My father is 97 years old. He will be 98 in June. He still has a sharp mind. He just has NO filter! His favorite expression: “I’m 97 years old and due some consideration.” Meaning, “I can do whatever I please and say whatever I want.”

The other day my wife was driving the minivan with my father in the front seat and I was in the back when my father started talking about a young woman at the nursing home, a worker no less, who he is “courting”. When my wife challenged him with the question: “Courting? Just what do you think you are able to do with a 35 year old woman?” I put my fingers in my ears and started humming the theme from Indiana Jones so I wouldn’t have to hear the ensuing conversation.

I never expected to see my father like this. When my mother died in 2004, I thought my father would pine himself to death. But, within four months he had put his sights on “the prettiest woman I ever saw” at church, a “mystery” woman and decided he was going to marry her. She, of course, was never apprised of my father’s plan, thank goodness. He soon moved onto another woman thirty years his junior but lost her to a “younger” man in his 80’s.

The old adage is “old soldiers fade away” but in my father’s case, “old ‘lover boy’s keep on going”. And going. And going. And going! The administrator of our hospital where I practice also is the administrator of my father’s nursing home. He is well acquainted with my father and his ministrations to the ladies. There are 103 women to my one father! So, the administrator tells everyone in the doctor’s cafe about my father and calls him “Lover Boy”. My father loves it!

What is strange is that my father and mother were married for 69 years. They loved each other and doted on each other all their lives. When my mother’s health turned for the worse and her mind began to slip, my father waited on her hand and foot. She was his queen. So, I was shocked to see how easily he moved on to other women. He never did this in life. He was always a one woman man and never stepped out on my mother.

But, I guess now that he is a bachelor again, it’s time to court! I will one day write a book about my father’s waning days. It will be entitled, “When Daddy Gets to Heaven, Momma’s Gonna Give Him Hell!”. I already have a song written with those lyrics so don’t any of you get the idea to turn it into a country western song. It’s copywritten!

The reason I bring this up is because of this incredible video I just ran across about a woman who is 108 years old and a survivor of the holocaust. Watch it and rejoice that life can be so wonderful as long as we have the right attitude.

I know that at times I grow weary of my father’s antics, but he is larger than life and to be lauded for having so much energy and optimism at age 97. How many men his age are courting someone who is 35?