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Jack Marshall: Genes, moderation, love

    by Larry Blumenthal
    Published 
What I learned from my father about health and living well
by Bill Marshall
Make two columns for my father, Jack Marshall. 
The first, his likes: Comfortable chairs, Scotch, naps, chatting, steak, chicken, salt, butter, doughnuts. 
The second, his dislikes: Vegetables, plain water, exercise, dieting.
These are both minus columns and should have killed him years before his first Social Security check arrived, yet he died last fall at 91 in good enough shape to drive to his favorite supermarkets and hit the sample counters until just months before his death. 
That makes his first lesson this: Your health is a genetic crapshoot. Favoring the good over the bad can tack on a few years but if you go for healthy habits, try to find ones you enjoy. If you hate running, swim. Bicycle. 
Lesson two is moderation. My father’s likes were not obsessions. He was overweight, not obese; he had a potbelly, not a gut. He smoked on average two cigars a year. He had cocktails nightly the way many in his generation did, but I never saw him drunk. 
Number three is be selfish sometimes. At 62, my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He later knew more about it than some doctors who work in the field and shared what he knew. Sometimes he did this tiresomely but I know much about my prostate because of it and that may help me one day.
Last, love something. With him it was primarily another person, his wife Cynthia, who preceded him in death by only weeks.

Make two columns for my father, Jack Marshall.

The first, his likes: Comfortable chairs, Scotch, naps, chatting, steak, chicken, salt, butter, doughnuts.

The second, his dislikes: Vegetables, plain water, exercise, dieting.

These are both minus columns and should have killed him years before his first Social Security check arrived, yet he died last fall at 91 in good enough shape to drive to his favorite supermarkets and hit the sample counters until just months before his death.

That makes his first lesson this: Your health is a genetic crapshoot. Favoring the good over the bad can tack on a few years, but if you go for healthy habits, try to find ones you enjoy. If you hate running, swim. Bicycle.

Lesson two is moderation. My father's likes were not obsessions. He was overweight, not obese; he had a potbelly, not a gut. He smoked on average two cigars a year. He had cocktails nightly the way many in his generation did, but I never saw him drunk.

Number three is be selfish sometimes. At 62, my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He later knew more about it than some doctors who work in the field and shared what he knew. Sometimes he did this tiresomely but I know much about my prostate because of it and that may help me one day.

Last, love something. With him it was primarily another person, his wife Cynthia, who preceded him in death by only weeks.

Bill Marshall