Witness to My Father’s Health Decline
My dad died just weeks before I opened Electric Beets in November of 2022.
His last words to me were, “Maybe I can be there for the opening—wouldn’t that be fun?”
My last words to him, during our final fragile hug, were, “Let go anytime you’re ready, Dad. You’ve lived a good life. I love you.”
I’ve wished for a few people to die for various reasons (yep – brutal honesty), and my dad was one of them. I knew I would never see him alive again. Even through my uncontrollable wailing through airport security, to my gate, and for days afterward, I was strangely at peace.
He had suffered for a long time. Over 15 years of strokes, cancer, relentless vertigo, dementia, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high triglycerides, type-2 diabetes, type-3 diabetes – and probably a few more things I’m choosing to forget. He took a handful of pills twice a day and joked with me, carefully but repeatedly, “This is your future.”
And the hardest part? Most of what he was dealing with could have been significantly improved – or at least better managed – by changes to his diet. Not erased. But mitigated. Slowed. Softened.
I always shuddered and said, “No. Absolutely not.”
He’d respond, “It’s genetics…”
It’s a shitty feeling to judge the people you love most for the choices they make about their health – the food they eat, the movement they avoid – but we do it anyway. Early on, every time another major health scare hit, I encouraged Dad to change something. Anything. To try to undo years of little movement and overindulgence. But initial discomfort always got in the way of forming better habits.
I took him seriously when he said, “This is your future.”
Because it could have been.
But I also knew that choosing a different future would be a decision I’d have to make every single day for the rest of my life.
From the outside, it might look like “I’ve got this.” But we all know that’s bullshit. We’re all fucked up in one way or another – it’s just easier to keep the chaos hidden.
And let’s be clear: I didn’t exactly start with a stacked deck. Sugar is my kryptonite.
I’ll talk about that in another post.
