Ryan Reynolds opened up People recounts his late father's terrifying battle with Parkinson's disease. Deadpool and Wolverine The star said that it “destabilized” their relationship with each other.
Reynolds was 22 when her “current” but “tough” ex-cop father, James, was diagnosed with a nervous system disorder that causes dopamine levels to drop through nerve damage in the brain. “He said the word 'Parkinson's' maybe three times that I know of, and not one of them was to me. There was a ton of denial, a ton of hiding,” Reynolds said of her father, who lived with the disease for nearly 20 years before his death in 2015 at age 74.
A decade after James was diagnosed, he began struggling with hallucinations and paranoid delusions, lesser-known Parkinson’s symptoms. “My relationship with him was really unstable because I didn’t really know what was going on,” Reynolds recalls. “At the time, I was just thinking, ‘My dad is losing his mind.’ He was spinning webs of conspiracies, like, ‘This is happening,’ and ‘These people might be chasing me,’ or ‘This person wants to get me.’ And these were very different things from the man I grew up with and knew.”
Reynolds admitted that when he was younger, “it was very easy for me to feed into the idea that my dad and I just couldn't agree on anything and that it was impossible to have a real relationship with him.” But now, as a father of four, Reynolds believes that “that's why I didn't want to meet him where he was back then.”
Reynolds continued: “Maybe I could have been with him towards the end, but I didn't. He and I drifted apart, and that's something I'll live with forever.”
Reynolds said that his father was “not able to express his emotions dynamically” because he was born “in the '40s.” As a result, “I don't even remember having a proper conversation with my father,” the actor explained.
But five months before James died, Reynolds sent him a heartfelt letter, which included “a list of every amazing thing he did — every time he showed up or did a catch with me outside after baseball practice. Every time he was just there.”
Reynolds concluded, “I am so grateful to have sent this letter. I know it meant the world to him. So I have this closure, but I was not there when he died and I wish I had been.”
But Reynolds finds hope in his relationship with his own children, whom he shares with Blake Lively. “For me, the healing comes more from my relationship with my own children, where I took some things from my dad that were of tremendous value,” he explained. “My dad had incredible integrity. He would not lie. [Now] Maybe I can fill in those little gaps that were hurting me. I can show up.”
You can find more information about Parkinson's at More to Parkinson's.