BIOGRAPHY | POLIO | LIFE
Granddad Left his Wheelchair Every Single Day
A story of truth, pain, and of achievement — beware, it is a story that ends with graphic detail
As Granddad read the letter, so his voice rose and fell with each wave that flooded over the bow, not just that, but he lifted his hands to protect himself as the mast came crashing to the deck.
“The mast has gone!” he yells from his wheelchair, “Crash it goes!”
Thinking the sailors would all perish, and the ship would sink, it was gripping stuff. I sat at his feet utterly carried away. Granddad was a Scot who for the better part of his life studied law. Had he not been an attorney, he would certainly have been an adventurer, but Granddad was born having contracted polio, and the paralysis resulted.
You see, Granddad’s heart was not in his profession; he wanted to write romantic novels, roam with his dogs over his beloved heather-covered hills, and track up the Gray Mare’s Tail, near Moffatt. That was his happiness dream, to wander in the glorious free open air, and work his few sheep.
In the end, you must understand, Granddad was an unhappy individual; at his worst when visited by relatives. He lived only for the barren wilderness of self-acknowledgment.
When family visited and asked about his health, Granddad’s response was never more than a mumble, its meaning lost in a painful scene of having to deal with the family intrusion into his life.
Granddad was not a cripple, not an invalid, he could feel himself walking out of the house, preferring the company of his muddied dogs and taking his daily imaginary walk. You see, Granddad was not bound to his chair even though he often wriggled, wanting to engage his legs, feeling himself bolt from the sympathy of friends and family.
It was that the appalling ignominy of legal forms and conveyances that left him too little time to turn his attention to the kind of writing he loved. He was eighty-four years old when he retired and could then write to his heart’s content.
His two dogs, Ivanhoe, a Scottish terrier, named after one of his hero’s, and Shackleton, a Border Collie, were buried beneath a yew tree at the foot of the garden, and continue to live on in his stories kept by members of the family. The dogs lived long and colorful lives among the scattered castle ruins and the beautiful, sometimes satanic countryside that granddad so loved.
He would tell me; he had heard the cries of those warriors fallen at Flodden Field and Bannockburn. He was once lost, he told me, lost in the hills during a blizzard and were it not for his two dogs keeping him warm, he would surely have perished among those warrior cries.
They were just stories, his romance, his adventures so often sought after by fellow drinkers in the locality, who never saw his wheelchair under him.
Mum told me on numerous occasions that I had been infected by Granddad’s tales. This is, of course, correct, and which is why I like to write my stories down and pass them on in the hope you’ll see what I saw. Feel what I feel.
I left Scotland as a young man, learning to fly in the service of the Queen.
Death, I learned, isn’t something that you can set right. I saw it close but was not personally changed by it till much later. What I knew back then, perhaps, was not to forget all those broken lives that can’t be fixed.
In 1979 it happened in a little town buried in a forest, in Northern Cambodia. We were delivering medical supplies to Phnom Penh, driving a column of trucks for the Red Cross through rebel areas while Pol Pot was doing his thing.
We came upon a woman holding a child, and at first, I believed they were just frightened, crouched as they were behind some fallen wall. When I took a closer look, I saw that the little girl had been hurt by shrapnel, that her belly was laid open. Her mother was trying to put her daughter’s guts back in, make her better again.
The little girl was screaming, telling her mother how much it hurt, and asking her to fix something that could never be put right. Her mother kept promising that it would all be better, she would get her to a doctor. The mother was begging help for her little girl, and all I could do was stand there and watch as the child’s crying got quieter, more and more feeble, until it stopped altogether. I never forget the look of loss on her face until fifteen years later when it would settle on mine.
I now understand Granddad’s repugnance for family visits. His thinly veiled displeasure. So, I walk my dogs, ride my horses, and for a long time stayed to myself. Until now.
I live again through the words I write. I love again from being loved.
I’m not as nice as I seem, I’m really not. But the friendship and love I’ve received here make me a better man.
You are all to blame. Thank you. ❤
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