WHEN LIFE DEALS A TOUGH HAND

The Boston Globe

BEVERLY BECKHAM

A young man interviewed me for a college assignment, and he asked some interesting questions. "Do you think people like me inspire people like you?"

He has cerebral palsy. He has difficulty walking. I walk the way I breathe, without thinking about it.

His question stayed with me.

A day later, at the Massachusetts Down Syndrome Conference in Worcester, a woman was asked, "How has having a grandchild with a disability impacted your life?"

She answered that her grandchild has enriched her life, that her family has grown closer, and that this child is a blessing.

My granddaughter has Down syndrome, too, and my life is enriched and my family is close and Lucy is a blessing. But the truth is, if I had a magic wand, I would wave it over Lucy and every other young person who is physically or mentally challenged, and forgo my family and my sense of closeness and all of my blessings, for them to have a typical and healthy life.

It's what most people have. And what people who don't have want most.

I met a beautiful young girl a few months ago. She is 17 and in love. She should be riding in cars and going to parties. She should be dancing.

But she can't dance or walk or even get into a car without help. She's OK with this. She's not complaining.

But I am. Why her and not me? Why did she get her life and why did I get mine? And can't we trade some days? "Go out. Have a good time."

Should we admit to thinking "If only"? Or should we pretend that riding in cars and dancing aren't important?

On the op-ed page last Monday, psychology professors Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun wrote a column titled "The paradox of post-traumatic growth," about how people who lose mobility and limbs often gain perspective and faith. "In the midst of suffering and loss there is survival and resilience. Beyond that, there can be something more transformation and growth," they wrote.

In lay terms? People play the hand they're dealt. They have to. They have no choice.

The real paradox of post-traumatic growth isn't what happens to people afflicted by injury or illness, but what happens to those around them- family, friends, neighbors, even strangers. They don't have to grow or transform. But many of them do.

"Where did you get your interest in the disabled?" the young college student also asked me. "Did it begin when your granddaughter was born?"

No, I told him. It began when my mother sustained a head injury.

I didn't yet know that a healthy middle-aged woman could slip on a step on a Thursday night and end up in a coma for three months and a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

I didn't yet have a friend whose daughter would die of cystic fibrosis.

I hadn't yet met the Murphys, whose two babies would die of a genetic disease, or the Bernabeis, whose two sons would live hard and immobile lives because of genetic disease.

My mother was in rehab at Lemuel Shattuck Hospital for many months. Another woman with polio had been at the Shattuck for many years. She lived in an iron lung. Sometimes she would be in the lobby when I walked in. I never said more than hello to her. I didn't know back then what to say to a woman in an iron lung.

We suffer and we learn. But it was my mother who suffered while I learned. I reap what she sowed.

Our bodies are not who we are. We shed them eventually. Healthy or sick, if we live 100 years or a single day, it's the same in the context of eternity.

That's the big picture.

But it's the small picture we wake up to every day. And in the small picture, pain is real, and loss is real, and frustration is real, and limbs that don't work are real.

And being 17 and unable to dance is real.

"Do you think people like me inspire people like you?" the young man asked.

Yes, I told him. And he smiled.

A paradox. And unfair.

This is life.