Read Emails from the Edge Online
Authors: Ken Haley
Emails from the Edge (37 page)
ESTONIA: 3â11 APRIL
DAY 640 (3 APRIL): PARNU
Snow lies over the parklands and on the public buildings. It keeps me off the footpaths and makes me skid all over the roads. Worst of all, it gums up my chair's works and doubles the effort involved in pushing myself round.
Most of the town's best-loved buildings date from the 17th century, when those peace-loving characters, the Swedes, came rampaging and pillaging hereabouts. Needless to say, these are the buildings that visitors to the place drool over and marvel at. Your Parnu parvenu prefers to live in modernistic Scandinavian-style houses composed of vast glass sheets, acres of Baltic pine forest and acute-angled snow-friendly roofs.
DAY 642 (5 APRIL): KURESSAARE, SAAREMAA
Estonia's western islandsâexposed to the full force of Nature out in the Balticâare renowned for experiencing more extreme weather than the mainland. Yet nothing could adequately prepare me for the journey from Parnu to the island of Saaremaa yesterday, undertaken just as a âsevere weather event' was bearing down from the Arctic.
So uncertain were bus schedules that I elected to take the service to Virtsu, a nondescript speck where the ferry leaves for Muhu, a small island leeward of Saaremaa, rather than wait for the direct bus to Saaremaa (which stood a higher chance of being cancelled). After half an hour spent trying to keep myself on the high side of hypothermia at Virtsu, a luxury coach full of geriatric Finnish fun-seekers pulled up and agreed to give me a lift to the big island.
DAY 643 (6 APRIL): KURESSAARE TO TALLINN
Still the snowflakes sweep and swirl, driven furiously to earth from a steel-grey sky. This morning I arrive at the bus station in good time but filled with disbelief. I am certain they will announce all today's services are cancelled due to the snowstorm.
The announcement never comes, instead the bus does. And so begins a nine-hour slog all the way to Tallinn, a trip that normally takes four hours. We battle the whole way through fields of late-lying snow and, halfway through the ordeal, the driver shakes his head in amazement and curses this weather as the worst he has ever come across âat this time of year'. Apparently this is the sort of tempest you can expect once every decade or soâin January, not in April.
DAY 645 (8 APRIL): TALLINN
Last night Stephanie Bunburyâthe friend who was first on the scene after my descent from the windowsill in East Melbourneâjoined me in the Estonian capital for a few days together in this icy outpost of civilisation. These days will be just as cold, but brighter now.
Along for the occasion is a close friend of hers I hadn't met before. Stephen Dalton writes television reviews for the
Times
in London, the city where Stephanie has been working as a journalist for years. Stephen and I strike up an immediate rapport, and I just know that the days to comeâthough filled with memories we'll all look back upon fondlyâwill pass much, much too quickly.
This morning, while Stephanie and Stephen are taking a late breakfast at their hotel, I am on the opposite side of town impersonating a snow plough. As I take a visible breather on one of the city's street corners, and try to get my bearings, a two-man hit squad from Tallinn's leading morning daily approaches me and asks what I am doing. I explain that I am near the end of a long journey in the wheelchair and just looking round Estonia.
Since they are braving the elements to do a round-up of all weather-related news for tomorrow's issue, I find myself thrust into the media spotlight. Next day a photo of me appears on page 9 of their esteemed rag ⦠at least, it must be me beneath that snow-encrusted rabbit-fur hat, because my name (spelt correctly!) is in the caption.
DAY 646 (9 APRIL): TALLINN
Their interest piqued by what I have told them about Navitrolla, a famous cartoonist here who is a sort of Estonian Leunig, Stephanie, Stephen and I nip inside the artist's studio high on Toompea hill which doubles as a shop selling a remarkable variety of merchandise. This incorporates creative work of his, ranging from boxed T-shirts and postcards to framed prints.
Navitrolla (real name Heiki Troll) reminds Estonians of their national character, not only through his artworks but also by his very name. Navi and Trolla are two long-established towns (his mother hails from Navi, his father from Trolla). A one-man tourist attraction and household name across Estonia, Navitrolla remains at 32 a âcountry boy' who prefers to spend time on the family farm outside Tartu, Estonia's second city, and come to Tallinn only when business (or the odd Australian interview) beckons.
Fame has certainly not given him airs. Asked does he remember how old he was when he first drew something and what it was, he gives an involuntary laugh. âMy mother tells me, I'm sure it's true, that when I was a very small kid I took off my pants and painted a whole wall of our house in shit, and my mother says she said, “Maybe my son will be an artist.”'
