Reason to try to smile

My father doesn’t smile very often these days. It takes an effort because Parkinson’s makes con­trol of your mus­cles, includ­ing the facial ones, dif­fi­cult, and the suf­ferer becomes with­drawn and unso­cial because of his inabil­ity to inter­act in the ways we nor­mally do.

Con­ver­sa­tion is also a strain because of the dif­fi­culty in con­trol­ling the vocal cords, and talk­ing to him is mainly just that — talk­ing to him. The engag­ing wit and tick­ing mind just stays in there some­where, masked by Parkin­sons’ stiffness.

Except last night when I said to him that I don’t care if he’s uncom­fort­able, because he’s got to be at the hos­pi­tal next month to wel­come his first pater­nal grandson:

His face con­torted into the biggest smile I’ve seen him smile in years, and he said in a voice qua­ver­ing either from Parkinson’s or from emo­tion, “Of course I will be there. I will be there wait­ing with you”.