Judy Gaman - Love, Life, and Lucille: Lessons Learned from a Centenarian

Judy Gaman writes from the heart, with honesty, humility, and tenderness. This story offers a profound and invaluable lesson but it also grabs you from the first chapter and keeps you reading. What a treat! A wise page-turner. Wish there were more out there like it.

W ILLIAM K ENOWER , author of Fearless Writing, and Editor-in-Chief of Author magazine

Lucille captured the lives of so many in the Dallas area and around the country. This is a behind-the-scenes look at how Lucille and Judy forged an inseparable bond. A story that had to be told!

J ANE M C G ARRY , host of Good Morning Texas

Our book club laughed and cried through Love, Life, and Lucille. This book demonstrated how we can learn from each other at any age and opened up many discussion topics, including respect for your fellow man, true friendship, and finding care through the end-of-life process. The author was genuine and vulnerable and we learned that it is never too late to find a friend who can truly change our life! We highly recommend Love, Life and Lucille for book clubs of all sizes.

N INFA F LEWITT , member of the Mineral Wells Book Club

Ive traveled the globe studying people who live past their 100th birthday. What an amazing and emotional story about how friendship really knows no age. We can all learn something from this book. Prepare to laugh, cry, and laugh againsometimes all in the same chapter!

N ICK B UETTNER , program director of Blue Zones Project

Riveting, heartwarming, emotionally moving, and beautifully written in a folksy manner, Judy Gamans latest book, Love, Life, and Lucille, is an easy read and must-read for ALL!!

F RAN W ALFISH , Beverly Hills family and relationship psychotherapist, author of The Self-Aware Parent, and costar of WE tvs Sex Box

Love, Life,
& Lucille

Copyright 2020, Judy Gaman

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2020

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-63152-882-8

ISBN: 978-1-63152-883-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019912669

For information, address:

She Writes Press

1569 Solano Ave #546

Berkeley, CA 94707

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC. All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

This book is dedicated to the most extraordinary best friend a girl could have. Lucille, you made me laugh, you made me cry, but above all you made me feel loved. You enriched my life in so many ways. I always said that the whole world needs a Lucille in their life. Now, I can give that to them. May all who read these pages be filled with your spirit, your spunk, and your wisdom.

I only met Lucille once, yet it was unforgettable. There she was, all dressed in red with a bow in her hair. I remember there were feathers somewhere, lovely jewelry, high-heeled shoes on her feet, and in that moment, my general overall impression was, what an adorable woman. The second thing I noticed right away was her energy; she was old (chronologically) but she wasnt old. There was a light about her and she possessed sparkling, twinkling eyes that looked right at you with a knowing. She had humor, savvy, a quickness, and a spirit that was disarming.

In life, if you are lucky, people will appear before you when you are ready to hear and see; these are our opportunities to learn and grow, to evolve. And at the moment, the planet is wobbly and sadly lacking wisdom. Gone are the matriarchs and patriarchs, replaced by older persons, shells of themselves, often lost in a sea of pills and more pills.

Immediately upon meeting Lucille, I could feel her one hundred years of perspective that didnt connect in any way with her remarkably youthful appearance. What did she know having lived all these decades? In these brief moments together, I longed for her to infuse her knowledge into me; she had answers about the universe, I was sure.

Is life, as we all know it, difficult as M. Scott Peck states at the beginning of his book, The Road Less Traveled? Or in the end, does life actually reveal itself as simple? Have we merely complicated the process by overthinking it?

As I watched Lucille, I noticed that she laughed a lot, she smiled (a lot), she clearly cared about her appearance, and there was nothing withdrawn or shy about her, which is so often the case with the elderly. As I watched her, I wondered, was attitude the key to longevity? Was acceptance in fact crucial to the aging process? She didnt seem lonely or sad, or cast aside. In fact, she was the center of attention! I take a lot of light in a room due to my celebrity, but Lucille was the STAR. People were drawn to her. What was it? I wondered curiously. How did she get this way?

I met her at the dinner before I gave a lecture and then at a chance meeting and photo-op afterwards in the hallway, and that was all it took to know intuitively that she held within her secrets that only those who lived long and well could teach us.

Wisdom and perspective are the gifts of aging. But in todays world aging has a negative connotation. The picture we all have in our mind is of the present paradigm, our final years rendering us frail, decrepit and sickly, usually with one of the big three: cancer, heart disease, or Alzheimers. And then the awful final destination, the nursing home where we corral our aging souls and drug them up until they no longer know who they are or who they were. Such a terrible way to end this beautiful thing called life. So, its people like Lucille who hold the secrets to successful aging within them who can teach us a new way forward.

Why not her? How did she escape the terrible present paradigm? Why was she so upbeat, so energetic, so full of fun and energy? I wanted to know what she knows. And now with this book, I can. Author Judy Gaman has uncovered Lucilles secret, and you will find it here within these pages. This book is a peek inside a life well lived. As you will see, Lucille is a prophet, a philosopher, and a storyteller. She is aspirational, inspirational. We all want what she has.

We learn by example. Lucille enjoyed her life to the fullest, taking each day and focusing on what she had, rather than what she didnt.

Aging, for so many people is a long, drawn-out, lonely, sickly experience. Through Lucille and her example, you will realize, life is what you make it. Life is what you choose. She chose to be fun, upbeat, and happy, and she dressed the part, too. When you met her, you smiled, you felt warm, you wanted to know her, and you wanted to be like her. You wanted her to be here forever.

She is gone now, but her spirit and example live on. Rest in peace, dear Lucille. And thank you from all of us.

Suzanne Somers