Jojo Moyes’ recent novel Me Before You is most often described as a modern love story. I enjoyed that aspect but it intrigued me
for another reason.
The setting is England where 26-year-old Louisa Clark has recently lost her job in a café. She is desperate for
income. So with strong encouragement
from her family, all dependent on what
she brings in, she accepts the position as caregiver/companion to Will Traynor,
a paraplegic because of traffic accident.
Will, a former successful businessman, an angry man,
is bitter about the accident he did not cause that has determined he will be without feeling from the neck down
for the rest of his life. Forever in a wheelchair.
He tells Lou: “I loved my life. Really loved
it. I loved my job, my travels, the
things I was. I loved being a physical person.
I liked riding my motorbike, hurling myself off big heights. I liked crushing people in big deals. I liked
having sex.... I led a big life.”
He is determined that the “rest of his life” will be
short. He plans to travel to Switzerland where, with the help of the
organization Dignitas, he will take the final action to end his life.
Over the weeks, as Lou cares for Will, she learns to
love the person he is, not what he can do.
She accidentally becomes aware of his “due date” in Switzerland and
determines to make him to see that even without mobility life is still worth
living because she loves him.
On the other hand, as Will learns to know Lou,
he recognizes that although she is
physically able, she is paralyzed in
other ways. Though 26 years of age, she
has never had any goals other than earning money. Intelligent, she has never read books, heard
classical music, or traveled. Her boyfriend,
a physical trainer, provides her with sex, nothing more. Life is a dead end for
her as much as it is for Will.
Even as Lou is determined to keep Will alive, he is
equally determined to bring her to life and
see the possibilities of a rich, full
life outside her little space.
While I enjoyed the love angle, I kept comparing Will’s
determination to end his life to my brother’s efforts to stay alive though also
a paraplegic for the last decade of his life. He died in 2010 at age 83 of a
stroke.
My brother, Jack Funk, had multiple sclerosis, first
diagnosed in the late 1960s. When life
was getting too difficult without more assistance, he and his wife Patricia
moved from their home on the bank of the beautiful Battle River in
Saskatchewan, outside Battleford, to Saskatoon to a care facility.
He took up
residence in a room with all the equipment needed to hoist him and look after his
needs, she moved into an apartment in an adjoining building. They left behind 18 years of
significant living: a comfortable
lifestyle with hot tub, breakfast on the deck, weekend trips, and visits from
family and friends.
Behind him was a 23-year career in education followed by
years as a senior official in the Saskatchewan government and then assistant
superintendent of education for the Department of Indian Affairs. As he researched this group of people he grasped
the depth of their oppression and became a voice for telling their stories.
In Jack’s book If
You Wait Someone Will Come: Life in Interim Manor, he admits the move was
traumatic, because such moves are an admission of failure, for him caused by a
combination of “ill health, frailty and circumstances.” They couldn't carry on alone any longer. A cure was not in the future. Now what?
His book, a mixture of satire, humor, and
information, looks at life in a care home from the viewpoint of a careful
observer. His insights into life with
paraplegia merit wider distribution. The
cartoons are priceless, the humor without equal. “There’s a lot of nudity around here, but don’t expect
Madonna,”he comments.
Jack’s openness about his condition did not come
about readily. For many years he wrote me letters, often weekly, with never a
hint about his health. He edited an occasional Funk family newsletter, with news
provided through emails from family members scattered worldwide.
His computer
was his lifeline. He described wonderful restaurant meals,
concerts, lectures, and more. He valued visits from children and friends. But his
condition deteriorated until he could move only his head and speak. He dropped the newsletter from his self-assigned
tasks.
He became depressed when he could
no longer communicate with others at will. But then he turned to voice
recognition software, which once again gave him an opening into the world
outside his small universe. He wrote
books, with Pat, his faithful wife, helping with editing and aspects that
needed footwork.
But multiple sclerosis is relentless, if slow-moving. . Only when I
read his book did I sense fully that at times he must have felt like Will
Traynor—ready to give up. He yearned to
be listened to, to be seen as still relevant.
He wrote that the task of
helpers and friends is about letting residents know they are “people of value, that they are
needed, even in their family. They need to experience that they still have a
contribution to make, simply by being here.”
Simply being there.
What do you do when you’ve been pushed into a spot in the care home and forgotten? You’re there, but does anyone else care? Do you watch the grass grow? Count the flies buzzing in the room? Guess the
number of feet one fly flies in 15 minutes? He can’t scratch an itch.
His only
operative muscle was in his neck which
allowed him to nod, turn his head, and push buttons with his chin. But when
you’re “parked” you’re away from your television and computer and your call button gets no response. Help is hired,
and most helpers are wonderful people, yet it is hard to synchronize body functions
when you are paralyzed with a worker’s schedule.
So for a while each time he waited he made note of
what was said in response to his call button, pushed with his chin. He
tabulated the responses: “Did you want
something?” (12 times) “Wait, someone will come” (18 times), “In a minute” (15
times), “Your girl went for supper,” (14),
and others.
If he waited long
enough, someone would come. Yet he acknowledged the wonderful people, often
overworked, on the staff. He trusted his life to them.
Moyes’s Will doesn’t want to live without sex, a
major part of his life before the accident. Jack describes what for him is “conjugal
time,” a poignant but tender description of intimate times with Pat though
helpless.
Read Me Before You for a great modern love story. Read Jack’s book
for realism about life as a paraplegic.
Jack’s other books are I Was Younger When I Was a
Boy and Outside the Women Cried (available online) written with voice recognition software.
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