I make time for It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown almost every October.
I’ve watched this Halloween classic more times than I can count. I know the scenes, the jokes, and how Linus spends Halloween night in the pumpkin patch waiting for something that never arrives.
After I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in February 2000, I saw Linus’ naïve actions and unfounded faith as a cautionary tale about MS.
There he sat in the pumpkin patch, convinced the Great Pumpkin eventually would appear. Everyone else was out trick-or-treating while he waited for the one miraculous thing he believed would make Halloween complete.
In the blue blanket-carrying character’s actions, I saw people diagnosed with MS all but putting their lives on hold and pinning their hopes on the next treatment. The next breakthrough. The ever-elusive cure.
“Stop wasting your time,” I thought. “This all may come eventually, but use the time you have now to get out there and live.”
I still believe that.
But after 26 years of living with MS, I’ve realized it isn’t quite that simple.
Maybe I was too hard on Linus. And perhaps I was too hard on the people I saw in him.
Looking back on that first October after my diagnosis, I realize I still was figuring out what it meant to have this disease and what it might mean for the rest of my life.
There was a lot I didn’t know.
Would my MS progress? Would treatments improve? How much would this disease change the life I thought I was going to have?
Twenty-six years later, some of those questions have answers. Others don’t.
And I’m still waiting.
Living with a chronic illness involves a lot of waiting.
We wait for neurologist appointments, test results, and insurance approvals. We wait to see whether a treatment works and for our strength to return after a setback.
And yes, we wait and hope for researchers to find better treatments and, someday, a cure.
Waiting isn’t necessarily the problem. Putting your life on hold while you wait is.
That’s the lesson I understand better now.
I can hope for advances in MS research while appreciating how far treatment has come. When my body needs time to recover, I can recognize there still are things I can do today. I can be frustrated by what MS has taken from me while being grateful for everything it hasn’t.
I also can admit that sometimes I’m going to get a rock instead of candy.
Just like Charlie Brown.
Every Halloween, the other kids compare what they received while trick-or-treating.
“I got a chocolate bar.”
“I got a quarter.”
“I got five pieces of candy.”
And then there’s Charlie Brown.
“I got a rock.”
There are days when MS feels a lot like that.
We watch other people move through life, seemingly collecting candy, while MS drops another rock into our bags, leaving us with more tricks than treats.
A new symptom. Another limitation. An adjustment we didn’t ask to make.
I’m not going to pretend those rocks are candy. They aren’t.
But I’ve learned they don’t have to be the only things I carry.
My life since that first Halloween with MS has brought things I never could have imagined when I was newly diagnosed.
I met and married Jennifer. Together, we built a life and a community around telling our stories and helping other people affected by MS. I’ve had opportunities, friendships, experiences, and purpose I never could have predicted while wondering what this disease had in store for me.
None of those things makes MS a gift. But they remind me that MS doesn’t get to decide everything that goes into my bag.
So, yes, I’m still waiting for the equivalent of the Great Pumpkin.
Perhaps Linus and I have more in common than I once wanted to admit.
We both have hope.
The difference is that I don’t have to spend my whole life sitting in the pumpkin patch.
I can wait. I can hope.
And I can keep living while I’m doing both.
Good grief.
Maybe Linus had something to teach me after all.