It has been twenty years since Parkinson’s started shaking up my life. This will come as no shock to you, my younger self: you can’t shake the jokes out of me. Lucky for you, your voice is still loud enough to gather everyone’s attention. Let me lend you some of my perspective, twenty years down a road I would not recommend travelling, but that you are directly headed.
One of my greatest skillsets is that I have always believed the best in others and always been willing to help anyone in need. Parkinson’s made me become a man of need. It’s humbling to have a disease that hits you down, again and again. I am not a quitter, so the good part of getting hit down is you learn even greater perseverance. And the best part of falling to the actual ground is that you might fall down next to something delicious and sweet that you dropped, so you’ll have a snack while you wait for your wife to get home and help you up.
When you spend most of your adult life constantly looking for ways to help others, which I know you are doing, you can find it quite surprising to wind up with a disease that forces you to need others to help you. I hope that you will learn to take help at a younger age, that you will recognize that others are as willing to help you as you have always been to help them. Who would have thought that all of the years spent serving others would lead to a life where others would wrongfully believe that you have little to offer? Never forget that you always have goodness to offer, and always value what others who live with Parkinson’s have to say. This disease will eventually lessen your ability to speak in a way others can understand, so make the most of every one-liner, every golf tournament speech, every extra low bass note. And can I suggest, please do speech therapy sooner and take it more seriously. My daughter and others miss my rich bass voice. If I could go back, I would take my singing voice back. I knew I loved to sing, but I did not know how much.
Parkinson’s is filled with secret losses. I know you and you know me – we are the funny guy, the one who is always ready to step up to the mic and share. What you will do over the next twenty years day after day is count it all joy. Do not stop the joy, but know that it would be okay if you also voice some of the losses to more of the people who love you. Parkinson’s will acquaint you with grief. Don’t go it alone, Gary.
One piece of good news that I can promise you is that all of these valuable friendships you have built on the golf course and over barbeques and practical jokes will sustain you. You wouldn’t believe how valuable the game of crib will become to your daily life. Your friends will amaze you by coming to play, and you will amaze them with your commitment to count this entire life as joy. Continue to love the game of golf, to find pleasure in a long car ride, to hold your wife’s hand and open her door. Make each step fill you with gratitude, for unfortunately, golf and driving will become memories.
The same friends who you’ve walked eighteen holes with over and over, will eventually pick you up after you tee’d off, and will eventually skunk you at crib for the eighth week in a row, years after your last golf game.
Start preparing your wife already for how much of the food budget will go to ice cream. Or perhaps learn to like vegetables. If I knew eating healthy would make my life now better, and I mean significantly better, then I would suggest veggies over jujubes. It’s too late now to change my habits around eating, but it’s not too late for you. Your son-in-law’s food budget is mostly lent to spinach salads. Give salad a chance, Gary!
One last thing. Don’t waste this good life on the lesser things. Love your family, love your God, and serve others with the joy you always will have.