Pepperell Small: Valedictorian Has Highest & Lowest G.P.A.

    If Norman Rockwell were alive today, Pepperell, Massachusetts would be the place he'd hang his hat at the end of a long day of painting. Not being from, or raised in New England, it has taken me a fair while to understand what it means to be from New England. In truth, I still don't get it, and probably never will. People from New England are an add breed.  These days, I have come to think of Pepperell as a person. The Town can be mean, angry and depressed in the winter; always optimistic and upbeat in the spring; pensive and reflective in the fall; and fun, supportive, and carefree during summer months. But it's the people who really give Pepperell its meat and bones, its complexion.

   I am not unlike 99% of others with Parkinson's disease. I live a mixture of all 5 stages of Elisabeth Kübler- Ross in a single week. My companion, my caregiver, is not a person but a town, Pepperell. Here's what I mean.

    For the past 2 years I have lived a life closer to that of a Cistern monk than a well educated, articulate, and funny 62 year old white male. When a person can no longer bullshit others with humor and charm, then-surprise, surprise-you're left alone with a complete and total stranger for a roommate. Somewhere in my late 50s, I became acutely aware of just how unprepared and outright terrible a father I was becoming. Now, the Cisterns are a contemplative, monastic order who live in silence and communal isolation.  Well, the dear Lord has not hurt his knuckles knocking on my door. Or so I thought. 
 

   For the past couple of years, I've spent without cable, no TV, not even rabbit ears. That last bit is an odd mention, I agree, but when first diagnosed with PD, I treated myself to six thousand cable channels. Every day I would wait for the next symptom to appear, and decided that since I could no longer go out to the world, I would bring the world to me. And each day, after too much news, or too many movies, like a Roman aristocrat at the bathhouse, I wanted to vomit and start all over again. Uncountable hours I willingly turned over to Bill O'Riley; I became part of the drama with the Teutle family on “American Chopper,” dissected what was wrong with Kate and Jon and all those kids; “Dirty Jobs,” and “Shark Week” dialogue rolled off my tongue, rote-like. Sad, very sad, that I knew more about designing a Harley than I did what music and books caught my daughter's attention. While becoming a movie, writing, and TV expert, I was just waiting, and waiting more, for that next symptom to appear. All the while, my daughter was growing up without me.

    I knew one person, and not all that well, in the town of Pepperell, MA, (pop. 12,000). Then as Fate would have it, Life intervenes when you least expect it. I was in the shower one day, just a singing-a-way and having a great ole time. Turning off the water I squeegeed the excess water from me. Holding the make-shift rail I went to lift my right leg over the lip of the bathtub. Like a bad Elvis impersonation, my right leg began to shimmer and shake just you'd imagine the King's might have done on the Ed Sullivan show. “Well, that's odd, “ I recall thinking to myself. Never one to be to easily fooled, and noticing that I had another leg with which to try, I turned and attempted to lift my other one over the 2” high lip. Different leg but the same result. So here was my dilemma.

   I recalled reading an article about a man from Mexico who had been confined to his bed and bedroom for years. In the end, and 500 lbs later, he needed medical attention that could no longer be provided to him in his home. The man needed to get to a hospital. After backing up a flatbed truck, the fire department, with the assistance of some heavy equipment, cut a giant hole in the side of his bedroom. Extricating the poor man, there was a picture of him going down the interstate covered by a tarp and on his way to the hospital.

    Meanwhile back in my shower. Once again I tried the right leg again with no success. Then the left one again. Then the right, left, right-cha-cha-cha! No matter how hard I tried to get that man and the flatbed truck out of my mind, all I could see is the headline of the local newspaper: “Local Man, Shakin' All Over, Lifted to Safety.” Finally, in an act of desperation it occurred to me that there was a way out of this potentially embarrassing situation. Kneeling, I pulled myself, python-like, over the lip of the bathtub and onto the safety of the floor. I remained there, on my butt, for what seemed like the longest time. Then , mustering the courage, I stood. First one tentative step and, hold it. Then the next foot and, once again, hold it. Steady as she goes there, Sean. Confidence regained, I practically ran out of the bathroom and dove onto the safety of my couch. Shades of the fire department using a hook & ladder to pull me through my window were quickly erased. True story.

