Still Learning From My Dad

My dad was born in 1926 Kansas to an evangelical minister and his wife. He grew up in India and Southern California. My grandmother was an amazing woman. She was neglected by her husband, left for months on end with small children in a foreign country, and decided to leave her husband in an era, and religious sect, that more than frowned upon divorce - you were shunned for such an act. Taking in washing, and selling baked goods, she was able to save enough money to pay for passage home from India for herself and her children. She started a new life, and my father grew up with a strong female role model, and later a powerful, big-hearted step father who adopted him and his younger sister. My father was a very bright man, and so far ahead in school when they returned from India that he finished high school two years ahead of his peers. He enrolled in college and the army air corps. Later he completed the Los Angeles Police Academy at the top of his class. He spent 30 years as an LAPD officer, retiring as a Lieutenant. "Mr. Juvenile" is the title he went by. My father was a man I admire greatly for many reasons.

Today my father remembers his partners, playing poker, his first car and his first girlfriend. He remembers a lot about his past, but the present is a shallow, ever shifting pool of mist. When he asks me where Jacob is (my nephew) I know he thinks I'm my sister. I believe, because of his great intelligence, and his efforts to keep his mind sharp (he played cards online up to about 5 years ago), he still uses tools he developed long ago such as referring to his calendar many times a day. When we visit I make sure he writes it in his "brain" as he calls it, otherwise the visit never happened. My sister took him for a car ride on a beautiful, crisp Southern California Saturday recently. He so enjoyed it, and the coffee they bought. He was happy. An hour after she left she received a call from him, and he asked her when she was going to get there. It still brings tears to my eyes.

I was thinking about about how he has to live, literally, in the present. He makes the best of the moment, every moment. There is no depression because there is nothing to regret or to mourn, no anticipation of an empty day or lack of purpose. His moments are his reality. I thought, what a lesson I can learn from that. What does the song say? Live as if you are dying. Live life to the fullest because you don't know how long you have. My dad, due to a disease that robs you of dignity, memory, and the person you are, must live this way. I choose to make happy as many of his moments that I can. I choose to make my own moments happy, every minute of every day.