An elderly man living with Parkinson’s discovered a shivering senior dog at his gate — and somehow, their unsteady bodies became a source of calm for one another.

manageable.

Not smaller in a lonely way.

Smaller in a sacred way.

A chair.

A dog.

A porch.

A bowl of soup.

A walk to the mailbox.

A hand on fur until the tremor softened.

I began attending Parkinson’s support group again because Rebecca asked, and because Mabel’s arrival had made it harder to insist that isolation counted as independence. The first meeting continue reading …