Life Renewed

January 2006A pause as I emerge from the holiday season. It has been a strange—and genuinely holy—season for me this year.My son, Peter, is very ill. I spent much of the month of December in Milwaukee where he was in the hospital undergoing tests. Three years ago, he was diagnosed as having young-onset Parkinson’s, but his symptoms never quite fit Parkinson’s, and his condition worsened much too rapidly. Finally, he was hospitalized to seek an answer, and after two weeks of inconclusive tests, the doctors found one.He has a disease called Diffuse Lewy Body Disease or LBD, a disease in which a protein invades the brain causing symptoms of Parkinson’s that don’t respond well to medication, dementia and visual hallucinations. It is a disease that ordinarily affects only the elderly. My son is forty-one years old.Peter’s condition grew so much more severe during this time in the hospital that, at the end of his stay, it was clear he could not return home. Instead, his wife had to place him in a nursing home as close to their home in Michigan as they could find a bed. And that is where he will stay, that is where his wife and three little boys visit him every weekend, that is where he will, eventually, die.While Peter was in the hospital—in fact, during the time he was undergoing the test that would finally name his illness—his sister, Beth-Alison, was having a baby, a fine, healthy boy named Chester. Curiously, my son-in-law chose the name Chester not knowing it had been my dad’s name.And more curiously still, life, just as it seems to be drawing to a close, renews itself.So I come into this new year, filled with sadness and touched, every single day, by joy.When the sadness grows too heavy to bear, I invite myself to my daughter’s home. I play a game of checkers with a nine-year-old grandson who can usually beat me. I listen to a granddaughter read. I gather lots of hugs. And I hold Chester. I look into this new little face that looks back at me so solemnly, and I am filled with gratitude.In the midst of deepest loss, life itself is incredibly sweet.