It wasn’t long after the Parkinson’s diagnosis last summer that I was outside one morning, watering the grass I was trying to regrow after replacing an underground downspout extension, when a neighbor stopped to chat. We’d waved to each other on previous occasions but she always looked preoccupied on her daily walks and I probably looked the same. She pointed in the direction of her street and said she was a retired professor, which would’ve been my guess — it’s a safe bet for many of our neighbors and, anyway, she looked like she had a closetful of PBS and NPR tote bags.
“Your flowers are lovely,” she said, gesturing toward peonies. “I can’t remember what they’re called.” She paused, possibly conflicted about whether to continue, and then made a decision. “I used to be a gardener,” she offered, her gaze fixed in my direction but her attention somewhere else. “I could identify any flower. Now I have Alzheimer’s.” It was, I assumed, a recent diagnosis: she was still fit and clean and ambulatory. She remembered her vocation and where she lived, and if she had a husband or adult child back home they trusted her to navigate the neighborhood by herself.
I knew what was in store for her, having watched it happen to my grandma and other relatives, and wasn’t sure what to say: “I’m sorry to hear that,” while true, felt sterile and insufficient. “If you ever want to talk, I’m here” was unlikely to have impressed her — what could someone in the prime of her life possibly understand about finding oneself at the mercy of a devastating neurodegenerative condition? I don’t remember what I said in response, but I know she’s been AWOL for months now.
“Why are you even here?”, an older woman asked me at the movement disorder clinic’s check-in counter earlier this year, after overhearing and misinterpreting my answer to a question about parking validation. I’m usually the youngest person in the rheumatology waiting room, too, even in my forties. At physical therapy, the younger patients typically have arms in slings or legs newly liberated from casts. I thought of all that and the peonies earlier, when I saw a social media post by John, an octogenarian friend from Crankenstein’s church.
We met in early 2015, when he tapped my shoulder as I read in a pew and asked “Are you [Crankenstein’s] new friend?” I nodded and he smiled warmly, introducing himself as another “choir widow” while rehearsal stopped and started behind us. He said he looked forward to getting to know me, which I thought might’ve been an empty pleasantry at the time. It wasn’t. In the years to come we often spent Christian holidays together at the home of mutual church friends, an elderly straight couple with a tradition of hosting gay congregants who were estranged from their families or had no local family. Crankenstein was a regular, as were John and his husband.
Sadly, he’s now a literal widower; his husband passed away a couple years ago. He’s currently on vacation, posting photos of his urban travels, and his hiking poles are visible in one — the first concession I’ve seen him make to his age. Mentally, he’s still sharp as a tack and endlessly curious about the world around him, and he’s more physically active than I am despite being twice my age. But those hiking sticks caught my eye and made me feel a little sad. Next time our paths cross I’ll be tempted to joke “John, we’re getting old.”