Dear Younger Self,

I remember you.

I remember a beautiful spring day, a neurologist’s office and those two words.  

Parkinson’s disease.

Early days, the doctor says. Keep exercising. The medication will help when the time comes.

You leave his office and join your husband in the waiting room. He wanted to come in with you to see the doctor  but you said, No.

It’s his birthday. His 68th birthday.  His sister lived with Parkinson’s for almost 30 years and then she died. You’ve read that Parkinson’s doesn’t kill you. It seems to you that it can, it does.  You fear the sorrow in his face. You think you know how this ends but…listen to me…you don’t.

You wait until you are in the car to tell him.  You weep and he hugs you and  you say, Let’s go home.

Fifteen minutes later — or maybe it’s much longer than that— you realize you are not on the highway to home, but on a strange road, high above the city, looking down on the lake and orchards, from an unfamiliar place.

Where are we? you ask.

I’ve no idea, he says.

You give your head  an ironic shake and cannot help but  laugh. It is the first time Parkinson’s  makes you laugh. It won’t be the last.

Laughter is going to get you through this. It lives just the other side of tears and, oh my goodness, there are going to be tears.

I can’t tell how you should do it differently. You do the best you can. You have days of self-pity and days of Pollyanna optimism. You resist connecting with other parkies —who wants to join that club?— and in your own time, and just in time, you find them, your wise and funny people, and you feel so much less alone. They hold you up.  

You research like crazy and sometimes it  makes you crazy, all the new knowledge you never wanted to learn. It makes you crazy, and angry and scared and sad.

And then it makes you powerful. It’s power to know that protein and levo-dopa don’t mix— to know that all the hiking, skiing, biking, and dancing you’d always loved to do will  help  you cuddle your grandbabies and kick the soccer ball and roll out the cookie dough and hang on to your marbles. It’s power to hold a frail 80 year old’s hand and teach her a breathing technique to calm the anxiety that her bewildered husband complains is all in her head.

Of course it is, you tell him. Where else would it be?

And if, as  time goes on, you start to feel less powerful, it’s okay to take a day  or a week to mourn the losses, to say out loud, This is hard.   

You don’t know how it ends. No one does. 

Remember that day? That day you heard the words? You weren’t truly lost, just a little turned around. And then you laughed.

So…laugh. Gather your people. Learn what you need to know. Exercise. Feel the feelings. Hold someone’s hand.  You’ll always find your way home.

With love,

Leslie