François Gravel - Colonel Parkinson in Charge: A Wry Reflection on My Incurable Illness

Copyright ditions Qubec Amrique, inc., 2019.

English translation copyright 2023 by Rochelle Shelley Pomerance

First published as vos ordres, colonel Parkinson! in 2019 by Les ditions Qubec Amrique Inc.

First published in English in 2023 by House of Anansi Press Inc.

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Colonel Parkinson in charge : a wry reflection on my incurable illness / Franois Gravel ; translated by Shelley Pomerance.

Other titles: vos ordres, colonel Parkinson! English

Names: Gravel, Franois, author. | Pomerance, Shelley, translator.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220424055 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220424136 |
ISBN 9781487010300 (softcover) | ISBN 9781487010317 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Gravel, Franois. | LCSH: Gravel, FranoisHealth. | LCSH: Parkinsons disease. | LCSH: Parkinsons diseasePatientsQubec (Province)Biography. | CSH: Authors, Canadian (French)Qubec (Province)20th centuryBiography. | LCGFT: Autobiographies.

Classification: LCC PS8563.R388 A713 2023 | DDC C843/.54dc23

Book design by Lucia Kim

Ebook developed by Nicole Lambe

Cover image: Brain image by jcomp on Freepik; Star image by Freepik

The typeface used for the chapter titles is Shake, which was created from the real handwriting of a person living with Parkinsons Disease. Learn more at writewithparkinsons.com.

House of Anansi Press respectfully acknowledges that the land on which we operate is the Traditional Territory of many Nations, including the Anishinabeg, the Wendat, and the Haudenosaunee. It is also the Treaty Lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the National Translation Program for Book Publishing, an initiative of the Action Plan for Official Languages 20182023: Investing in Our Future, for our translation activities.

Ive never been good at sports. Its a matter of coordination, I suppose, or balance, or body type. Its very likely that all of these reasons are valid, along with a few others Im not even aware of. In high school, when it came time to pick teams, I was always one of the last to be chosen. With good reason, Im sorry to say. If it had been up to me, I wouldnt have chosen myself.

I hated gym class, though that never prevented me from playing sports with friends on the street. Im the product of an era when all you had to do was stick your nose outside to find enough kids to form two teams for just about any sport. When I was with my friends, I could imagine that I was Maurice Richard, Jacques Plante, or Yogi Berra, who had a long career as a baseball catcher before becoming a famous philosopher. I loved this way of playing sports: we could mix up the teams when they were unbalanced, invent our own rules, and play for hours on end without a teacher cutting us down to size. Total bliss.

Inevitably, over time this group of friends disbanded, though I still see my old pal Bernard, with whom I never miss an opportunity to throw anything thats somewhat round and flies through the air. Sixty years later, childhood is not that far behind us.

A few years ago, Bernard and I were up at the cottage, tossing around a Frisbee, when suddenly I noticed something strange: I was unable to throw the Frisbee properly. Even when I concentrated, the Frisbee seemed to systematically land in the hedge or on a neighbours lawn.

I may not be a great athlete, but I do know how to throw a Frisbee in a straight line. You hold it firmly and let go at just the right time its not that complicated. Over the last half-century, Ive done it hundreds of times, so why couldnt I do it now? I gave it another spin, straight into the hedge. Maybe I was concentrating too hard or I was too tense. I tried to relax before throwing it again, but no luck: the Frisbee landed on the neighbours lawn. I got the feeling that Bernard was growing tired of jumping over the fence to rescue the disc, but I tried one last experiment and threw it with my left hand. I succeeded on the very first try, even though Im usually completely ham-fisted with my left hand.

Eventually, we grew tired of this frustrating back and forth and joined our wives, who were waiting to have a drink on the terrace. I told them what had just happened to me, deciding to make light of it: its not so serious; most likely its just a temporary problem; its part of the pact Ive made with old age, this new friend who, in return, has endowed me with wisdom, serenity, emotional intelligence, patience, experience, erudition, and so many other joys that those younger than me arent even aware of. I can imagine living the rest of my life without tossing any Frisbees at all, if thats the price to pay for all these advantages.

During my friends stay at the cottage, I made an effort to be an accommodating host, though at times I was a bit distracted: a seed had been sown in my brain, and a nasty plant had begun to sprout there.

* * *

Over the next two years, I felt myself aging at an accelerated rate. I tired easily and couldnt do without my midday nap. At times, Michle, my beloved, pointed out that I dragged my feet while walking and my back hunched over. My brother-in-law mentioned that my gait had changed and my right arm was bent, as if I had it in a sling. When I was aware of it, I managed, without too much effort, to persuade my arm to behave normally, but as soon as I got lost in thought which is, after all, the whole point of going for a walk I would bend forward unconsciously and my arm would fold up, like a football player guarding the ball while wending his way through enemy lines. I also ran more slowly, and for the last while had been letting Michle overtake me on our daily jog.

The act of writing also presented some interesting challenges. If my handwriting has always been atrocious, it now became absolutely illegible, even to me. It seemed my right hand no longer obeyed my brain: even if I told it to form large letters, it could produce only an increasingly tiny, spidery scrawl. If a word had more than three syllables, the last syllable would be twice as small as the first, as if the muscles of my hand refused to co-operate. If I lived in a world without computers or typewriters, I would have had to stop writing stories, which would be a lot more stressful for me than giving up my dream of one day becoming a champion at ultimate Frisbee.

The situation became embarrassing when I had to sign books at book fairs. I could manage only a horrible scribble, and I blamed myself: Children deserve something better, Franois. No one is asking you to turn yourself into a monk who copies dainty illuminations, but to write legibly is not all that difficult. Make an effort...

But even when I applied myself, all I could manage was a clumsy smudge. I tried to make excuses by laying the blame on computers these days, who still writes by hand? but I found myself less and less credible.