I had a boyfriend in the eighth grade and was new to a town where there were seldom new people. He was dear and sweet with large blue eyes and long curly eyelashes. His family was prominent, mine was not, his was old money, mine was no money. He was the first person who ever loved me and I was fourteen and incapable of loving at any level. Our romantic relationship terminated before the school year was out but we managed, after some adjusting, to remain very close friends. He was a wounded child, the victim of a toxic childhood riddled with abuse and neglect and I felt the need to watch over him. He ran away once to follow the PGA Tour and was gone for weeks. No one reported him missing.

I was fragile in my own right in those days, the product of a gypsy childhood. Always the new one, never quite fitting in, never quite adjusting to the new environment. He was my entrée I was his stability. We remained close all through high school. He went east for a substantial education, I stayed nearby for a mediocre one. We both married, he divorced, I did not, but we lost contact and that wonderful support we gave each other without condition. That was forty years ago.

Last summer we accidently reconnected in an odd culmination of events neither of us could have imagined much less engineered. With that reconnection began a correspondence that has continued almost daily until now. I told him early on of my Parkinson’s diagnosis and he told me of his recent battle with depression. We have been as honest as two people who have not seen each other in nearly half a century can be.

Now, with the approval of my husband of 36 years I have invited him for a visit. He still has siblings here but their lives are riddled with tragedy so I invited him and he accepted.

Now here’s my quandary, How do I tell him before he arrives of how Parkinson’s Disease has robbed me of my youth and vigor? But, you say, I must be on up there as I have been married 36 years, and there is some truth in that. I am not young anymore but I am not as old as my shuffling gait and gravely voice would indicate. How do I bring up how difficult walking is for me now and the fact that I won’t be cooking while he is here because I have no facility with a knife? How do I tell him I can no longer do anything with my hair on my own or apply make up with any success? What is the order of words that one uses to begin this conversation? Or, do I just stand mute and wait to see the shocked expression when he arrives, hitting him blind-sided and without any warning at all? While this is no longer a romantic attachment it was once and I still have a few shreds of vanity that stick to my personality regardless of my efforts to the contrary. I am so excited about seeing this dear friend again but I am also dreading those first few moments, until we recover ourselves and can move on.

Can someone tell me how to prepare him or myself for that first encounter after all these years? I’m not really as superficial as I sound, or perhaps I am. I just wish we could do this in the dark, like the correspondence has been. That way the memories wouldn’t have to be so disturbed.