My mom loved people and was a gypsy at heart, died at 92 years, my sweet and kind grandma lived until 90, my curmudgeon stepdad lived for 95 grumpy years, and my kind and funny dad didn’t make it past 59.

What were their secrets to a long life and a life cut down in its prime?

My dad grew up poor and was raised on a farm where his dad used pesticides, not knowing they would kill him at 60 and my dad at almost the same age. They ate nothing but the pork they raised along with homegrown vegetables cooked in lard. Cancer killed them both…the fast incurable kind…pancreatic cancer. Was it bad genes, the fried foods and red meat they ate, or the pesticides that poisoned the soil and them?

My mom and grandma grew up 100 miles away in a small college town.. They were poor and ate vegetables from their garden and homemade bread. They had very little money after my grandpa left them, a traveling Watson salesman in search of greener pastures after the depression.

Mom, Dad and Grandma eventually wanted more than what the Midwest offered them, so they packed up their few belongings and made the long trek from there to California back in 1954. They had nothing but an old car, a tent, dreams of a better life, and a baby on the way….me.

My mom and dad smoked for years but neither had any lung disease during their lives. They loved their Midwest fried foods and lots of red meat, Dad died at 59 from cancer and yet Mom died at 92, shortly after her 3rd Covid shot, that damaged her lungs, and made her bedfast.

When Mom realized that her days of playing cards, going to parties and spending two hours a day to look beautiful were over, she stopped drinking and eating and was dead in a week. She had nothing to live for and decided to end it as she said she would always do when it was her time. “Just push me off a cliff when it’s over….no nursing home for me” she said for 30 years. I guess she decided to jump on her own.

My grandma was never a smoker or drinker and didn’t eat much meat…a very clean life. “Cleo Vera” must have been very daring, by the pictures of her dressed like a sexy flapper. Then another one of her posing in overalls with a cocky watchman’s hat, sitting on a Model T with a cigar dangling from her lips. I think she had a few dark secrets, but we’ll never know! Her ultra-clean life ended when she broke her hip, got sepsis in the hospital and slipped away quietly into the night at 90. My heart still breaks when I think of the many years we stood together in the kitchen, quietly making things I never made again after she died. It just hurt too much,

My crabby stepdad was a wanderer, always looking for that famous pot of gold, knowing he would strike it rich one day. His life was full of adventures, born in Denver, serving in the Army, living in New Orleans after the war, working on the Apollo 13 mission, living in sunny California for years, and finally moving to Sun City, AZ.

This wanderlust wanderer settled into old age with my mom in an area where old people go to grow older and die. His secret to a long life were his love of salmon, asparagus, angel hair pasta, sardines and saltines. Yep….that’s about all I saw him eat in the 19 years I knew him. He smoked pot when he was young and drank regularly. That sure didn’t kill him, did it?

So what is their common secret? Their genes? Their eating habits? Their life styles? Maybe it was everything, but I know that my family had a zest for life, and never gave up, no matter what heartache they faced, with three of them living for 90+ years. I was raised to quit complaining, get up and start over.

I do believe that genes make a difference, healthy food keeps your body happy, while poisons in the earth, water and air can cut down good people in their prime.

So walk more, choose real and healthy food at the store or the farmers market. Learn new things every day, have good friends and make new ones along the way, stay active, sit in the sunshine along the ocean, a lake or a river. Explore the world, live life to the fullest, fall down in pain, and then get right up again. Give up or get up, it’s your choice.

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