Like Michael Leunig, his guiding spirit is the quicksilver element of whimsy, and any attempt to define his work is courteously but firmly resisted. The closest he comes to giving it a label is âZen painting'âa definition by anti-definition. When I ask does his art contain an underlying message, he smiles and nods vigorously. âMany ⦠but the most important is: open your eyes. The world is full of things to see and, of course, you will never understand it all but if you try you will be happier.'
Before leaving the studio, I buy a little happiness in the form of a T-shirt that reflects his philosophy well. Over a black background a shaggy-haired animal which Navitrolla dubs the Sorrow is powering its way across the sky. Beneath it, a wry tag is printed in Estonian and English: âThe Sorrow Flies Away'.
DAY 647 (10 APRIL): TALLINN
At the mint-new youth hostel on Uus tanav, where I am lodging directly opposite the Lithuanian Embassy, Stephanie and Stephen arrive just in time to see the dramatic pictures from Baghdad of Saddam's statue being toppled. âThey won't know when to get out,' predicts Stephen.
On this our last night in Tallinn before the two S's head west for a few weeks in Berlin and I continue north to the end of my circuitous line, we are on the lookout for an authentically Estonian dining experience. After a while we happen upon a dimly lit establishment that looks like a student hangout, a place specialising in beer that reluctantly serves food as well. This will have to do, we concur, with looks that stop a fair way short of out-and-out enthusiasm.
On our way to an empty table on the far side of the room, I see a lonely-looking piano. Flipping its lid, and to warm up my fingers as much as anything, I riff off 16 bars of
Memphis Tennessee
(don't ask me why) before gliding across to our chosen table. Before we reach it, a round of applause breaks out from the student crowd at the bar, and I bow low.
Chuffed though I am at this burst of appreciation, I notice it is not followed by any special effort at instituting table service or subsequent reductions in the cost of food or drink. But our attitude tonight is devil-take-the-hindmost and, as soon as Stephen returns to the table, drinks clutched in his hands, we offer up toasts and get on with enjoying the evening.
Had anyone back in Ward 13 prophesied that a dozen years into my blank future I would be spending an evening in the warm company of friends old and new at an Estonian bistro, I might have paraphrased the Eurythmics' Annie Lennox and shot back: âSweet dreams are
not
made of this.' But, having travelled the world and the seven seas, here am I to disagree.
DAY 640 (3 APRIL): PARNU
Snow lies over the parklands and on the public buildings. It keeps me off the footpaths and makes me skid all over the roads. Worst of all, it gums up my chair's works and doubles the effort involved in pushing myself round.
Most of the town's best-loved buildings date from the 17th century, when those peace-loving characters, the Swedes, came rampaging and pillaging hereabouts. Needless to say, these are the buildings that visitors to the place drool over and marvel at. Your Parnu parvenu prefers to live in modernistic Scandinavian-style houses composed of vast glass sheets, acres of Baltic pine forest and acute-angled snow-friendly roofs.
DAY 642 (5 APRIL): KURESSAARE, SAAREMAA
Estonia's western islandsâexposed to the full force of Nature out in the Balticâare renowned for experiencing more extreme weather than the mainland. Yet nothing could adequately prepare me for the journey from Parnu to the island of Saaremaa yesterday, undertaken just as a âsevere weather event' was bearing down from the Arctic.
So uncertain were bus schedules that I elected to take the service to Virtsu, a nondescript speck where the ferry leaves for Muhu, a small island leeward of Saaremaa, rather than wait for the direct bus to Saaremaa (which stood a higher chance of being cancelled). After half an hour spent trying to keep myself on the high side of hypothermia at Virtsu, a luxury coach full of geriatric Finnish fun-seekers pulled up and agreed to give me a lift to the big island.
DAY 643 (6 APRIL): KURESSAARE TO TALLINN
Still the snowflakes sweep and swirl, driven furiously to earth from a steel-grey sky. This morning I arrive at the bus station in good time but filled with disbelief. I am certain they will announce all today's services are cancelled due to the snowstorm.
The announcement never comes, instead the bus does. And so begins a nine-hour slog all the way to Tallinn, a trip that normally takes four hours. We battle the whole way through fields of late-lying snow and, halfway through the ordeal, the driver shakes his head in amazement and curses this weather as the worst he has ever come across âat this time of year'. Apparently this is the sort of tempest you can expect once every decade or soâin January, not in April.
DAY 645 (8 APRIL): TALLINN
Last night Stephanie Bunburyâthe friend who was first on the scene after my descent from the windowsill in East Melbourneâjoined me in the Estonian capital for a few days together in this icy outpost of civilisation. These days will be just as cold, but brighter now.
