Surrounded by Love

I was sitting in the car behind the wheel watching my husband as he came out of the Circle K – slightly bent over, shuffling a bit, the coke in his hand trembling. A big, tough-looking man wearing a tank top and baseball cap took hold of the door my shorter-than-he-ever-used-to-be husband was trying to push through and stood aside, gesturing with a nod that my husband should go on through, he’d hold the door.
One night, about a year after my husband was diagnosed, just as his symptoms were becoming noticeable to others, I was sitting on the edge of our bed in our bedroom when he came in from going out to pick up a paper. He sat on the bed next to me. What? The hardest thing about this disease is the pity, he said. What pity? The pity people give me. I see it in their eyes. What happened? Somebody asked if they could help me with the door when I was coming out. They had that look in their eyes. What look? Pity, he said.
I told my husband then that I thought he was misunderstanding people. I told him that having always been a strong, healthy, capable man; he’d never been in a position in which people could see that he needed help. I told him that perhaps he was misreading the look in their eyes. I told him that perhaps he was confusing pity with love.
The other day at the Circle K, my husband saw that I had noticed what happened with the big tough-looking stranger who was holding the door for him. He saw that I had seen him look the stranger full in the face. He saw that I had seen him tell the stranger thank you. When my husband got to the passenger side of the car I reached over and opened the door for him from the inside. He sat himself down in the tortuously slow way that Parkinsons forces on him and put the Coke in the holder. I’m surrounded by love, he said.
After he and I had that conversation on the edge of the bed those few years ago about seeing people as offering love instead of seeing them as offering pity, my husband changed. No more pity for him. It has always been my belief that if you offer people something tender and real, they will respond in kind – from their best selves. I have seen waiters help my husband on with his jacket, store clerks carry a single grocery bag out to the car, massage therapists offer to button his shirts – over and over, I have seen people reach out to him and over and over, I have seen him now let them do it.
Through it all though, what has been the most moving aspect of the dynamic for me is that I have seen my husband allow others into his life in ways that help him and quite possibly helps them as well. I have seen Parkinson’s change my husband and more or less change the very world he lives in. He’s right. Everywhere he goes, he’s surrounded by love.