A few days before my father turned 91, I reminded him of this milestone.

“Why that’s amazing,” he said, surprised and delighted, wrapped in a protective cocoon of dementia.

My father’s only choice at that point was to be here now.

Lawrence Vincent on his 91st birthday

This man smoked two packs of cigarettes a day until he was 62 years old, ate hot fudge sundaes and beef stroganoff, never exercised, worked like a fiend and kept the irregular hours of a professional actor until his mid-70s. Both of his parents died young.

How did he defy the odds? In a word: resilience. When life handed him lemons, Dad makes lemonade – and then made darn sure everyone around him appreciated it! Psychologists call this “adaptive coping.”

My father passionately loved his life in the theater as well as teaching acting to his students.  He delighted in movies, plays, and music. He loved life despite circumstances that would depress many. He survived colon cancer surgery in his late 80s and a broken hip a year later.

Until recently, Dad could be found tooling around the halls of the Actors Fund Home in Englewood, New Jersey in an electric wheelchair. He didn’t know how old he was or even today’s date, but he still recognized my voice in our weekly phone calls.

I miss those calls. Dad died in March a few months before his 93rd birthday.

Some forms of dementia lead to paranoia and anger. My father’s made him a kinder, gentler human being.

The geriatric psychiatrist Helen Lavretsky, MD, writing in Psychiatirc Times, says resilient people are characterized by commitment, dynamism, humor in the face of adversity, patience, optimism, faith and altruism. My type-A father was naturally gifted with six of the seven traits – and his physical and mental limitations forced patience upon him – so near the end of his life he exhibited all of them.

I’m not one to sugarcoat the challenges of aging, but I look for the bright spots. My father’s ability to laugh in the face of adversity inspires me. Dad passed on the characteristics of resilience to me. Whether by nature or nurture, I have followed my father’s example by handling setbacks with renewed determination. My default setting is always humor and a belief that I’ll do better next time.

When I told Dad I was about to celebrate my 65th birthday, he gasped.

           “No. You aren’t!”

“I am, Dad,” I said.

           “Well you don’t look it,” he said.

“And you don’t look a day over 85,” I quipped.

He guffawed. I made my father laugh, which brought me joy and a measure of hope for my own old age.

Dad had little money to leave his children, but I’ve received gifts from him that you can’t put a price on – an ability to bounce back and a firm conviction that hot fudge cannot be bad for me.