Along for the occasion is a close friend of hers I hadn't met before. Stephen Dalton writes television reviews for the
Times
in London, the city where Stephanie has been working as a journalist for years. Stephen and I strike up an immediate rapport, and I just know that the days to comeâthough filled with memories we'll all look back upon fondlyâwill pass much, much too quickly.
This morning, while Stephanie and Stephen are taking a late breakfast at their hotel, I am on the opposite side of town impersonating a snow plough. As I take a visible breather on one of the city's street corners, and try to get my bearings, a two-man hit squad from Tallinn's leading morning daily approaches me and asks what I am doing. I explain that I am near the end of a long journey in the wheelchair and just looking round Estonia.
Since they are braving the elements to do a round-up of all weather-related news for tomorrow's issue, I find myself thrust into the media spotlight. Next day a photo of me appears on page 9 of their esteemed rag ⦠at least, it must be me beneath that snow-encrusted rabbit-fur hat, because my name (spelt correctly!) is in the caption.
DAY 646 (9 APRIL): TALLINN
Their interest piqued by what I have told them about Navitrolla, a famous cartoonist here who is a sort of Estonian Leunig, Stephanie, Stephen and I nip inside the artist's studio high on Toompea hill which doubles as a shop selling a remarkable variety of merchandise. This incorporates creative work of his, ranging from boxed T-shirts and postcards to framed prints.
Navitrolla (real name Heiki Troll) reminds Estonians of their national character, not only through his artworks but also by his very name. Navi and Trolla are two long-established towns (his mother hails from Navi, his father from Trolla). A one-man tourist attraction and household name across Estonia, Navitrolla remains at 32 a âcountry boy' who prefers to spend time on the family farm outside Tartu, Estonia's second city, and come to Tallinn only when business (or the odd Australian interview) beckons.
Fame has certainly not given him airs. Asked does he remember how old he was when he first drew something and what it was, he gives an involuntary laugh. âMy mother tells me, I'm sure it's true, that when I was a very small kid I took off my pants and painted a whole wall of our house in shit, and my mother says she said, “Maybe my son will be an artist.”'
Like Michael Leunig, his guiding spirit is the quicksilver element of whimsy, and any attempt to define his work is courteously but firmly resisted. The closest he comes to giving it a label is âZen painting'âa definition by anti-definition. When I ask does his art contain an underlying message, he smiles and nods vigorously. âMany ⦠but the most important is: open your eyes. The world is full of things to see and, of course, you will never understand it all but if you try you will be happier.'
Before leaving the studio, I buy a little happiness in the form of a T-shirt that reflects his philosophy well. Over a black background a shaggy-haired animal which Navitrolla dubs the Sorrow is powering its way across the sky. Beneath it, a wry tag is printed in Estonian and English: âThe Sorrow Flies Away'.
DAY 647 (10 APRIL): TALLINN
At the mint-new youth hostel on Uus tanav, where I am lodging directly opposite the Lithuanian Embassy, Stephanie and Stephen arrive just in time to see the dramatic pictures from Baghdad of Saddam's statue being toppled. âThey won't know when to get out,' predicts Stephen.
On this our last night in Tallinn before the two S's head west for a few weeks in Berlin and I continue north to the end of my circuitous line, we are on the lookout for an authentically Estonian dining experience. After a while we happen upon a dimly lit establishment that looks like a student hangout, a place specialising in beer that reluctantly serves food as well. This will have to do, we concur, with looks that stop a fair way short of out-and-out enthusiasm.
On our way to an empty table on the far side of the room, I see a lonely-looking piano. Flipping its lid, and to warm up my fingers as much as anything, I riff off 16 bars of
Memphis Tennessee
(don't ask me why) before gliding across to our chosen table. Before we reach it, a round of applause breaks out from the student crowd at the bar, and I bow low.
Chuffed though I am at this burst of appreciation, I notice it is not followed by any special effort at instituting table service or subsequent reductions in the cost of food or drink. But our attitude tonight is devil-take-the-hindmost and, as soon as Stephen returns to the table, drinks clutched in his hands, we offer up toasts and get on with enjoying the evening.
Had anyone back in Ward 13 prophesied that a dozen years into my blank future I would be spending an evening in the warm company of friends old and new at an Estonian bistro, I might have paraphrased the Eurythmics' Annie Lennox and shot back: âSweet dreams are
not
made of this.' But, having travelled the world and the seven seas, here am I to disagree.
