“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given, than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”
He was very much alive, but the Parkinsons had taken its toll on him. He did very little in the way of public appearances in like the last decade or so, since the '96 Olympics. His voice was pretty much gone, and the shaking was probably horrible by the time he passed away.
Parkinsons is one of those three diseases that really suck. Alzheimer's and cancer are the other two - though Cancer is #1 with a bullet.