A few days after my mother died, a month shy of her 83rd birthday, my father and I were raking the front lawn in preparation for the gathering after her funeral. He stood up straight, leaned on his rake, and said, “Your mother accepted that she was going to die. She said she’d had a good life, and it was fine.”
I waited, certain he was going to say more. Our eyes met.
“I don’t feel that way at all!” he exclaimed. “I want to live to be 100!”
My parents, late 1940s.
At the time he was 82, and although neither of us knew it, he would have 15 more years of life -- most of it in remarkably good health— before dying at 97, several months after his second partner. I wish he had made it to 100, but how fortunate he was to have so many good years late in life.
My father and his second partner, Barbara, around 2022.
I know exactly what he attributed his good health to: exercise. After quitting smoking in the late 1050s, a habit acquired during his service in Europe in WWII, he became obsessed with physical fitness. He’d always been a good athlete, particularly as a baseball player and runner, and was one of the first people to take up jogging in our small town. He kept running until his knees simply wouldn’t let him. Every morning he did the Royal Canadian Air Force exercises - and kept that up until a year or so before he died. His other sport was table tennis, which he practiced incessantly, playing any challenger, and having a regular weekly game with a series of well-matched players. He competed regionally, at the state level, and many times in the national Senior Games, where he won first place in his age class, one of the years when he was over 90. He denied being competitive, but that claim was disingenuous - he never let me win at anything, even when I was little! I do agree that his drive was less about winning than about continual self-improvement. It could be difficult to be around someone like that, but I also admired it.
Dad and me, early 1970s
He ate a lot of sugar, red meat, and had a cocktail every night, but stayed thin, and never took statins or blood pressure medications. Maybe when you exercise as much as he did, both in an athletic sense, and in building and taking care of a house and property, it mitigates the effects of diet. Certainly he had a high metabolism! On the other hand, we’ve also had people in our families who never exercised, were overweight, and took plenty of medication, and also lived well into their 90s. I think my father was lucky in his genetic makeup, courageous and strong in spirit, as well as having two women who loved him and many friends through his life. The greatest challenge he faced was surviving the war — and he had several very close calls. After that, I think he was determined to build a life and live it fully — and he did. I will always miss him, and be grateful for the qualities we shared and the things he taught me.
This is a lovely tribute to your father. It is a portrait of your father, but also of you. Thank you for sharing it.
Posted by: Sheena | December 15, 2024 at 06:47 PM