Chapter 23
HERE BEGINNETH THE AFTERLIFE
CCLESIASTES
3:3
1991-2001
To relate the story of life as a paraplegic from the early days of my hospital stay up to the time of my Eurasian expedition is like chronicling a second life. It is certainly one so dramatically different in its externals that people who have come into my life since then have been known to wonder what I must have been like before. The answer to that, say those who knew me then, is ⦠very much the same except taller.
After those first months, when the shock wore off and the circulatory system stabilised, all the hurdles on the track to recovery were mental. The first barrier to get over was the thought
My life has been ruined
.
Surmounting that obstacle gave me much needed confidence. I was back in the race. Learning old skills anew and fresh ones, too, reminded me that this period was not just recovering from a life-threatening trauma but preparing for the something (just what I couldn't begin to imagine) that would be my future life.
These days, when some immigration form is shoved in front of me that demands to know my height, I'm always tempted to jot down â142 centimetres'. But that is only the most obvious change between my first and second incarnations. It takes several months to adapt to the whole caboodle of physical reconfigurations (but, note, what matters is the adaptation, not the changes themselves: in the end, mindâits strength and singlenessâis all).
How did the crisis leave me physically? First, those stainless steel metal rods they implanted in my spinal column back in 1991 are still there and will remain there, if only because it is good to avoid unnecessary pain. A scar runs down my back, also from the operation. My feet are still red raw, the toes clawed and ingrown. I suffer from increased flatulence; and unless I do a lot of pushing aboutâanother reason that travel is good for my healthâa âwheelie's paunch' develops, marring my naturally athletic film-star looks.
Occasionally I surprise people by moving my legs, but this is no party trick: the doctors at the Austin told me that on average I had 3 per cent of the motor power necessary to walk. (The strength in my right leg is slightly greater than that in my left.) The only use of being able to move a limb to this modest degree is that it keeps me in my place, not tempted into the forbidden paths of bipedal perambulation by having an out-of-chair experience.
I can't wiggle my toes any more, but then how much time do
you
spend doing that? As for keeping in time to music, I find tapping my fingers just as satisfying.
Self-image remains as important as ever, but in the end what difference has the great descent caused to my physical envelope? After all that has been done, and said, it's just a change of posture. Make that two changes of posture. In the daytime the change is there for all to see, but my slumbering form is also different.
In an earlier chapter I remarked that in hospital the spinally injured return to babyhood. Toilet training begins all over againâthis time involving quite inventive ways of doing the basic functions, which most of us think we've left behind when we celebrate that birthday with three candles on the cake. The lifters and turners even teach you how to protect yourself while sleeping. They counsel you on the importance of sleeping on your side (because to spend the whole night, or even hours, on your back is to risk exactly the problem, bedsores or pressure sores, that plagued me during my wanderings through the Caucasus and Iran).
My initial reaction when told I must learn how to turn myself, without waking up, was to scoff. I shot back at the messengers, âWe don't wake up when we toss and turn in our sleep, so how am I ever going to get a good night's sleep again?' Their reply was along the lines of, âForget tossing your body about, but by levering yourself onto your opposite hip you can easily go from lying on your right to lying on your left and within seconds you'll be back in the Land of Nod.'
All my scepticism was unfounded, I am happy to say. The turners knew exactly what they were talking about, and the technique has now become second nature: you might say I could do it in my sleep.
But the best coping mechanisms for a particular spinal patient always depend on how much physical function has returned, and there are limits to that. Unless there has been a sea change in understanding of the condition since I was at the Austin more than a decade ago, those limits are usually reached (or, rather, whatever regrowth is ever going to occur does so) within a month of the event that has inflicted the injury.
Psychically, thoughâthe way your brain makes sense of your life and its potentialsâhealing seems not to begin until there is no prospect of further physical regrowth. It is as if the mind cannot accept your ânew body' and what must be until what is becomes truly unalterable.
Hospitals are not ideal seedbeds for rehabilitation. The sights and sounds, and sometimes even smells, of suffering tend to depress the hardiest spiritâand a ward full of people whose vitality is reeling from a heavy blow is a ward full of fragile spirits. And yet, if it is true that there is always someone worse off than yourself, a hospital is likely to be where you two will meet up.
The patient who had the biggest effect on my outlook was my next-bed neighbour Paul. He was nineteen when, one Friday night while his parents were out, a mate came round to his place and suggested they go for a drive (in the mate's car). Seeing his friend was drunk, Paul tried to talk him out of the idea, instead suggesting that they order a pizza and eat in. But the mate was deaf to persuasion so Paul went along for the ride. When his friend drove the car up a tree, Paul suffered upper-spinal lesions which left him a quadriplegic, unable to feed himself or even move his head without causing further, and possibly fatal, injury.
