A year ago, Ernst Daniël Smid could barely speak, let alone sing, because of Parkinson’s disease. An operation gave the opera singer his life back, something he is celebrating with a double performance on May 29 in Afas Live. “My children finally saw their father smile again.”
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Halfway through the conversation in his brother’s restaurant in Winterswijk, Ernst Daniël Smid (69) thoughtfully looks out the window at the ditch where a handful of ducks are celebrating the budding spring. “It’s devastating that the speed of thinking I used to have is gone. It makes conversation difficult. And I still have so much to say.”
It is one of his few gloomy musings this afternoon, because the celebrated opera and musical singer may have been affected by Parkinson’s; above all he is positive. Since he underwent an operation nine months ago where electrodes were placed in his head, things are much better on all fronts. “I feel reborn, like I’ve had a fantastic second chance. Behind me is misery, before me is hope.”
Electrodes give impulses
In short: the electrodes that give impulses to his brain are controlled by a neurostimulator, a subcutaneous device under the collarbone. “For example, if I start to vibrate too much on the right, then I can add a tenth with a remote control, which has an immediate effect. There are limits to this: I am now at 2.0, the device goes up to 7. You can compare it with a volume knob for someone with progressive hearing loss.”
The operation was in July 2022, before that time it was bad for Smid, who was diagnosed with the disease in 2017. “I felt completely weakened and hardly recognized myself anymore. I couldn’t get dressed anymore, couldn’t tie my shoelaces, couldn’t use my phone and could barely talk or walk. I was a greenhouse plant. It made me very solitary, people tried avoid as much as possible.”
-Photo: Vincent Jannink
Depressive thoughts
It was a period when the disease had pushed him back so far that he started to have depressive thoughts. “I started to feel like I didn’t matter anymore. I started to wonder what it would matter if I were dead. Yes, my children would be sad, but what good was it for me to live? go to inquire at the association for a voluntary end of life. I have not arranged anything yet, but I am therefore prepared. In those days it was allowed to be over for me every day, while now I cannot live long enough. “
The operation in the hospital figuratively made the difference between life and death. “I can talk, sing, write, type, walk and drive a car again. My children finally saw their father smile again. Before the operation they had seen a worried man for two or three years who deteriorated very quickly. Immediately after the operation, still in the recovery room, I called my family. My kids were on the phone crying. ‘Dad, you’re back. You’re happy again. You’re back to voice.'”
However good it may be, the intervention was not curative. “That disease remains basic and will eventually destroy me. Some people can live with this for ten years, some twenty and others five. I’ve been told that this surgery puts a patient back six or seven years in the process, in my case is that the time when the diagnosis was made. I do indeed recognize my current complaints from those early days. It is a humiliating disease that makes you incredibly insecure. You become afraid of falling, you slowly become disabled. You no longer count completely .”
The fact that his voice is working again, partly thanks to training and daily practice sessions, is a blessing for Smid. “My voice has been my identity all my life. Singing opera is no longer possible, but evergreens, musicals and Dutch are. That’s how I started thinking about performing again.” The comparison with Rob de Nijs, who suffers from the same illness and gave a farewell concert in Ziggo Dome last year, is only partly valid. “I was there and thought it was very beautiful. Especially when he sang Not for the last time in the encore. Beautiful. Only I don’t see Afas Live as a farewell, but rather as an encore. We call it Encore, which is something like bis bis bis : more more more. If possible, I would very much like to go into the theater.”
Drie Baritone
First, on Whit Monday, Smid will take the stage in Afas Live, both in the afternoon and in the evening, with colleagues such as Lone van Roosendaal, Thijs van Leer, his daughter Coosje and Pleun Bierbooms, winner of The voice of Holland and the daughter of Jolanda , Smith’s friend and great support. Who are still missing from the pamphlet: Marco Bakker and Henk Poort, the colleagues with whom Smid formed the Three Baritones. He hesitates when it comes up. “Henk wants to do absolutely nothing for a year. You think they belong? Yes, I think so too, I’m going to call in a bit to ask if they want to come.”
As he sits here this afternoon in Winterswijk, there is little to notice about Smid. His hands only shake slightly now and then and he gets his words right. Despite this, a great physical and mental effort awaits him in May, which he does not know whether it may have adverse effects on his health. He grins. “That’s going to rust my ass. I’m just going to do it, then we’ll see.”
-Photo: BrunoPress
Grandchildren
Smid accepts his limitations, but above all he celebrates life. “Of course the disease takes away some of my happiness. I think I’m at 80 percent of what it could have been, but with 80 percent luck you can also live well. I enjoy my six grandchildren, am proud of my three children. But nature will irrevocably say one day: it has been beautiful, so far and no further, aju. I asked the neurologist what I will die of, I was curious about that. Pneumonia can be fatal for me. ” Dry: “Well, then I just have to make sure I don’t get pneumonia.”
When his time comes, his children and girlfriend Jolanda will know what Smid does not want. “End up as a rattling piece of human in a wheelchair. If I can no longer communicate with others, then I don’t need it anymore.” He softly sings André Hazes: ‘It’s about time, it’s about time’. “Yes, we’re laughing about it now. What else can you do. In the Princess Máxima Center, 2-year-olds fight for their lives. I’m 69, I’ve had a wonderful working life, that’s how it is. Count your blessings.”
