Taking Dad to the Dollar Store

My brother and I were blessed with good parents.  They had a knack for mixing just the right amount of freedom and control to guide us from childhood to becoming young adults.  They were healthy and happy and we had a calm and peaceful home, even during our teen years.  They paid for our college educations and that led to our both having good careers.  My dad was a particularly good example of financial discipline and even though he only made middle class wages as a traveling salesman for household products and then later as an insurance salesman, he became a millionaire due to diligent saving and investing.  He only owned one house and paid for cars and all our consumer goods with cash.  He paid every credit card off in full every month and while he had some nice tools and a nice fishing boat and my mom had her diamonds, they were generally quite frugal.

My parents liked to travel after we left the nest, at least at first.  But fate dealt them cruel blows when my mom developed a fear of travel and of strangers, perhaps a sign of early onset dementia, and my dad developed Parkinson’s.  Parkinson’s is a devastating disease which slowly but inexorably robs you of control of your body.  It was particularly ironic that it happened to him, because my dad was very health conscious.  He ate well and was slim and even got up and walked 3 miles daily in the early mornings.  Yet he was awarded the silver bullet of a terminal and incurable disease with no known cause or cure.  We watched the decline, which began slowly, limit his mobility and his ability to use the computers he so loved.  He had been a computer fan since the very first personal computers came on the market, yet eventually he could no longer type on a keyboard and was wheelchair bound.  And that brings me to the Dollar Store.

One of the things Parkinson’s victims have to come to terms with is a relentlessly shrinking sphere of capability. As he lost mobility he focused on the hobbies he could do while stationary.  Those were photography and computers.  He had an assortment of digital cameras and photographed waitresses, store clerks and all of the nursing home staff.  He’d then print 8 x 10 glossy portraits that he would give away.  People loved it when he’d hand them a photo of them at work. He became known as the “camera man” by the retail and food workers at the places he would frequent.  Eventually he no longer maintained the dexterity to operate cameras or to print out photos.

My dad was not a brilliant guy but he was creative and a good problem solver and it was no accident that the last hobby he was able to maintain was shopping at the Dollar Store. He wanted to go every week and my wife or I would take him.  He would buy toiletry items and office supplies, things he had used in his daily and working life.  He did not need them, there were piles of them in his room at the nursing home that the staff were constantly removing to make a place for his next shopping trip.  But it was a profound act of “doing something” for him.   He pointed at what he wanted as I pushed him through the store and I would put it in the cart.  And he would pay for it himself.  It was one of the few meaningful activities he could still pursue at the end.  Honestly now that he is gone, it makes me cry reliving dozens of trips like that.  It was sad and uplifting at the same time.  Sad that it was all he could do and uplifting because I got to help him do it.

He had lived a life most of us can only imagine.  He was a WWII disabled veteran with some serious war injuries.  He ran the radar on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific Campaign in that war while Kamikaze airplanes dove on the ship trying to sink it and submarines narrowly missed with torpedo attacks. After the war he attended and graduated from a highly rated liberal arts college on the GI bill.  He married a brilliant and beautiful lady and stayed married to her for 63 years until death stole her from him.  He worked jobs he did not particularly enjoy for fifty years to provide for his family.  He never had a cent of consumer debt, paid the house off early and became a millionaire on middle class wages.  He paid his two sons’ way through college so they could graduate with no student loans and modeled for them how to be successful with money.  He never said a mean or angry word to his wife, our mom, and always treated her with respect. Until he was unable he always opened her car door and gave her a kiss.  In a world that was very much racially divided I never heard him utter a single slur or derogatory remark about someone of another race. I never heard him speak badly about his boss, his friends or our neighbors.  I did not realize how special he was until later in life.

My generation of boomers is one of the first to be horribly prepared for retirement.  We started work in a world where retirement was a promised fat company pension, only to see those plans dismantled early in our working careers to be replaced by 401K’s.  In my case I had been in the work world for ten years before I even had access to a 401K and my fat pension, well, I was cashed out of that after seven years for the tidy sum of $2,000.  Like most of my fellow boomers I was positioned for disaster.  I had three kids to put through college and aging parents, a perfect sandwich of responsibilities that has wrecked many of my generation’s financial futures.  Yet I’m good, I’m fine.  My dad never needed a penny from my brother or me.  In fact, he left a million dollar legacy for each of us in spite of my parents burning through the better part of ten thousand a month for their health care the last few years of their lives.  We are supremely fortunate that he turned middle class wages into a small fortune by doing exactly what the FIRE community preaches now.  Spend less than you make and invest for growth.  It worked for him, one of the greatest generation, it worked for me and my brother, boomers, and it is working for gen Xr’s and millennials.

I was always proud of my dad, I knew he was a good guy, principled and dedicated to his family.  I knew without a shadow of a doubt he loved me and was proud of me.  In a lot of ways my success in business and as a parent are things I owe to him.  He taught me to naturally like other people.  To be inclined to appreciate their good points without worrying much about their flaws.  And he taught me to save and invest and to spend frugally.  But I did not realize how special he was at the time, I just thought everyone was like that, until I later realized that almost nobody is.  It was so sad to see his abilities collapse in on him as Parkinson’s took its toll on his body.  But it never conquered his will.  At the end his trips to the Dollar Store were the highlights of his week.  And while that was profoundly sad on one level I am eternally grateful that I was able to take him on those trips where he could be in charge and could do something normal, something we all take for granted.  It mattered to him, it was all he had left.  And strangely, it was enough.  I miss you Dad.