The mate escaped from the wreck without a scratch and never once visited him in the ensuing months. With the wisdom of hindsight, it is possible to see that the distress wasn't all on Paul's side, and I can only hope they reconciled in later years, for both their sakes.
But Paul's hospital life made mine feel like the equivalent of a hiccup. He was in constant pain, which he bore manfully. His head was gripped in a type of vice called tongs, preventing all movement, and whenever they were adjusted he was subjected to teeth-grinding agony. Still in pain, he had to deal with police visits designed to prosecute his âmate'. And every day he was confronted with the sight of his distraught parents and other relatives struggling to cope with the impact of his tragedy on their lives.
Without meaning to do so, Paul taught me how much of a relief it is to have no one else to blame. It's a strange blessing to realise that, having survived an attempt to take your own life, you will never have to bear the burden of blaming someone else for the way you now are.
Thinking about Paul, and how I at least had no one to blame for being where I found myself, led naturally to the next mental stepping-stone in my recovery, the thought
So why blame yourself either?
Loath though I am to pretend to any âexpertise' on suicide, I did come to the considered view that only a few cases of self-annihilation are heroic, and only a few are acts of cowardice. Most are deeds born of desperation, by no means acts of free choice.
They are the result of decisions taken under enormous mental and emotional pressure that make them seem the only possible âchoice' but are in fact the opposite of what choice signifies: selecting one course among a range of alternatives.
When I tried to end it all, I was madâas I have since come to accept. People thrown off mental balance are not held by the law to be responsible for their actions; and I cannot respect any moral law that would make them so. Another thing that those who are quick to condemn their fellow human beings' weakness do not seem to appreciate is that suicide attempts are not entirely due to an emotional impulse. The mind in pain provides its own rationales, and they appear as compelling and real as debt on your credit card (and sometimes more logical). To a mind under siege, ending the endless onslaught of pain can appear a thoroughly rational response to an apparently uncaring world. Our self-image is renewed by what others tell us about ourselves: if they say only bad things or nothing at all, eventually we will turn in on ourselves. It bears repeating: humans, like other creatures, will instinctively seek out the least painful course.
That is why, as every jailer knows, prolonged isolation will break almost anyone's spirit, and why even people who go into jail protesting their innocence can be so disheartened that they take their own lives. I am thinking now of the Aboriginal teenagers whose deaths in custody sparked a Royal Commission more than a decade ago.
Over the years such a surprising number of people have told me of their suicidal thoughtsâpeople whom I would never have suspected of these dark stabs of self-reproach and self-belittlementâthat I have come to believe everybody has a greater or lesser breaking point. I am not saying that everyone thinks of rejecting the gift of life, but that at some point we each feel that life has been diminished or devalued, and that some of us will see no point to the stretch of existence immediately ahead of us. Many of us will bide our time waiting for the point to emerge; but a few cannot, that is all.
Having come through my ordeal, I am not about to trivialise the feelings of those few by saying, âWait around and things will sooner or later change for the better.' Maybe they won't. Where words run out, no advice can be as effective as a touch of compassion.
To try talking someone out of suicide would be hypocritical, after what I have done. But, for those readers going through their own hell, I would put one picture in front of you that was unimagined by me then. If your âdeath wish' is really a cry for attention and affection, and not a response to acute fear as mine was, picture the faces of your closest loved ones (in my case, my parents) bending over you and contorted with grief. No words of mine can alter the depth of your despair, I'm not that presumptuous, but be prepared to know that when you damage your tired unwanted self you will not only be evoking pity but horrifying those you care for most.
And then, if you must go ahead, know that others you care for (without ever admitting it to yourself) may misunderstand and feel cut off from you. When you've attempted suicide and âfailed', you don't really want visitors. And it was odd how the topic itself was sensitively avoided on several occasions at the Austin when I was visited by my uncle and an old family friend. At times such as those, looks of sympathy count for more than words anyway.
But a brother of mine never visited, and the reason he didn't was out of religious conviction. Influenced by his wife, he had converted to Catholicism during my absence and felt it necessary to disapprove of my courting mortal sin by staying away. Thirteen years after the event, I am still struggling to see his absence as nothing blameworthy but an act of fidelity to his creedâdoing what he understood to be the right thing by his faith. We have never yet spoken about it.
Once the firstâand necessaryâstage of self-pity has passed, the mind is like a child ready to enter upon a new stage in its physical growth: incredibly receptive to stimuli. In my case, the lifter's timely observation that 95 per cent of spinally injured patients go on to enjoy productive lives spurred just such a revolution in my own thoughts.
