Seize The Day

My father was going to retire and then go to Europe. Instead, he retired and then he died.  "Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live." That quote by Margaret Fuller pretty well sums it all up. The only thing you will regret on your deathbed will be the things you didn't get to do. He had made the trip once and very much wanted to go back, free from the time line dictated by the workplace. For my dad, there would not be another stroll through Piccadilly Circus, no cruise along the Seine and no view from the Eiffel Tower. 

I was 24 when he passed away and, even though I wasn't a child, I was certainly in my formative years for learning to become an adult. His death shaped and formed my outlook on work and life and my adamant belief that if I don't get to do something right away I may never get to do it.

My dad, God rest his friendly soul, drove over 90 miles round trip on his commute to his contracts administrator job. East on the flat I-10 from Houston's western suburbs, past the skyscrapers and south on I-45 to the marshy bay area, almost to Galveston, and then back home at 5 o'clock  to our little ranch style house. He ate dinner and watched the news in his burgundy leather chair. He ate an apple and tossed our dachshund the core. He was off to bed by 10:30. It was the nightly routine. 

He was a model employee who sat behind the same gray metal desk for 47 years. His sense of loyalty was born from the fact that his employer hired him when no one else would. He was an amputee who lost his leg to gangrene when he was 12 years old. It was horrible timing; penicillin was discovered a few years after the infection claimed his leg. When he landed his job there were no laws protecting the disabled and I can imagine how grateful he was to be hired.

I think he was happy. I can't imagine doing something you hated, day in and day out, for 47 years. I believe a lot of what kept his pedals to the work a day metal was an abiding fear that he would never find another job. Looking back, I am immensely proud of his dedication. Growing up, I swore I never wanted a life like that.

His death had a profound influence on my own life strategy. I never wanted to put off until tomorrow any experience that I could have today. I'm sure I was deep down worried that my own retirement age may never come or that I would hit 65 and they'd be pulling the sheet over me.  Always, in the back of my mind, was the thought that I had to seize the day and make it all count because my days may be numbered. Henry David Thoreau said "you must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment." 

All children take something from their parents' lives and make it a part of their own. They also refuse to go down certain paths that their parents have paved. That addition and subtraction, the traits embraced and those that are pushed away, make an adult child complete. From a parent's loss, a child can learn.