Bucket List - 2010

What are you looking forward to?

Although it is raining outside tonight, the weather in this brand-new year has not been excessively rainy. And the snow has managed to make only the briefest of appearances. Despite the gloom and gray of threatening skies, there must be a reason why this time of year causes me to think about my "bucket list". While it seems a strange and somewhat morbid fascination, or even addiction, I find a growing excitement when contemplating what might be struck from that list in the year ahead.

If you remember the Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman movie (The Bucket List), the 2 main characters recognized their mortality and realized that time was inevitably running out. What does one do when one faces that reality? Some would sigh and bemoan the fact that they cannot do everything they would like before they "kick the bucket". Others would simply ignore the reality of the clock winding down, effectively denying the inevitable, and continue to live life in the same fashion as it had been lived before. But, recognizing the value of the time we have to live, some of us make a "bucket list".

Whatever "kick the bucket" originally meant, and whatever one believes about the afterlife, there is certainly merit in those of us with Parkinson's disease asking the question, "what do I want to do now that I may not be able to do in the future?" In my experience, and I expect and that of others, there are a multitude of rather phenomenal benefits that occur from answering this question and then working on the resulting list.

The first benefit is that one's priorities are committed to writing.  In many cases the real important things in life are not written down. This is what triggers the imagination of the characters in the movie. The really important stuff of living is often subverted to the urgent or obligatory demands that confront us daily. Somehow it seems selfish to answer the question, "What is really important to me?"  But what could be more important than asking and answering that question?

Secondly, making and pursuing a bucket list gives one focus, a sense of priority, something to look forward to.  Rather than simply anticipating the inevitable deterioration of our physical and mental functioning, we can concentrate on living life to the fullest, as may to some extent be defined by our circumstances, but is often most limited by our choices. This exercise gives purpose beyond the daily regime we often fall into, rather than choose.

Thirdly, you can take it from me, and others who have pursued marking items off their own bucket lists, that the enjoyment and sense of achievement is thrilling. It leaves a legacy of stories to tell and encouragement for others to reach beyond their comfort zone into a land of hopes and dreams that can come true. I have found that my list has grown even as I have checked off items each year. And with it my desire to seize the day. Carpe diem! Some of my friends with Parkinson's have grasped this rallying cry, making it their solemn commitment in the fight against the corrosive effects of the disease. Every goal accomplished is a strike against the our opponent.

Fourthly, but not finally as there are too many results to discuss here, by listing the items our hearts desire we can begin to see how very much there is that we can do, instead of focusing on what we cannot do. It is in this way that we can defeat the enemy of hopelessness that so often hides in the shadows of this disease that seeks to take from us the life we had, and thought we would have.

Go around the world. Visit friends or relatives or the home you have not seen since you were a child. Write a book. Skydive or scuba dive. Go to Antarctica. Get a degree. Learn a new art, hobby, skill or language. Climb a mountain (not me!).  What are you really looking forward to this year?

Thankful for Everything?

Under most circumstances, the room would have been filled with a suffocating hopelessness and despair. Yet there was a serenity that I felt as I stood in the quiet ground-floor condominium suite with the father, his daughter, and his son-in-law, who was holding a young baby. Everyone was quiet except for my friend, Bob Dobson. He was praying. "Lord, although I do not understand it, and my pain and sense of loss is overwhelming, I know that I need to thank you for what has occurred. Help to assure me in the days ahead as we discover why it is we can be thankful."

It was at 5:30 PM on June 12, 2006 that a Ford Explorer driven by a seminary student was heading north along the Oregon Coast Highway #101 as the Dobson van was headed south. Bob noticed the Explorer drift onto the shoulder, suddenly overcorrect, veering into the van's path, striking head on at essentially full speed. There had been no time for Bob Dobson to react or even brake. The van was immediately set ablaze with its four generations of occupants desperately scrambled to undo seat belts and pull themselves, or be pulled, from the burning wreckage. In a fiery instant Pastor Bob Dobson's life changed forever and in every conceivable way. He lost his wife, his mother, his health, and almost his daughter, son-in-law and grandson. So how is it that a man who has lost so much could pray as he did?

How can you be thankful when life seems to turn on you? Loved ones are lost, cruelly torn from a family's future, others have relationships end leaving splintered hearts, a child is drawn into a life that destroys body and mind and leaves helpless parents weeping, or normal aging robs some of the best of their dignity and sanity. Some have heard a well-meaning neurologist pronounce a few syllables that shatter dreams that were almost within reach and bring recurring and ever-amplified nightmares in their stead.

This is where an "attitude of gratitude" runs headlong into crushing reality, leaving either a discarded platitude or refined fortitude. Life has a way of testing glib sayings as it chisels away at the foundations of what we say we believe.

For some, the diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease slowly seeps into the resistant psyche, as if uncertain as to whether its subject can bear the impact of its meaning. For others those words have an immediate and devastating sense of despair. For me the verdict delivered on January 19, 2006 continues to ripple through my life in ever widening circles, like a stone dropped in the middle of quiet lake.

Perhaps it is enough for some to learn how to accept the adversity and disability represented by PD. But for me, that feels too much like gritting my teeth and trying to smile. As difficult as it is sometimes, I have come to the conclusion that I must see this as more than just another challenge. Perhaps this disease is an opportunity for which I need to be thankful. This past Canadian Thanksgiving weekend it was a question I felt compelled to consider.

Certainly that is the message of Michael J. Fox in his book "Always Looking Up". Although I am left pondering the title and the source of his faith (looking up to what?), I do embrace his view that there is purpose in living with this disease. We can choose to see it all as having meaning, rather than assume it is just the cruel hand of fate.

If there is purpose in having PD then we can take a page (literally) from the faith of my friend, Bob Dobson. He would quote the Bible, 1 Thessalonians 4:7,"... give thanks in all circumstances...".