In my first few months at the Austin it never occurred to me that I had a futureâI couldn't picture what that might look likeâand the mere mention by a casual visitor of life in the future tense would plunge me into a depressive state that could last for hours. In those days my unhappiness manifested itself in bleak meditation. Normally, people can't stop me talking (it's my besetting fault, just ask my former friends) but in those days I uttered hardly a word. My personality had been turned inside out. The post-traumatic stress and re-traumatising outcome of my suicide attempt so shattered my oneness that the months-long battle to become whole again was fought in intense silence (and, while that is a battle no one else can fight for you, it does help to have allies).
And then out of the blue, one May morning a simple thought washed up in my mind,
I'm alive, so what am I going to do about it?
The initial answerâand I recognised the humour in it instantaneously âwas,
Well, I could always do nothing
. And so, in theory, I could have. This was Australia, after all, a pioneer of the welfare state. Laziness has always appealed to me as a way of life. In practice, the problem with doing nothing is that it's so incredibly hard to sustain over time. (Believe me, I've tried.)
Of course, my mind turned to the 5 per cent of patients who, according to that inspired lifter, go on to become vegetables. Thinking of them, death once again seemed preferable to a meaningless life.
A word at the right time changed everything or, more precisely, the way I looked at everything. It fell from Dr Ungar's lips when he cited Montesquieu's oft-quoted observation about seeing life as a glass half full or half empty. Whether the wise doctor shrewdly chose his moment to impart this wisdom, or said it without knowing I was ready to be nourished by it, is now beyond recall. But this one remark did inspire me to concentrate on what I had rather than what I no longer had, and my thinking grew more positive in the ensuing weeks.
Ungar also took time to reintroduce me to the outside world. Only now did news that the Gulf War had ended come to my notice, without the news having any repercussions on me. A television above my bed would be turned on in the evening, and I began to follow events at home and abroad.
During childhood music lessons, I was always fascinated by the tick-tock of the metronome that sat on my teacher's piano lid. If you could imagine a metronome synchronised with the vibrations of grief, as I now could, it would spasm ever less frequently as the distance from the grief-inducing event receded.
HERE BEGINNETH THE AFTERLIFE
(To every thing there is ⦠a time
â¦)
to break down, and a time to build up;
Eâ¦)
to break down, and a time to build up;
CCLESIASTES
3:3
1991-2001
To relate the story of life as a paraplegic from the early days of my hospital stay up to the time of my Eurasian expedition is like chronicling a second life. It is certainly one so dramatically different in its externals that people who have come into my life since then have been known to wonder what I must have been like before. The answer to that, say those who knew me then, is ⦠very much the same except taller.
After those first months, when the shock wore off and the circulatory system stabilised, all the hurdles on the track to recovery were mental. The first barrier to get over was the thought
My life has been ruined
.
Surmounting that obstacle gave me much needed confidence. I was back in the race. Learning old skills anew and fresh ones, too, reminded me that this period was not just recovering from a life-threatening trauma but preparing for the something (just what I couldn't begin to imagine) that would be my future life.
These days, when some immigration form is shoved in front of me that demands to know my height, I'm always tempted to jot down â142 centimetres'. But that is only the most obvious change between my first and second incarnations. It takes several months to adapt to the whole caboodle of physical reconfigurations (but, note, what matters is the adaptation, not the changes themselves: in the end, mindâits strength and singlenessâis all).
How did the crisis leave me physically? First, those stainless steel metal rods they implanted in my spinal column back in 1991 are still there and will remain there, if only because it is good to avoid unnecessary pain. A scar runs down my back, also from the operation. My feet are still red raw, the toes clawed and ingrown. I suffer from increased flatulence; and unless I do a lot of pushing aboutâanother reason that travel is good for my healthâa âwheelie's paunch' develops, marring my naturally athletic film-star looks.
Occasionally I surprise people by moving my legs, but this is no party trick: the doctors at the Austin told me that on average I had 3 per cent of the motor power necessary to walk. (The strength in my right leg is slightly greater than that in my left.) The only use of being able to move a limb to this modest degree is that it keeps me in my place, not tempted into the forbidden paths of bipedal perambulation by having an out-of-chair experience.
I can't wiggle my toes any more, but then how much time do
you
spend doing that? As for keeping in time to music, I find tapping my fingers just as satisfying.
Self-image remains as important as ever, but in the end what difference has the great descent caused to my physical envelope? After all that has been done, and said, it's just a change of posture. Make that two changes of posture. In the daytime the change is there for all to see, but my slumbering form is also different.
