I owe you one–or a dozen

By Teresa Swartz Roberts

Blog post 61 copyright 2025

Part I Our Meet Cute

It’s time for me to write something about Frank. My soulmate. My soul. My Honey. 

It’s been three months since Frank passed. I’m doing the work of grieving. I don’t know what it’s supposed to look like. I only know what it does look like. If I thought I was having an identity crisis before, it pales in comparison to the identity crisis I have now that my other half has gone. It seems I can hardly remember a time when we weren’t Frank and Teresa.  

On our 37^th anniversary, Frank said, “Thirty-seven years is a long time,” and then he paused and said, “but not long enough.” I’m grateful for the few more years that we lived together. Even as close as he was to dying, Frank was able to retain a part of himself so that he could love me. And I loved him. More than I can ever express. He knew who I was. He knew who I am. He saw me. He also saw me becoming something else because of my illness. And still he managed to love me. 

I was surprised when I reread the obituary that I wrote for Frank that I had left out the theater. I think it was just too personal to put in the public document. But it’s time. The first time I ever saw Frank was in the Studio Theater at Concord College in West Virginia. I saw him on stage in a rehearsal for the play JB after missing a week of school for my grandmother’s funeral. I asked my friend Allison, “Who’s that?” Her answer was “That’s Frank; he’s older.” Frank had already done a lot of living in the Marine Corps before we met. He was engaged to a woman who was living in Oklahoma.  

I liked the way that he acted. I mean on stage. I didn’t know much about him in person. He had a stage presence that drew me into the performance. When it was time to cast the one-act play for my senior project, I asked him to try out. I cast him as Her Husband. I was right about his acting. Frank was honored as the best actor in a one act. Not for my play, but for another one, which goes to show just how talented he was. Through the next few weeks of rehearsals, we got to know each other as friends. As our friendship grew, he became clearly perfect for the role of My Husband, My Honey. 

Later we had a theater kid. And we were then a theater family. As much as theater connected us, we had separate lives as well. But we always supported each other.  

Part II A Special Delivery

Frank and I were both writers. Our styles and our approaches were completely different. I knew that he was much more likely to write something important than I was, even though I made my living as a writer several times during our marriage. Frank had a popular local column, “An Eye to the Future.” And I was lucky enough to teach writing and share my passion for a well- constructed sentence in the classroom,  newsroom,  and writing center. 

 Frank always thought I could do anything. As a matter of fact, he volunteered me for things I really wasn’t qualified for. It always seemed that he knew me better than I knew myself, had more confidence in me than I had in myself. 

A month before he died, Frank told me that he was worried about a gift he had ordered for me, about its not having arrived. After he was gone, during sleepless nights, I tracked that package through the UK and US postal systems. I contacted the manufacturer in Scotland.  

The gift began to represent what I had lost. Not just Frank, but time with him,  time that I tried to save in a bottle just like the song that was sung at our wedding. The gift became a symbol of his love and the sacrifices that it entailed. 

Frank had gotten the idea for the gift because he wasn’t sleeping. He started falling asleep to a TV show called “How it’s made.” You can watch factory footage or artisans working to make everything from basketball hoops to baby beds. He liked what he saw when he watched Heathergems, a process that takes the heather plant from the hillsides in Scotland and compresses them to make jewelry and other fine items. It reminded me of my directing Brigadoon as a second-year drama teacher. “The Heather on the Hill” still runs through my mind from time to time. Frank didn’t buy me a piece of jewelry. He bought me a pen. He wanted to show me that he valued my role as a writer. Even though I have difficulty holding a pen now and my handwriting is nearly illegible, the pen reminds me that I am still a writer. I just have to make adjustments. 

Maybe writer’s block is a choice. I can make a different choice.  Adjustments. On our last movie date to watch Moana 2 on Disney Plus, I was struck by the message spoken by the ghost of the grandmother. She said we never stop choosing who we are. I love who Frank chose to be. I love that he worked through the pain to have the best quality of life that he could wring out of his existence. I love the way he still makes me feel by sending me a random gift just to remind me that he loves me. And that I can still think of myself as a writer.  

One day a mailer arrived stamped “US Customs.” It was empty and torn. I contacted the company again because I knew that Frank wanted me to have the pen. It arrived after he had been gone for two months, having provided me with something to worry about as I worked through paperwork and grief. Frank knew me better than anybody. He was the perfect Her Husband onstage. He was the best My Husband in real life. He was My Honey. 

Part III Making Good Choices

I never thought that my inspiration to overcome writer’s block would come from a Disney movie. But it did. In Moana 2 the character of Moana’s grandmother, who happens to be dead, tells her, “I cannot see where your story leads. But,” I have to look this up to make sure I get it right, “We never stop choosing who we are.” 

That’s what Parkinson’s is still teaching me. 

I was getting a little tired of the lessons Parkinson’s has been teaching me: patience, peace, awareness of my body and my surroundings, gratitude for my family and the love around me, how to live in the moment. This is the pretty list. Parkinson’s has also taught me anger, anxiety, and depression. I’ve learned that my soul has the capacity to feel deep despair. When you roll them all together, the real overriding lesson is that we never stop choosing who we are. 

Parkinson’s is a disease of priorities. I have so little time when I’m still myself that I must choose how I spend those minutes very carefully and wisely. 

Many of my blog posts have talked about the done list. A done list is the opposite of  a to-do list. Instead of making up a list that you can fail, you look at what you’ve done that day. It might include sending a text to your sister-in-law who’s been in the hospital. That text may take you all morning, all of your on time. Maybe you gave up something important. Scrubbing the toilet. But it was worth it. 

I suggest that you make a done list before going to bed tonight. Just mentally run through how you spent your time. Is there anything of value on the list? It doesn’t have to be productive. It doesn’t have to be anything competitive. Watching the birds outside your window. Or calling your dad and asking him how the weather is. Watching a Disney movie with your spouse. Reading this blog post.  It can be being present. Thinking about Today. And being grateful for it. 

Everything that I can do for Parkinson’s disease I am already doing. The only thing left in my control is how I react to having the disease and having it get worse. I don’t think Parkinson’s is teaching me anything now except how to have Parkinson’s. Maybe that’s my role now, to show one way to live with Parkinson’s. Maybe that’s enough. At least it’s enough for the done list. And I still get to choose who I am.