Earlier this year, my husband and I boarded a flight home from Barcelona to Denver, with a stop in Munich. This is a route we have done easily in the past after visiting our son, who lives in Spain. I plan carefully and allow extra time between flights to make the trip as easy as possible for my husband, who has Parkinson’s.
But on this rainy day, the plane left Barcelona 45 minutes late, and we found ourselves in a holding pattern, making wide banking circles of the Munich airport. We soared over beautiful rectangular farm fields of yellow and green, waiting for our pilot to make the final descent. When the pilot announced the airport had been closed due to a drone sighting near one of the runways, I looked at my watch and felt my pulse accelerate.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, unfortunately, we must now fly to Stuttgart for refueling and wait for news as regards our onward journey,” said the pilot.
My husband became visibly agitated; his symptoms of Parkinson’s always ratchet up under stress. I reached for his hand and tried to put an optimistic face on our changing situation.
“Listen, we’ll be okay, we don’t have to get home today. It’s okay. We’ll work it out,” I said, hoping he would relax. “I’ve never been to Stuttgart,” I said with a smile. He talked about how he’d been there before, decades earlier. Talking about it as if we were tourists helped normalize the uncertainty of the changing landscape.
Less than two hours later, we were flying back to Munich, but we were too late to make our connection or try for another flight home. Inside the Munich terminal, we saw hundreds of passengers queued in the Lufthansa service center line. My sense of optimism shifted quickly. My husband, who has lived with Parkinson’s now for 25 years, could not manage standing in that line. No public seating areas existed nearby. An experienced traveler, I had already been on the phone with our connecting airlines and was told they couldn’t help; we had to let Lufthansa manage our rebooking, find and reroute our luggage, and provide us with a hotel.
I stepped to the side of the queue to ask for help, minimally, I hoped to learn if someone with a disability could sit down.
A young employee who was answering questions from other passengers noted my distress and allowed me to explain our situation. I let him know my husband has Parkinson’s Disease. At first, he indicated that we had to stand in line, but then he pivoted and called a manager over. This was our first moment of grace. The manager listened to me, glanced at my husband, and invited us to sit inside the cordoned-off area. He took our boarding passes and passports, offered us water, and asked us to be patient while explaining he would help us.
Instantly, the manager joined our team. His kindness and compassion in a sea of chaos put us at rest.
Diagnosis is a detour
The experience reminded me of our journey through the early years after diagnosis of Parkinson’s—a chronic, incurable, debilitating, and progressive disease. That diagnosis rerouted and drastically changed the path we had carved for ourselves 25 years ago. Like landing in Stuttgart, we weren’t where we had intended to be, and didn’t know then where we were headed. Decades ago, the only tool we had was our communal optimism and commitment. Given no choice, we harnessed hope, which paved the way for us to find help when needed.
As we waited, it reminded me of the multitudes of uncertainties and challenges I’d experienced as a care partner. I thought about the moments when kindness from strangers had reshaped my perspective and helped me find a way through. This trained capacity to find calm in my internal chaos allowed me to turn frustration into acceptance and gratitude. My experience as a former elite endurance athlete also helps because I know how to lean into taking a breath, or two, to reduce stress. At times, we have to give in to situations beyond our control, but we don’t give up.
Asking for help is a superpower
The manager’s compassion would not have been possible had I not asked for help. Asking for assistance isn’t a sign of weakness—it’s an act of trust and provides an opportunity for kindness. The unexpected support we received was a gift and a reminder that when we ask, we may find the grace to reach our destination and to keep going.