In an earlier chapter I remarked that in hospital the spinally injured return to babyhood. Toilet training begins all over againâthis time involving quite inventive ways of doing the basic functions, which most of us think we've left behind when we celebrate that birthday with three candles on the cake. The lifters and turners even teach you how to protect yourself while sleeping. They counsel you on the importance of sleeping on your side (because to spend the whole night, or even hours, on your back is to risk exactly the problem, bedsores or pressure sores, that plagued me during my wanderings through the Caucasus and Iran).
My initial reaction when told I must learn how to turn myself, without waking up, was to scoff. I shot back at the messengers, âWe don't wake up when we toss and turn in our sleep, so how am I ever going to get a good night's sleep again?' Their reply was along the lines of, âForget tossing your body about, but by levering yourself onto your opposite hip you can easily go from lying on your right to lying on your left and within seconds you'll be back in the Land of Nod.'
All my scepticism was unfounded, I am happy to say. The turners knew exactly what they were talking about, and the technique has now become second nature: you might say I could do it in my sleep.
But the best coping mechanisms for a particular spinal patient always depend on how much physical function has returned, and there are limits to that. Unless there has been a sea change in understanding of the condition since I was at the Austin more than a decade ago, those limits are usually reached (or, rather, whatever regrowth is ever going to occur does so) within a month of the event that has inflicted the injury.
Psychically, thoughâthe way your brain makes sense of your life and its potentialsâhealing seems not to begin until there is no prospect of further physical regrowth. It is as if the mind cannot accept your ânew body' and what must be until what is becomes truly unalterable.
Hospitals are not ideal seedbeds for rehabilitation. The sights and sounds, and sometimes even smells, of suffering tend to depress the hardiest spiritâand a ward full of people whose vitality is reeling from a heavy blow is a ward full of fragile spirits. And yet, if it is true that there is always someone worse off than yourself, a hospital is likely to be where you two will meet up.
The patient who had the biggest effect on my outlook was my next-bed neighbour Paul. He was nineteen when, one Friday night while his parents were out, a mate came round to his place and suggested they go for a drive (in the mate's car). Seeing his friend was drunk, Paul tried to talk him out of the idea, instead suggesting that they order a pizza and eat in. But the mate was deaf to persuasion so Paul went along for the ride. When his friend drove the car up a tree, Paul suffered upper-spinal lesions which left him a quadriplegic, unable to feed himself or even move his head without causing further, and possibly fatal, injury.
The mate escaped from the wreck without a scratch and never once visited him in the ensuing months. With the wisdom of hindsight, it is possible to see that the distress wasn't all on Paul's side, and I can only hope they reconciled in later years, for both their sakes.
But Paul's hospital life made mine feel like the equivalent of a hiccup. He was in constant pain, which he bore manfully. His head was gripped in a type of vice called tongs, preventing all movement, and whenever they were adjusted he was subjected to teeth-grinding agony. Still in pain, he had to deal with police visits designed to prosecute his âmate'. And every day he was confronted with the sight of his distraught parents and other relatives struggling to cope with the impact of his tragedy on their lives.
Without meaning to do so, Paul taught me how much of a relief it is to have no one else to blame. It's a strange blessing to realise that, having survived an attempt to take your own life, you will never have to bear the burden of blaming someone else for the way you now are.
Thinking about Paul, and how I at least had no one to blame for being where I found myself, led naturally to the next mental stepping-stone in my recovery, the thought
So why blame yourself either?
Loath though I am to pretend to any âexpertise' on suicide, I did come to the considered view that only a few cases of self-annihilation are heroic, and only a few are acts of cowardice. Most are deeds born of desperation, by no means acts of free choice.
They are the result of decisions taken under enormous mental and emotional pressure that make them seem the only possible âchoice' but are in fact the opposite of what choice signifies: selecting one course among a range of alternatives.
When I tried to end it all, I was madâas I have since come to accept. People thrown off mental balance are not held by the law to be responsible for their actions; and I cannot respect any moral law that would make them so. Another thing that those who are quick to condemn their fellow human beings' weakness do not seem to appreciate is that suicide attempts are not entirely due to an emotional impulse. The mind in pain provides its own rationales, and they appear as compelling and real as debt on your credit card (and sometimes more logical). To a mind under siege, ending the endless onslaught of pain can appear a thoroughly rational response to an apparently uncaring world. Our self-image is renewed by what others tell us about ourselves: if they say only bad things or nothing at all, eventually we will turn in on ourselves. It bears repeating: humans, like other creatures, will instinctively seek out the least painful course.
