Monastic Musings on Parkinson's

The meal was eaten in silence. That is, except for the reader. He was perched above us in a small balcony protruding from the wall about 8 feet above the diners. Thirty or so members of the Benedictine community sat silently on simple wooden chairs on the outside of the U-shaped table arrangement, eating and listening to an echoing essay about the Roman Catholic church in Africa. Supper was comprised of bread, salad and a rice dish, with applesauce for dessert. Not being a social gathering, it was over in about 25 minutes. The food was plain, but tasty, and certainly adequate, much like the room in which the meals were eaten. It was 25 feet high at its steeple peak, covered with wood paneling rising from colored concrete floors to windows through which beamed the unusually warm January sunrays. A vibrant, iconoclastic style mural of Christ and his disciples filled one end of the hall, evidencing a reverent and loving dedication of thousands of hours of painstaking attention to detail. I have always been honored and humbled to be eating with these men who have voluntarily surrendered many of what we would call modern life’s benefits. Father Placidus, Father Mark, Brother Luke and Father Abbot John welcome me despite the fact that I am not a Catholic. This is a community that lives St. Benedict's vow of hospitality.

This setting, Westminster Abbey in Mission, British Columbia, has become a place of refuge and peace for me for more than 25 years. I come here to a world that has no rush hour, or rush at all, to step off the treadmill for a day or 2, or more. The guest quarters provide the rudimentary comforts; a room with a bed, a small desk, chair and a lamp, and bathroom, but no more. It is here, in relative silence, beauty and solitude, that I come to think, read, write, plan and pray at least a couple times a year. I have never found a place that is better for these contemplative activities.

It took me a while, and still does each time I come here, to get used to living without the constant barrage of noise, distraction, people and obligations. I recognize that this may not be everyone's idea of a good time. But this is the place where I can unbundle the many applications that I have concurrently running on the hard drive of my life. It is a time of retreat. A time to refresh, reboot or defrag, if you will, for the onslaught of spam, viruses and phishing to which I will return.

Perhaps, most significantly for me, this brief repose gives opportunity to consider the important, instead of just the urgent, matters of living. Since being diagnosed with Parkinson's 4 years ago this month, I find I need and value these times more. Perhaps it is the fatigue or vulnerability caused by the disease. But whatever it is, these times alone at the Abbey provide a much-needed rest stop in the race I run.

I have found that, while the 2 activities may seem similar, there is a significant distinction between isolation and solitude. As people with Parkinson's it is often easier for us to isolate ourselves rather than face questioning looks and the seemingly inevitable embarrassment of social interaction. But solitude is not hiding. Rather, it is meant to prepare us for engagement with life as fully as it can be lived. But without time for contemplation, how can we determine what it means to live fully?

I wonder why we are so often afraid to be alone with ourselves in silence?

Parkinson's, Wine and Old Friends

Relationships with old friends are like wines; the good ones usually improve with age, becoming richer, deeper and more intoxicating, while the others of lesser quality lose their flavour. This was proven last night.

It actually started 30 years ago, in September of 1976, when some 179 mostly young students (me being one of them) met for the first time in classes or the "Interaction Area".  Someone lacked creativity, but that is what they called the lounge area in the bunker style building of the University of British Columbia Law School. Three years later, almost all of us were unleashed to "practice" law on an unsuspecting public. Can you imagine the fear of those first clients if the truth had been known? "Hi, my name is Gerald and I will be your lawyer today. I have a law degree but no experience so I will be practicing on you."

Of course, we learned about the law at law school. However, we never learned how to actually be lawyers until we began to "practice". In retrospect, it was like handing a scalpel to medical students, who had never performed an operation or even watched one (except on TV), and suggesting they go find someone to "practice" on. Young lawyers do not get supplied with cadavers for “practice”.

Fast-forward (and I mean fast) 30 years to a gathering of those same people, at least a reasonable sampling of them. The scene at the 30 Year Reunion of the Law School Class of 1979 was fascinating for numerous reasons. The usual differences in appearance were stereotypical. Some had aged well and others, well, they had aged.  Some put on weight and others looked like models.  Some were in Armani suits while others were in jeans.  There was the array of careers from personal life coach to an expert in “meteor law” (true!). There was a mining executive with a UBC librairy named after him and a significant number of judges.  And some of our class did not come for obvious reasons.

I was charged with giving a tribute to our classmate and friend, Hugh. As part of that 'in memoriam' I read my October 1, 2009 blog entry, "Round Multicoloured Bruises", which off-handedly mentioned my Parkinson's disease. I did not want to make a big deal of this disclosure, but I did not want to hide it either. I had tried to prepare myself for what I thought might be the responses. I knew that there would be no collective inhaled gasp, lawyers are far too controlled for that, but I was anticipating a variety of responses. Like uncorking a bottle of wine, I honestly did not know what to expect.

I was struck again by how awkward even old friends seemed to handle the news (only a few in the room knew of my diagnosis). Despite trying to be casual and take a "it's just a card I've been dealt" attitude with a chaser of "lots of people have it worse", few classmates mentioned it. Maybe they did not hear me, as apparently I was reading too quickly in my attempt to keep to my time allotment (something most lawyers find difficult, as was ably demonstrated by others later in the evening). Those that did comment seemed to have difficulty with words (not a common occurrence for members of the legal profession).

It seems to me that dealing with a person who has a disease or disability is difficult, even for my friends. There seems to be helplessness felt that does not sit comfortably with those more at home with corporate mergers, complex court cases or solving problems generally. PD just does not fit. And it cannot be hidden (at least for long) before an explanation needs to be given for the symptoms. So I had concluded that the risk had to be taken.

It may be groundless, and even a touch of paranoia, but I drove home wondering if I had just been labeled by most of my classmates.

Like the bottles of wine we auctioned for a law school scholarship fund, we all seem to want to know names and details so that we can define what, or who, is inside.  But it is time, which ages all things, that will provide proof of character and content.