When are you too old?

I am sorry that I have not posted much lately.  I originally wanted this blog to be about MitzvahArt and my personal spiritual path (as it relates to MitzvahArt) but I am in the middle of a more personal spiritual “event”.  My Dad is 89 years old and recently had open heart surgery.

Yeah, I know, isn’t he too old for that?  That was my first thought too.

But to answer that, you really need to know my Dad. He is not your average 89 year old, or so I think.  At 63 he had a heart attack and completely changed his life.  He retired from the financial industry, eats not just well but carefully and deliberately, exercises regularly and frankly before the latest heart issue was fitter than me. In retirement, he worked on advertising and merchandising at the family clothing store. At 70 he decided to become a commercial real estate broker, at 80 his summer project was to de-thatch his lawn…. by hand, at 83 he had a knee replaced because he could no longer enjoy golf with his original one. He is no stranger to difficult obstacles and has always had goals to keep him

So when his heart started to slow him down, he sought out the reason. “Well your 89 years old” was not acceptable. I started thinking about the notion of acceptance and started to think that once you “accept” fate, age or the way it is, you lose control of your destiny and in some way your person. Interestingly, in the Torah many of the great stories are of people into their second century, which we all consider to be figurative but realistically I think its about what you can do with a level of maturity that is just not reached until later in life.  So who are we to tell older people they cannot do anything?  To take away their motivation.  To force them to accept their fate. In the back of my mind, I put myself in his shoes and wonder if I have the determination and love of life that he has to put myself through what he is going through.  A new level of admiration for a man I already place high up there.

Anyway, needless to say even though I am three hours away from him, he is dominating my free thoughts and my not so free time. I am looking at the bright side of this, spending lots of time with the family and helping where I can.  (I must say that my sister and brother in law, who are local to my folks and the hospital, have been godsends and I thank them for their diligence).