Parkinson's, Broken Bones, and 60 Pushups

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My father-in-law Ed, who has advanced Parkinson’s, broke two of his ribs and scapula the other day and then had a puddle of fluid drained from his lungs. We met over FaceTime — he from a California hospital, my family and I from our Virginia kitchen.

He was haggard. We’d had to wait until he woke up from a long nap to call him, and still, he spoke of how tired he was. When we asked him how he was feeling, he said in his weakened, halting voice that he planned to be back to his regimen of 60 pushups very shortly.

If you didn’t know my father-in-law, you’d think he was living on his own special — and lively — planet. To be fair, he is, but that’s for another story, which I’m sure he’d like to tell you himself — he’s nodding his head.

So, I wasn’t sure how to respond to this 60-pushup goal. To expect 60 pushups out of a 90-year-old man well into the throes of Parkinson’s was pushing reality — pushing it over.

Yet, I had to ask myself, “Could it be possible?”

That’s because my father-in-law has always been a boundary pusher. He competed in the Masters World Freestyle Wrestling Championship at 60 and 61 years old. He won by pinning a Yugoslavian ex-Olympian to the mat. He lived an oversized life — growing a successful orthopedic practice, stepping foot in most countries, cultivating land, surviving a shark attack, writing, hunting, fishing, coaching, nurturing snakes — ick.

He always valued being physically capable, which he did to a remarkable degree until recently. The way he mentally weathered his Parkinson’s is one of the more spectacular shows he's starred in.

Was it not reasonable for me to wonder whether somehow, in some odd corner of possibility, with the help of his in-home care team, he was able to wobble out, if not sixty, then some small number of pushups?

And why would I care?

Those pushups — either in his mind or true — might have been his way of staving off thoughts of defeat. Or, they were the latest version of his constant message to the world. We don’t have the limits we think we do.

His message has been delivered countless times either as commentary on himself or on you. If he only ever asserted how much he could accomplish, you’d think he was self-enamored. But he didn’t. He told you how much you could accomplish at least as often.

He was insistent about this, which was in opposition to my own insistence. His insistence wouldn’t let go of the idea that he could accomplish anything. Mine wouldn’t let go of the idea that I couldn’t.

How varied the mind.

In terms of mind, he had a medical one, given his long career as a surgeon. Whenever he had health setbacks, he approached them with reason and practicality. The idea was always, “This is the timeframe. These are the limitations. This is when life will be back on track.”

Recently, I hosted a family member and her acquaintance as they came through our area on a long road trip. This acquaintance was, like my father-in-law, unlike most people I’d ever met, but she was on the opposite end of the spectrum.

She was a soft-spoken woman who at every turn told you, “Oh, no. I could never do that.” She said this about nearly everything. I could see something was keeping her so close to the ground, and this broke my heart.

Here were two ends of a belief system. I can. I can’t.

I realized this woman was to me, as I was to Ed. I knew this woman was capable of the simple things we spoke of — things most people do with their eyes closed. All these years, Ed has probably known the same thing about me.

Thinking back on our conversation the other day, I wonder why Ed felt he needed to tell us he’d be “back to it soon.” It could be he didn’t realize what he was saying, or he simply misspoke. But I suspect it might have been something else.

If my father-in-law knows he can’t do five pushups, let alone sixty, but he tells us he’ll be doing them soon, maybe what he’s really saying is don’t lose faith — because faith in this life project is everything.

Stories are integral to human beings because each one is a model of how to resolve a problem. For anyone who knows Ed, he’s a living story that will be told long after he’s gone.

Finally, I attempted 60 pushups.

I did 25. Not bad. What about you?