That is why, as every jailer knows, prolonged isolation will break almost anyone's spirit, and why even people who go into jail protesting their innocence can be so disheartened that they take their own lives. I am thinking now of the Aboriginal teenagers whose deaths in custody sparked a Royal Commission more than a decade ago.
Over the years such a surprising number of people have told me of their suicidal thoughtsâpeople whom I would never have suspected of these dark stabs of self-reproach and self-belittlementâthat I have come to believe everybody has a greater or lesser breaking point. I am not saying that everyone thinks of rejecting the gift of life, but that at some point we each feel that life has been diminished or devalued, and that some of us will see no point to the stretch of existence immediately ahead of us. Many of us will bide our time waiting for the point to emerge; but a few cannot, that is all.
Having come through my ordeal, I am not about to trivialise the feelings of those few by saying, âWait around and things will sooner or later change for the better.' Maybe they won't. Where words run out, no advice can be as effective as a touch of compassion.
To try talking someone out of suicide would be hypocritical, after what I have done. But, for those readers going through their own hell, I would put one picture in front of you that was unimagined by me then. If your âdeath wish' is really a cry for attention and affection, and not a response to acute fear as mine was, picture the faces of your closest loved ones (in my case, my parents) bending over you and contorted with grief. No words of mine can alter the depth of your despair, I'm not that presumptuous, but be prepared to know that when you damage your tired unwanted self you will not only be evoking pity but horrifying those you care for most.
And then, if you must go ahead, know that others you care for (without ever admitting it to yourself) may misunderstand and feel cut off from you. When you've attempted suicide and âfailed', you don't really want visitors. And it was odd how the topic itself was sensitively avoided on several occasions at the Austin when I was visited by my uncle and an old family friend. At times such as those, looks of sympathy count for more than words anyway.
But a brother of mine never visited, and the reason he didn't was out of religious conviction. Influenced by his wife, he had converted to Catholicism during my absence and felt it necessary to disapprove of my courting mortal sin by staying away. Thirteen years after the event, I am still struggling to see his absence as nothing blameworthy but an act of fidelity to his creedâdoing what he understood to be the right thing by his faith. We have never yet spoken about it.
Once the firstâand necessaryâstage of self-pity has passed, the mind is like a child ready to enter upon a new stage in its physical growth: incredibly receptive to stimuli. In my case, the lifter's timely observation that 95 per cent of spinally injured patients go on to enjoy productive lives spurred just such a revolution in my own thoughts.
In my first few months at the Austin it never occurred to me that I had a futureâI couldn't picture what that might look likeâand the mere mention by a casual visitor of life in the future tense would plunge me into a depressive state that could last for hours. In those days my unhappiness manifested itself in bleak meditation. Normally, people can't stop me talking (it's my besetting fault, just ask my former friends) but in those days I uttered hardly a word. My personality had been turned inside out. The post-traumatic stress and re-traumatising outcome of my suicide attempt so shattered my oneness that the months-long battle to become whole again was fought in intense silence (and, while that is a battle no one else can fight for you, it does help to have allies).
And then out of the blue, one May morning a simple thought washed up in my mind,
I'm alive, so what am I going to do about it?
The initial answerâand I recognised the humour in it instantaneously âwas,
Well, I could always do nothing
. And so, in theory, I could have. This was Australia, after all, a pioneer of the welfare state. Laziness has always appealed to me as a way of life. In practice, the problem with doing nothing is that it's so incredibly hard to sustain over time. (Believe me, I've tried.)
Of course, my mind turned to the 5 per cent of patients who, according to that inspired lifter, go on to become vegetables. Thinking of them, death once again seemed preferable to a meaningless life.
A word at the right time changed everything or, more precisely, the way I looked at everything. It fell from Dr Ungar's lips when he cited Montesquieu's oft-quoted observation about seeing life as a glass half full or half empty. Whether the wise doctor shrewdly chose his moment to impart this wisdom, or said it without knowing I was ready to be nourished by it, is now beyond recall. But this one remark did inspire me to concentrate on what I had rather than what I no longer had, and my thinking grew more positive in the ensuing weeks.
Ungar also took time to reintroduce me to the outside world. Only now did news that the Gulf War had ended come to my notice, without the news having any repercussions on me. A television above my bed would be turned on in the evening, and I began to follow events at home and abroad.
During childhood music lessons, I was always fascinated by the tick-tock of the metronome that sat on my teacher's piano lid. If you could imagine a metronome synchronised with the vibrations of grief, as I now could, it would spasm ever less frequently as the distance from the grief-inducing event receded.
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