    For days afterward, people of this Town, without ever knowing specifically what, knew something was acutely wrong with me.Through a series of phone calls and knocks at my front door, the "face" of Pepperell was checking in with me to be sure I was OK. First, there was the sweetest person in the world, Tracy, owner of the Pepperell Family Pharmacy. Tracy looks and acts exactly like you'd expect a Norman Rockwell grandmother to look and act. When I first moved to Pepperell, on her own, she helped me with my Parkinson medications until my insurance coverage was straightened out. Tracy is a modern day, small-town saint, and has followed in the footsteps of her mentor, John M., Sr. Between the two of them over the last 30 years, they and their pharmacies have anonymously helped more people, and wanted less credit, than I have ever been exposed, ever. Small saints, indeed, in an ever more frightening and violent world.

Al S., was the manager of my apartment building, but also has his business office located here. Al pointed out where to find this and that around here, but, in the following months, became my small-town guide. Now the thing that was anathema to me before, but I have grown to respect now, is that Al, in essence, has been doing the same job, with the same people for the last 25 to thirty years. One foot in front of the other, day in and day out, through humid summers and record-breaking winters. Quietly raising a family with all the challenges and victories that go along with that endeavor. Here is my point: At 68, when most people are retired, Al and his partner (in his 70s), still put in a day's work. He would not-and could not-have it another way. It isn't the job that defines Al, but rather the routine that gives him, to this day, structure great meaning to his days. Amazing. Their number, it seems, is legion in Pepperell.

    Al, like most people in Pepperell, is deeply spiritual, but would never flaunt religion in your face. And they all share a common denominator, namely, these are people who have found a way to love what they do. They don't work for a living, but receive life out of working. People like Al, Tracy, Deb at the Lawrence Library, or Susan at the Senior Center, exist everywhere in this world. But they never really 'appear' in sprawling, metropolitan, hip, social, ladder-climbing developments of 2015. Here in Peperell people like them bubble to the surface, help, listen, vent, or advise, and then retreat once again to the anonymity Pepperell affords them, to put one foot in front of the other again.

    Pepperell and its inhabitants have absorbed my Parkinson's and me in a way like no other place I've lived. I can walk to nearly everything: grocery shopping, doctor appointments, pharmacy, and the Catholic church, dry cleaner, restaurant. Ah, but there is no movie theater-maybe someday. Last Sunday I was speaking to a friend, a relative by marriage, Cathy Heywood, who still lives in the town I was born and raised, San Benardino, California .“A guy was shot at the gas station at 40^th and Mountain Ave. That's too close,” she aptly pointed out. There is no crime, to speak of, in Pepperell, not compared to SoCal, at least.

    Finally, I attend Mass almost every morning. The Irish have a saying, “Sin at night and pray the rosary in the morning”. You get the idea. It isn't that I go and pray for anything, really. It is simply that the inside of the church is a familiar place to me, and a great space to begin my day. It helps me remember what is and what isn't important in this life. That's all. I know what a privilege it is to start my day like that. By noon most days I have forgotten what it is that I was remembering that morning. But, it helps me to try and make “something” out of my Parkinson's disease. And the Catholic church is peppered with more small town saints, but they'd never let on. That is simply the way they want it.

   No, Pepperell would never register on the Southern California "cool" meter. The people you see on daytime TV, almost always wrinkle-free, tanned, 30-40-somethings who believe that "character" is a small acting role for someone with a face made for radio. No, if there is such a thing as "spiritual evolution," then the petri dish for that slow growth toward God is right here, right now, in Pepperell. Thank God for that fact.