Ryan Reynolds is opening up to People magazine about his late father James Chester Reynolds’ battle with Parkinson’s disease.
The actor was 22 when his dad was first diagnosed, and James lived with the disease for close to 20 years. He passed away in 2015 at 74.
Ryan explained they had a complicated relationship, “I have to preface this with the fact that my father was a man who does not share his feelings. He was a boxer, a cop, a hard-ass. I can’t even recall ever really having a proper conversation with my father.”
Reynolds went on, “He was a present father, never missed a football game, but he just didn’t have the capacity to feel, or at least share, the full spectrum of human emotion a bit. And pride was just so ingrained in him that it dictated almost everything that he did.”
After the diagnosis, Reynolds recalled a “ton of denial, a ton of hiding.”
Making matters worse, James began suffering from hallucinations and delusions about 10 years later.
Ryan recalled thinking at the time, “My dad’s losing his mind,” explaining, “My father was really slipping down a rabbit hole where he was struggling to differentiate between reality and fiction. And subsequently, everyone else in his life was losing the bedrock faith and trust that they had on his point of view.”
The “Deadpool & Wolverine” star continued, “There would be conspiratorial webs that he would spin about ‘this is happening’ and that ‘these people might be after me’ or ‘this person is out to get me.’ And just stuff that was such a wild departure from the man that I grew up with and knew.”
This was particularly difficult for Ryan’s mom Tammy, who was James’ caretaker at the time.
Ryan said, “My mom, I think, lived a life of true isolation with my dad for many, many years. And when somebody is not necessarily speaking from their baseline or right mental state, they can make life really tough for the only person [there]. My mom was a backboard for my father during that time, but it really broke her. Caregiver fatigue is very real — it’s one of probably the most unreported side effects of diseases like this.”
Looking back at his father’s battle with Parkinson’s, Ryan says he’s “constantly putting pieces of the story together.”
He says at the time, “I wasn’t really accepting my own responsibility. It was very easy for me to dine off the idea that my father and I do not see eye to eye on anything and that an actual relationship with him is impossible. And as I’m older now, I look back at it, and I think of it more as that was my unwillingness at the time to meet him where he was. I could have maybe been there with him toward the end, and I wasn’t. He and I just drifted apart, and that’s something I’ll live with forever.”
The star did, however, send his father a letter about five months before he passed away.
“I’m very grateful I did,” Reynolds said. “The letter was basically a list of every amazing thing he ever did — every time he showed up or every time he had a catch with me outside after baseball practice. Every time he just was there. And if the man couldn’t express his emotions in a way that was dynamic, well, many people can’t. The guy was born in the ’40s. It’s okay. So I’m super grateful that I sent that letter. I know for a fact it meant the world to him. So I did get that closure, but I wasn’t with him when he passed away, and I do wish I was.”
Now, he’s finding healing through being a father himself. Ryan shares four children with wife Blake Lively: James, 9, Inez, 7, Betty, 4, and Olin. 1.
He shared, “The healing for me really comes more through my relationship with my own kids, while taking some of the things from my father that are of immense value. My dad had incredible integrity. He did not lie. [Now] I get to fill in those little gaps that maybe hurt me. I get to show up. When my kid is acting out or telling me I’m the worst — my dad would retreat into the power of silence, and that is not the way to acknowledge your kid. So to be able to get down on their level and just tell them that I believe them and that I’m here for them . . . I’m like, ‘Oh, okay. I just weirdly didn’t mean to, but I fixed something with my own dad.’”
Ryan recently opened up to “Extra’s” Mona Kosar Abdi about his kids at the “Deadpool & Wolverine” premiere in NYC. Watch!
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