Don't Wait to Live - Vale Tom K Smith

Brendan Neil
Jan 18
5 min read

1962-2026

Don’t Wait Until You Retire

My mother gave us a piece of advice when we were young that never sounded particularly profound at the time:

“Don’t wait until you retire to have fun.”

At the time, it just seemed like one of those lines adults say in passing while they’re paying bills, mowing lawns, or packing school lunches. It wasn’t until much later that I understood the weight behind those words.

Mum learned that advice the hard way.

Her father—my grandfather—died in an accident just a few months after he retired. I was just a baby. He had spent decades serving others as a Salvation Army Officer (like a priest), moving his family all over the Country every 2yrs, saving, and preparing for a future he barely got to touch.

My father’s father wasn’t much luckier. He was injured at work and passed away from complications not long after. This was a man who survived the sinking of the HMAS Canberra in the Guadalcanal in WWII. They had just moved into their “forever home.” He was only months away from the retirement finish line. A whole stage of life—planned, anticipated, earned—was cut off before it began.

When you grow up around stories like that, the idea of “waiting for later” starts to look like a dangerous gamble. Later is not guaranteed. Later is not a promise. Later is a luxury.

Another Reminder — Tom Smith

This week I went to the funeral of a former boss, Tom Smith. I had the privilege of working with Tom at two different organisations. He was just eight years older than me. He retired "early" only 18 months ago.

The chapel was filled with people from all walks of Tom’s life. Business colleagues. Family. Rally drivers. Neighbours. Old friends. New ones. People who knew him in ways I never did. And yet, almost everyone described the same man.

When I first worked with Tom, I thought he was just a good manager. Interesting, talented, curious. A rally car co-driver who also wrote for a rally magazine. A bloke who seemed somehow fearless. A bloke with a library of voice impersonations.

But as time went on, and as I expanded my own work life, I learned the distinction between managers and leaders. I learned it by working for many managers and very few leaders.

Tom was a leader.

When chaos hit, most people panicked, pointed fingers, or strategised their own escape. Tom didn’t. He was calm. He was measured. He didn’t seek heroes. He sought clarity. It always impressed me how rally car people think under pressure — how they read the terrain, anticipate the next corner, and keep their driver alive at high speed. That’s how Tom led. Head up. Eyes forward. No drama. Just get on with it.

While others participated in toxic office culture—cutting people out, diminishing others’ value, shrinking the room so they could appear bigger—Tom did the opposite. He set standards. He created environments where teams behaved like professionals, not contestants. Where careers grew and credit was shared.

It was only after working in other environments that I fully realised how rare that was.

The Strange Experience of Rewinding Time

Funerals often bring people back together who haven’t been in the same room for 10, 20, 30 years. As we stood around after the service, swapping stories about Tom and the years we worked together, something unexpected hit me.

I felt a profound sense of loss.

Not just sadness, not just grief — loss in a broader, more uncomfortable sense.

Loss of time. Loss of potential. Loss of ambition. Loss of versions of myself. Sorry for your loss.

Talking with old colleagues transported me back to my late 20s and 30s, and then later to my early 40s, when Tom and I worked together again. There were parts of myself from those eras that I’m glad I’ve left behind — fear, impatience, immaturity, insecurity. But there were other parts I’d forgotten existed. Energy. Drive. Ambition. Curiosity. Hunger for adventure. A sense that life was still unfolding, still becoming, still possible.

Somewhere in the process of living, the years get filled with obligations. Careers, children, mortgages, logistics, responsibilities. You don’t make a decision to put parts of yourself down. It just sort of… happens. A quiet drift. A gradual surrender.

And there I was, shaking hands with people from my past, realising how much time had passed without me noticing.

The Uncomfortable Mirror of Mortality

Mourning Tom was one layer of grief. The other was realising how mortal I am. Funerals do that. They compress time. They show you the length of a human life in a slideshow set to music. They collapse decades into minutes. They reveal not just that someone lived, but that someone finished.

And that’s confronting.

Because buried inside grief sits a question we rarely want to voice out loud:

“What have I done with the time I’ve had?”

and worse:

“What have I not done?”

In psychology there are theories that describe this sensation. One is existential loss — the grief not of losing someone else, but of losing versions of ourselves we never fully lived. Another is counterfactual regret — the discomfort that arises when we realise the life we lived deviated from the life we hoped for, or the life we sensed we were capable of.

These concepts sound clinical, but they’re deeply human. And almost everyone feels them eventually. Most just try not to.

See More, Do More, Be More

I don’t share all of this to depress anyone. Quite the opposite. I share it because watching someone else’s life conclude should challenge us to examine our own with honesty. It should provoke questions about how we’re spending our finite time, energy, talent, curiosity and joy.

Too many people treat life as a preparation phase for a post-work afterlife called “retirement,” as though living begins when employment ends.

But what if retirement is not the start line?

What if it’s just the cooldown?

What if the real tragedy isn’t death at all — but deferral?

What if the greatest loss is not what we failed to finish, but what we never began?

My mother was right. You shouldn’t wait until you retire to have fun. Or to learn. Or to explore. Or to change. Or to become someone you actually admire. If something in you feels unfulfilled, unlived, or unfinished, then that is not a reason to wait.

It is a reason to begin.

See More. Do More. Be More. Before the finish line appears. Before the slideshow starts. Before colleagues gather to tell stories about who you were.

Not everyone gets the luxury of “later.”

So don’t wait for later.

Because later might not wait for you.

Tom leaves behind his wife and two daughters, and from all accounts he lived the role of husband and father completely — present, supportive, proud and deeply involved. Many of us who worked with Tom in the early stages of our careers owe him more than we ever said out loud. He gave young people a start. He opened doors, backed potential, and set foundations for future success that many still stand on decades later. Outside of the office, Tom poured just as much of his life into the rally world — not just turning up, but contributing. Through his writing, his co-driving, and his decades of participation, he didn’t just consume a sport, he strengthened its culture and preserved its stories. Tom lived fully across the things he cared about: his family, his work, and his passion. May we honour him not only in memory, but in how we choose to spend the finite time we still have.