For as long as I can remember, my father was the epitome of the Type A personality. He was not happy unless he was working on a project. If there wasn’t something that needed to be done, he would make something up. Dig a drain field for the washer, add a fourth bedroom to the house, build a shed, or remove a 200-year-old oak tree threatening the house. He would come home from work, eat dinner with us, then start working on his current project. When he would finish one project, he would immediately launch into the next, often on the same day. There were no breaks.
One day, in the fall of 1984, my father started feeling bad at work. He drove himself to the hospital. While he was diagnosed with a benign cardiac event of unknown origin, he learned that he had had a previous heart attack. This previous heart attack went undiagnosed until that day. He could not remember when it had happened.
That day was one of the very few days he admitted he was not feeling well. Between unused vacation and unused sick time, my dad had accrued just over eight months of paid time off before retiring at the age of 60 in late August of 1990 even though his last day of work was December 22nd, 1989. Prior to retiring, his employer required him to take nearly two months off because of a “use it or lose it” situation with his unused annual leave. The man just could not stop working – whether at his job or at home. Type A all the way every day!
I went home for dinner the following Friday night after this cardiac event. I did not recognize the man sitting at the table. While his appearance remained unchanged, his entire countenance had changed; and for the first time, I saw my dad living in the moment and not striving to get to the next. The Type A personality was gone. I remember shaking his hand and asking, “Who are you, and what have you done with my father?” He only smiled and said nothing.
From that day forward until the end of his life, my dad always said, “it is important to have a Plan B.” Whenever he was working on a project, if things were not going as expected, he would sit down and think about what needed to happen to get things back on track. This almost always involved a Coors Light. To this day, all his kids and grandkids, and our spouses, call Coors Light “Plan B.”
So on this, his 93rd birthday, please join me in saluting my old man with a cold Plan B!
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But again thank you for the kind words!
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