Keeping Our Loved Ones Alive and Healthy Longer

I wrote this a few years ago and included it in my book, Making Kind Choices: Everyday Ways to Enhance Your Life Through Earth- and Animal-Friendly Living. I know you have people in your life for whom you care greatly, so I wanted to share this story with you.

My father had the dry sense of humor of an English elder statesman, and I rather think that he would have enjoyed Moore’s rebuttal in the following exchange:

“I understand,” said a member of a posh London club, objecting to the poet Thomas Moore’s application for membership, “that your father was a shopkeeper. How very interesting. May I enquire why you didn’t follow in his footsteps?”

“Because my talents were limited,” said Moore, adding, “I have heard that your father was a gentleman. May I ask why you haven’t followed in his footsteps?”

-A Biography of Thomas Moore (1779-1852)

But my father has gone, and I will never be able to read him those lines.

In my closet are my father’s medals from World War II, when he fought with the Black Watch in France; the pictures of him, as a boy, playing with Mickey, the mixed beagle he loved; the wedding announcement of his marriage to my mother; and the notebooks that constitute his memoirs of the oil-exploration years he spent on a dhow in the Persian Gulf and catching sea turtles in the weeks leading up to the big bomb test on Easter Island.

All the monkeys who were given arterial plaques and the dogs who were force-fed high fat diets and all the rats and pigs who had their organs sliced, diced, and examined did not save him.

I think that he sometimes didn’t really know what to do with a daughter. I have a photograph of us sitting together on the running board of the family car when I was about 7 years old. The two of us look like characters out of a Monty Python skit: We are wearing handkerchiefs on our heads to keep the sun from burning our scalps, and my father was teaching me to spit out cherry pits in a straight line. At other times, he took me clambering over the rocks in the south of England, taught me to pick mussels, how to remove their poisonous beards, and how to steam them in vinegar over a camping stove. My father also tried to teach me to drive by instructing me on how to repair a crank shaft or some such mystery car part. I remember staring at the oil-covered diagrams, when all I wanted was to put the car in “D” and head for the beach.

This clever and fearless man, who relished danger, somehow survived typhoid, German gunners, the sinking sands of the Little Rani of Kutch in India, and hurricane conditions at sea in his little boat off the Gulf Coast. Yet, his downfall was that he lived dangerously at the table. He had been raised on meat and relished it all, from calves’ liver to steak. He drank a glass of milk each night before he went to bed and always stopped the car if he spotted an ice cream parlor.

My father suffered an attack of gout. Then came a stroke, then another. His arteries hardened, and pain gripped his chest. In the end, he was a very frustrated man with a razor-sharp mind trapped inside a failed body. No amount of medication could open up the arteries to his heart and brain or the flow of blood to his feet. That could only have come from a diet like Dr. Dean Ornish’s regime of vegan food, moderate exercise, and stress reduction-a diet proven to reverse plaques and lower cholesterol to the 150 mark, that magic number at and below which no one has been known to die of a heart attack.

One day, I have no doubt, the meat and dairy industries’ alluring ads will be replaced with judgments against them and forced admissions that, yes, they realized long ago that meat and milk are addictive. People acquire more than a casual taste for the stuff, a fact borne out when you see someone seemingly unable to break the habit, no matter that their bodies have become blobs. They cannot miss the barrage of news stories about the ill health consequences of the bacon-and-egg breakfast or the cheese pizza topping, and they turn a blind eye to the sight and plight of animals intensively farmed, inhumanely transported, and prodded to their deaths.

I know that some people resent having veganism “shoved down their throats,” no matter how pleasantly one raises the issue. But I also know that if I could turn back the clock, I’d far rather have a dirty look than have lost my father.

If your father is heading down the same road mine trod, perhaps some dietary advice, sent with a loving note or simply left on his favorite chair, might help persuade him to stay around for a little longer.

Resources
Check out the following resources for more information:

• “Stand Up to Cancer: Go Vegetarian”:A recent PETA Prime article talked about the relationship between diet and cancer.
• “Vegetarian 101″: This PETA Web page has great resources for anyone who is considering making the switch to a veg diet.
• The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM): PCRM provides dietary information to help reduce the risk of various diseases, including cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart attacks, and strokes. It offers a wide range of books, pamphlets, CDs and other health-related materials.
• Dr. Dean Ornish’s Lifestyle Program for Heart Disease Reversal: Dr. Ornish promotes a regime of diet, moderate exercise, stress management, and social support to help patients lose weight while eating more and reduce or discontinue their medications.