We Can Still Fly

It had robbed his soul of a moving body. The neurons in his brain were tired with age. Parkinson’s disease is a mysterious and incurable force.

But through the darkness and unanswerable questions, sometimes miracles await. This moment came for a man who spent his youth feeling the breezes, letting cold streams wash over his feet, praising the beauty of the nature all around him.

People had given up. Perhaps he had given up—almost. His body was stiff, frozen, remembering what it was like to run and jump and swim and lounge. But one person remembered to give him a chance at joy, at least through memory and touch. This person knew that fly fishing was a source of delight and peace once upon a time. This person watched as the old man sat, motionless by a rushing river, wishing his body back to youth. And then, something amazing happened.

The old man, paralyzed by disease, sat with a fly-fishing rod perched in his hand almost as a keepsake. And the keepsake turned into a magic wand as the man began to move with the rhythm of his fishing days. He stood and, for the first time in years, fluidly went through the glorious motions—whip and swirl and sink, whip and swirl and sink—of one of his earlier passions. Pure bliss, stored in the soul of a man who seemed forever stuck, literally moved him into flight.

Let’s never forget to hold onto hope, to keep trying. We may find life’s most amazing surprises.