ALIVE with PURPOSE

Well here I am at the beginning of my new year. Yes, that's right, for the last four years I have considered New Years Eve as when I came home from the Unity Walk in NYC. I really don't know where to begin. I am really glad I went early, for I would have never crammed all of what I did into two days. Thursday I left home about three in the morning and headed for St.Louis International and American Airlines who treated me like royalty as they made sure I made it to New York's Manhattan Hilton in style. I got settled in and was off to the Parkinson Disease Foundation's Manhattan Office to see the PDF Quilt Project Panels for the first time. We went through them one by one, almost like a very slow moving slide show but we were able to touch and feel each send it's message of hope and promise. Each a different color and different style, just as we become so different in our fight to conquer or at least survive the battle with this disease. Each panel telling it's own story in it's own way from it's own source..Some were family trees with members who had passed or were still living with Parkinson's Disease. Some were just a beautiful picture of a place they go to when retreat is needed. Some showed pain in it's starkest form and then moved on to show the conquering of that pain to a sun filled sky. A quilt never means the same thing to two people, but it usually involves a touch and if there is a national symbol for Parkinson's it is the HUG.....to be able to Touch and Hug is our way of communicating our thanks.....Thanks for what? Thanks for taking the time to stop and listen to someone who has went silent. Thanks for opening a door for someone who cannot. Thanks for being a friend to someone who has none. Thanks for letting us finish our lives ALIVE with PURPOSE. love Pokie