“A positive attitude leads to a longer and healthier life” is probably the biggest load of bullshit anyone has ever tried to pawn on the young.

Sure there are living examples all around me of long lived “happy people.”

My mother-in-law, the house elf, is 95. Her two living sisters are 97 and 93, respectfully. Happy Savages one and all.

But my father just turned 93.

“He must have a great attitude,” my friend Stephen Metcalfe — the writer of screenplays, novels and stories that always seem to find a “happy ending” — said.

No, no he doesn’t.

He’s a pessimist’s, pessimist. The world has been going to hell in many different hand baskets for as long as I’ve known him.

Stole the image from here.

In the 70’s, we were all going to freeze to death in a new ice age if the Japanese didn’t take over the world first.

In the 80’s, the Reagan Revolution or crack cocaine was going to kill us all.

In the 90’s, gang violence was going to turn America into Haiti. Or our national debt was going to destroy the value of money.

In the 2000’s, the financial crisis was going to kill Wall Street. We would all die homeless from a lack of venture capital.

Then came global warming, climate change, inequality, and the shifts to right wing dictatorships. The end of the world as we know it.

I’m not sure exactly when all this pessimism started. He was born at the start of the “Great Depression”. Maybe that had something to do with it.

But I think he may have gotten it from his mother.

Next to her he looked like little Mary Sunshine. By the time I knew her, she never had a kind word to say about or to anyone. She even hated dogs.

I think my dad’s negativity really got kicked off when I was about 10.

Cancer ain’t nothing

He had a cancer diagnosis. A small tumor on his thigh. The surgeon said he made one small cut and every cancer cell popped out in one piece like a golf ball.

A lesser man would have taken this as a sign. His body spit out cancer like it was a badly cooked Brussel sprout. Can you spell invincible?

My dad took a different tact.

He started planning for his own death in 1973 (or so).

Each year for 50 years, he has written the “death letter.”

All our names typed in birth order across the top with one name circled to personalize a copy. Most of the time the circled name matches the one on the envelope, but not always.

The letter always has 500 words or so about his latest foray into philosophy. What we should do and how we could live the best possible lives for the most people while doing as little harm as possible.

Thought experiments on the way things “ought to be.”

Then come the final wishes.

Have a ceremony “with a decent wine” (you cheap bastards — sorry couldn’t help but read something into that statement).

What to do with the body.

And the splitting of the assets among the 5 children, 5 grandchildren and now 3 great-grandchildren.

That’s the thing about age. The “assets” get smaller as we spend them on living and the “inheritors” get larger with the unfortunate consequences of sex — babies. Until there’s nothing really worth fighting for.

Fighting amongst his heirs is my father’s greatest fear. The death letter is meant to prevent all that. I don’t have the heart to tell him he has outlived any sibling rivalry and there are not enough assets left to “fight over.”

No complaints. He has never needed help from us and helped all of us with college tuition — including contributions to the 529 plans for his great grandchildren — and down payments on housing the grandchildren.

For most of his adult life all this pessimism had a powerful foil. My mother could make anything sound better.

Trapped in a convent-like catholic school from age 14 to 22?

“Ohh it was great fun outsmarting the nuns. “

Saddled with 5 kids in 6 years and forced to move out of New York City to live in Akron, Ohio just when the rubber factories were dying?

“It was a real shit show, but you all managed to grow up without me dropping you on your little heads.”

3 vodka martinis a day made life in Akron go down like a teaspoon of sugar.

Make pessimism great again

Dad isn’t a complete pessimist for every part of the day. But he has to work his way through it.

A few months ago he had a week long stay in the hospital.

My brother, the fruit farmer, came down for nearly two weeks and spent almost all day, every day in the hospital with dad.

My brother’s nickname in high school? Smiley.

“You know I’m glad John was here,” dad said as we were grabbing his shit and going home. “But he’s just such an optimist.

“It can really get on my nerves. Just let me bitch about things for a little while.

“I can’t be happy all the time. It doesn’t feel right.”

Believe me, I get it dad. Just try to read 3 of these blog posts in a row, and you’ll see this apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

Maybe if I keep writing this bullshit, I’ll live to 100.