Question: How can one throw enough candles on a birthday cake for one of the world’s oldest survivors of COVID-19? Answer: With 117 candles you can not.
A French nun who is believed to be the second oldest person in the world celebrated her 117th birthday in style on Thursday. There were plans for champagne and red wine, a feast with her favorite dessert, a mist in honor of her and other delicacies to toast Sister André’s exceptionally long life through two world wars and a recent coronavirus infection.
“This is a big day,” David Tavella, communications manager for the non-care facility in the southern French city of Toulon, told the Associated Press. “She’s in great shape. I went to see her this morning. She’s really happy. She wanted me to tell her the schedule for the day again. ”
It was crowded. Sister André’s grandchildren and great-grandparents were expected to join her for a morning video call, and the bishop of Toulon had to celebrate a mass in her honor.
“She was very proud when I told her. She said, “A mass for me?” Said Tavella.
On the menu for her birthday party was an appetizer of foie gras, followed by capon with fragrant mushrooms and topped with baked Alaska, the nun’s favorite dessert.
‘It all washed down with red wine, because she drinks red wine. This is one of her secrets of longevity. And a little champagne with dessert, because 117 years have to be roasted, ‘Tavella said.
What had been packing candles on a cake for decades, ‘we stopped trying for a long time’, he added. ‘Because even if we make big cakes, I’m not sure she would get enough breath to blow everyone out. You need a fire extinguisher. ‘
Sister André’s birth name is Lucile Randon. The Gerontology Research Group, which confirms details of people presumably 110 or older, calls her the second oldest known living person in the world, behind only a 118-year-old woman in Japan, Kane Tanaka.
Tavella told French media earlier this week that Sister André had tested positive for the coronavirus in mid-January, but she had so few symptoms that she did not even realize she was infected. Her survival made headlines in France and beyond.
‘When the whole world suddenly started talking about this story, I understood that Sister André was a bit like an Olympic flame on a global tour that wants to grab people, because we all need a little hope right now, Said Tavella.
Coincidentally, Tavella celebrates his 43rd birthday on Thursday.
“We often joke that she and I were born on the same day,” he said. ‘I never tell myself she’s 117 because she’s so easy to talk to, regardless of her age. Only when she talked about the First World War as if she had been through it did I realize, “Yes, she went through it!”