Turning 80 Isn’t As Easy As Turning 60

By Cheryl Ryan

My Mom turned eighty a few weeks ago, and my sister and I flew to Arizona to celebrate her. While there, we took her to an elegant dinner at L’Auberge de Sedona, a restaurant beside Sedona’s gorgeous desert river. Then, we stopped by her favorite dance club, the 10/12 Lounge, for a quick listen and spin on the dance floor. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I was on a dance floor, but she goes weekly.

My Mom has always loved to go dancing. But she said she couldn’t feel the music she always felt. Not for the last couple of years anyway. Between Covid, Cancer, Chemo and the onset of Parkinson’s, her recovery has been rough.

We didn’t see much of her during Covid, so we were surprised when she arrived for my daughter’s wedding. Her walking was unstable, her facial expressions looked different and she seemed far from our fiercely independent Mom.

She’d been told before the shutdown that they needed additional screening for anomalies on her breast. She didn’t worry much since she’d routinely been called back after a scan, but they never found anything. But this time she did have Cancer and it went untreated for longer than it should have. By the time we got confirmation, she needed to act. They prescribed a rigorous protocol; surgery followed by chemo then radiation. It was the same treatment my 38-year-old neighbor and mother of three was undergoing. After her surgery, she stayed with me during her 5 months of treatment. It was no joke and took a toll on her. 

What we didn’t know was that along with the cancer treatment she was harboring the beginnings of Parkinson’s. Later, I found a study that indicated a potential acceleration of Parkinson’s due to chemotherapy treatment. We’ll never know if that was the reason, but her Parkinson’s symptoms were becoming more pronounced as she tried to recover from Cancer treatment. 

She was exhausted and her bones ached. Old injuries from a fall that left her with a broken back many years earlier were exacerbated. It was an extraordinarily difficult time. She was exhausted and her attempts at regaining her life were overwhelming most days. But she never gave up. She worked with heroic (they, honestly, worked so hard to help her) trainers that came to her home twice a week.

This was a difficult time for all of us as we tried to navigate these monumental changes from her previous life. But through it all, she worked tirelessly to regain her previous health. As she engaged in daily workouts, she began to restore her muscle strength. Even through emotional turmoil and physical pains, one thing that always shined through was my mom’s relentless optimism, even when there shouldn’t have been. 

She began each day believing that the day ahead would be better than the last. Many of her days were not easy, but she never gave up. Yet, her resilience and desire to find joy brought her to a dance club and out on a dance floor for her 80th birthday. 

We went to celebrate Mom’s birthday, but I left with the gift of my Mom’s resilience and a much-needed reminder about the power of positive thinking.

Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you.