The beginning of the Army of Change.

Tuesday September 8th. 2009

Words. Let’s see there is, motivation, purpose, drive, dreams, goals, determination, and a thousand other words. They all move us.

When a man knows what he wants, the world has a way of stepping aside for him. If he has bled enough for his cause, it just may let him have it. While I have personally never lacked for any of the words above, what I want is something else. I want something more. I want something animalistic and primitive.

In the 1990's Alzheimer’s Disease had killed my grandmother, and I did nothing.
Now Alzheimer’s has it’s grip on my mother, but I know better.

I've since learned that I can’t afford to make the same mistake twice. As luck might have it, now Alzheimer's Disease may be biting at my heels as well.

As for Parkinson’s Disease, there was an iron man who is my father-in-law. Mind you, he's still made of iron, but Parkinson’s Disease seems to delight in making him rust.

Of my relatives, some are the forgotten and some are the still. For this, I want revenge. For this, I promise to build and army of people big enough to force Alzheimer’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease into extinction.

August 8th. 2006
Mont Blanc Tacul, on the French & Italian Border (13,937ft.)

Today is the beginning of the end. As I stand here alone on the summit of Mont Blanc Tacul listening to the wind hum past me I look East into the darkness draped over Europe. With each step the snow creeks and squeals like the sound of a steel hull flexing under a heavy sea. What a horribly lonely sound it has. It sounds hollow, or maybe that’s just the way I feel right now.

Like the years leading up to this, none of this has been easy. I’ve been moving for hours, and finally I've reached the top. I stop and fall onto my knees to plant my mountain axe in the snow before me. The leash, I lay over it like a thin red cloak, then take hold of the axe with both hands as if I was kneeling at a pew. I put my head down and stopped.

I just knelt there listening to myself breath. The sound was roaring as it reverberated inside the high collars of my black hood. The smell and taste from my mouth was rancid, and I could begin to feel the saliva was coagulating into strings, which were doing their best to sew my lips shut like a dead man. I could tell I was starting to dehydrate, and of course the sun was only just about to rise.

I knew it was coming.

It would be "the end" and "the beginning" all at once, and then there it was like a fire starting to burn on the edge of the earth. The light began to spill over the horizon and it was rolling like a tsunami across an ocean of clouds. In a matter of moments it had over taken country after country until I was hit. Elysium.

It was destiny. I know this day has been a thousand years in the making. It is now as it was in the time of my ancestors and I honestly believe I could feel them course through me on that mountain top. I stood up, pulled my axe out of the snow, leashed it to my wrist and swung it in the air. This is my war.

I thought to myself Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s while you may have come to take us, you might try, but you will loose. I am more than a Simone. In my blood there is the strength of ancient Chadwick’s, and a Chadwick cannot be beaten.

This story can end only two ways.

I win and 30 million people around the world are liberated from the devastation Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s have waiting for them. Or you win. You may steal my mind, and my last breath, but I'll go down fighting. Regardless, I’m never giving up.

For the sake of the children I'll someday have, I won’t count on losing. Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease...your day has come to be conquered.

Vincent Roland Simone