull of grandmothers and grandfathers who had been left alone while younger family members holidayed in August.
Being France, the state did an immediate investigation. The same could not happen today. When temperatures look set to rise to extreme levels, mayors in every village and every hospital must activate an emergency plan.
However, there are always people who emerge with new ideas or who explode the myth that older people can’t adapt. In France, people became captivated by the case of Fiona Lauriol and her grandmother, Dominique. They went on a road trip together when Dominique was already 100.
Titled 101 Years Old, Nana on the Road / 101 ans Mémé part en vadrouille, Fiona Lauriol’s book tells the story of their long farewell.
“As her centenarian grandmother was wasting away in an EHPAD, her granddaughter decided to take her to the south of Europe in a motorhome.”
One of the truly lovely things about Fiona’s book is the extraordinary way in which her grandmother regained her zest for life. Her grandmother, unsurprisingly given her huge age, was initially frightened and sullen—you could say almost untrained and unused to proper interaction.
Over the months they spent together, she became a different woman. She became bright-eyed and, despite being over a hundred, developed a sense of having a future.
Fiona tells France 2 that these two and a half years with Dominique, who celebrated her 103rd birthday on the move, made it clear to her that she had to “live life to the fullest, [and] you shouldn’t tell yourself: ‘That’s it, they’re too old.’”
“She always talked to me about the Côte d’Azur, but she’d never been there,” she explained. “I suggested Lourdes, because she was very religious, then the Côte d’Azur and her home village in Italy.”
The two women travelled throughout southern Europe. In total, grandmother and granddaughter covered some 15,000 km. Dominique died at the age of 103, and Fiona Lauriol kept her promise to tell the story of this last long family journey in a book.
During this journey, the grandmother became something of a media phenomenon—not unlike the mini-heroics of Captain Tom during lockdown. The family journey of this hundred-year-old woman became an emblem for the idea of family togetherness and reconciliation. She also astounded the doctors who had given her around one week to live when she left the home, by remaining alive for over two years.
Those of us in England know the fallout after Captain Tom died. Effectively, his daughter tarnished his memory by abusing the charity set up in his name. Fortunately, this has never happened with Fiona Lauriol.
Instead of effectively scooping up her winnings and exploiting the goodwill of others, she has become a campaigner for the rights of older people in France, advising and helping communities and families create a less boring world for those who have reached a stage in life where they cannot easily live alone. In the same van that housed her grandmother and herself, she now raises public awareness about the isolation of the elderly.