My Daddy Never Retired From Living

He was 92 when he died. Until then, he had places to go, music to play, and absolutely no intention of acting his age.

“Come on, Monica, it’s time to go play for the old folks!”

That’s what my daddy would announce whenever we were getting ready to head out for another gig with his ten-piece band. Daddy was pushing 90 himself, and most of the people he was going to entertain at the retirement homes were younger than he was. It never once crossed his mind.

For the last five years of his life, I was his roadie. I hauled the equipment, set up the sound system, and followed that band to retirement homes, churches, political picnics, and anywhere else somebody wanted to hear a little music. He and the boys had even recorded two albums back in the cassette tape days and sold them, but Daddy never needed the money. He was a successful businessman who’d done well for himself. He played because he loved the music, loved the people, and loved getting everybody together to put on a show.

And apparently, he loved entertaining the old folks. God help me, I never had the heart to tell him he was one of them.

The lawnmower incident

Now, before anybody decides my daddy was some sweet little elderly gentleman quietly strumming a guitar on the porch, let me tell you about the lawnmower.

I’d moved into his house for the last ten years of his life, and one afternoon I heard him hollering from the backyard. I ran out to find him on his riding mower with something tangled in the blades. He didn’t ask for help. He informed me that he was going to lift up the mower, and I was going to crawl underneath it and find out what was caught.

And that’s exactly what we did. He lifted. I crawled. I found the problem, cleared the blades, and scooted back out. I swear to God, the man was about 88 years old.

I’m perfectly aware that crawling under a lawnmower held up by another human being is a spectacularly stupid thing to do, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody at any age. But here’s what fascinates me about that afternoon. It never occurred to Daddy that he couldn’t lift that mower, and it never occurred to me that he couldn’t either. Nobody took inventory of his limitations or wondered aloud whether an 88-year-old man ought to be attempting such a thing. There was a problem, and we were going to solve it.

The possibility that he couldn’t do something simply wasn’t in his vocabulary.

Getting to know my father as a grown woman

During those last ten years, I got something I consider one of the great privileges of my life: I got to know him as an adult. I wasn’t only the little girl who adored her daddy anymore. I was a woman in my fifties with decades of living behind me, sharing a house with a man in his eighties and nineties, and I was paying attention.

One morning at the kitchen table over coffee, I asked him something I’d been genuinely curious about.

“Daddy, what’s it like to be your age? What does it feel like?”

His answer surprised me. He said he felt done. He was ready to go home to Momma, who’d been gone twenty years, and he missed her terribly. He was tired of putting up with some of the things life required of him, and he wondered what the point of it all was anymore.

Then he said something I’ve never forgotten.

“I’m still doing, because what else is there to do but to do?”

I understood exactly what he meant. He’d lived a long, full life and loved a woman he wanted to see again, and part of him was ready for whatever came next. But none of that kept him from getting up in the morning and living it. He wasn’t sitting around waiting to die. He had music to play and people to entertain, and apparently, there were still lawnmowers that needed lifting.

Daddy never had to choose between loving the life in front of him and longing for the woman he’d lost. Both were true at once. He could miss her with all his heart and still take real pleasure in the day unfolding outside his window, and he never had to manufacture enthusiasm or remind himself to look for joy. He just lived it.

The things people remember

It’s interesting what’s left of a person after they’re gone.

Ask the grandchildren about MawMaw ( my Mom), and they’ll tell you about her cooking. Everybody loved gathering around her table, because she could feed a family and make an occasion out of it. They’ll remember her temper too. MawMaw had a rigidity about her, and anger was a familiar presence in her life, but that’s another story for another day.

Ask those same grandchildren about Daddy, and their faces change. They remember how much they loved being around him. They remember a man who enjoyed being alive, and it didn’t have a thing to do with his money or his success or the fact that he made it to 92. What they carry is how it felt to be in his company.

Daddy embodied joy long before anybody was writing books about how to find it, practice it, or cultivate it into a daily exercise. He didn’t need a gratitude journal to tell him life was worth enjoying. He had a ten-piece band and a daughter willing to crawl underneath a lawnmower.

The little cowboy hat on my wall

His little cowboy hat, the one he wore when he played with the band, hangs on the wall of my home.

I see it every day, and every time I do, I’m reminded of how much of that man is still alive in me.

I’m 71 now, and I get so excited about a new idea that I forget to eat, forget the time, and forget that somewhere along the way I was supposed to have settled into retirement. I paint. I write. I’m always dreaming up what to build next. I know exactly where that comes from. I watched my father live for years without ever consulting his age to find out what he was allowed to enjoy. He never made a speech about it. He simply kept doing what delighted him, long after the world expected him to sit down and take it easy, and in those last ten years together I soaked up far more of that attitude than I realized.

I doubt Daddy had any idea what he was teaching us. He was too busy living.

Now let me ask you

Who in your life never checked with their age before deciding what they were allowed to enjoy? Maybe it was a grandmother who danced in the kitchen, an uncle who took up a new hobby at 80, or a neighbor who kept showing up for life long after everyone assumed she’d quit.

Whatever they handed you is still in you, and I’d bet it’s been waiting for you to stop asking permission from a number. You don’t need a grand declaration, either. Daddy certainly never made one.

When I think about the paintings I haven’t painted yet and the things I haven’t written, I don’t hear a solemn lecture about making the most of my remaining time. I hear my daddy’s voice.

Come on, Monica, it’s time to go play for the old people!

And I smile, because I’ve got places to go, too. So do you.

Daddy never played alone, you know. He had a ten-piece band and a daughter to haul the equipment.

The Breakthrough Circle is my version of that band: a room full of women over 60 who are still curious about what comes next and would rather figure it out in good company. We swap stories, argue about ideas, laugh a lot, and there’s always room for one more chair. The Breakthrough Circle meets via Zoom every Tuesday at 7PM

Paid memberships are 20% off today. Come join us.

We’ve still got a whole lot of living to do.

We’re Not Done Yet.

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