Building that table hadn't been easy, but he had something to prove — to himself
Written by Crystal Onyema | July 1, 2026
There are few things more humbling than confidently giving someone credit for a job they didn’t do. That’s what happened to my family when an Ikea table suddenly showed up, fully assembled, in my aunt’s living room. Naturally, we assumed one of my cousins had put it together while everyone else was busy.
Uncle Brandon had been having a tough week. His tremors were more noticeable, his freezing episodes happened more often, and we just couldn’t picture him taking on a project that meant reading instructions, sorting hardware, and putting together so many pieces.
So we started congratulating my cousin, who looked at us with complete confusion. “I didn’t build the table,” he said.
That’s when we heard a familiar voice from the couch. “I did.”
Uncle Brandon never even looked away from the television. He simply cleared his throat and matter-of-factly claimed the credit, as if assembling Ikea furniture was just another Tuesday afternoon.
Proving something to himself
The room got quiet. We all looked at him. “You built it?” He nodded. Apparently, while everyone else was at church, he decided to tackle the project himself.
He later admitted it wasn’t easy. His tremors made him drop screws a few times. Some of the smaller pieces took longer to line up than they used to, and there were moments when he almost gave up. Instead, he kept going.
He said he glanced at the instructions now and then, but most of the work came from muscle memory. For decades, building and fixing things had been second nature to him. Long before Parkinson’s disease, he built furniture, fixed engines, and took on projects most people wouldn’t even try.
He trusted those years of experience. One screw at a time. One piece at a time. And one deep breath at a time.
When he finally tightened the last bolt, it wasn’t just a completed table sitting in the living room. It was proof that he could still finish what he started. Looking back, I don’t think Uncle Brandon was trying to prove anything to us. He was trying to prove something to himself.
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