Death My Inspiration
Death has always been my greatest inspiration.
There’s something hauntingly beautiful, tremendously sad, freeing and devastating about saying a final goodbye. You leave a piece of yourself with the other person a piece you won’t ever get back, you feel it and you see it as you look over your shoulder and take a final glance. You feel the tears well up in your eyes and you walk out of the room hurriedly staring at the ground, but you don’t cry because you know it’s for the best.
There’s a desire to be a better human, you walk away inspired, wanting to show them what you can make of yourself but knowing they won’t ever see the result but I’m not sure that matters, I don’t think it ever did. You know there won’t be a bounce back, you know keeping them in your thoughts won’t miraculously save them, you just hope it’s peaceful, you hope there’s someone there in the final moments because you can’t be, you hope the last thought is a good one. You hope they were proud of you — no, you need them to be because you realise you were trying to make them proud the whole time.
Death carries a weight the moment won’t ever be able to compartmentalise. There’s a truth, a moment of quiet, an ongoing pain in which can’t be filled with cheap moments. An important person can’t just disappear from your life, but anyone who has lived knows how naïve that thought is.
This story starts with the hardest goodbye of my life, to my Grandfather. Lolo. My Grandfather was Spanish and as a child, I couldn’t pronounce Abuelo properly and could only pronounce Lolo. As a result, the name stuck, with myself being the first Grandchild I had naming rights.
My Grandparents, immigrants from Spain in the early 1960’s both stubborn but both with a heart of gold. I think my belief of anything being possible stems from them carving out a life for themselves in Australia. I am so proud to come from their family.
With the first two paragraphs written in this story, written as a goodbye tribute. Which I wrote the moment I left the hospital, tears streaming down my face, knowing the following day I’d be flying 4000km across the country to return to work. I skipped the funeral; I’d done all I could for my Mum and Grandmother (Lela) and had their blessing. And knowing my Grandfather he wouldn’t have wanted a funeral anyway, not his thing he’d always say. Instead, I took students on a snow trip and gave him a tribute at the top of a black run on the far side of the mountain overlooking a deep valley. I left behind a small object he once gave me that had absolutely no significance other than it had been given to me by him. I cried at the top, my ski goggles catching my tears — with the refelctive lenses suggesting I was happy. In truth devastated.
Typing this, I realise it’s been exactly two years since his passing, to the day. Something fitting about writing this today, something eerie.
A few weeks had passed, and as any death occurs life just moves forwards, not caring. Life finds a way, even when our hearts are in pain.
Something happened after Lolo died, and it didn’t happen instantly and in fact, it took the better part of a few months to intrude into my life. I thought I was okay, I kept busy, I wrote, I read, I met new people, I escaped. Then there was a moment. It was something small at first.
A negative comment was made about my hands, and I retreated into my turtle shell. Three months before I would have stood up for myself. I would have politely told the person where to shove it, responding with a sarcastic comment or just simply smiling and taking the comment in as fuel. Now I took it in, felt it and retreated. This wasn’t who I was, not in the slightest.
I should give some context, I was born with a rare disease known as ‘Congenital hand and foot difference’, which is known as a central defect, where there is an absence of the central rays. This essentially means I was born with two toes on each foot, and four fingers on each hand. With many surgeries, hospital visits and doctor appointments I have great functionality and very few limitations.
I have a disability. I’m proud to say it, it’s part of my identity.
I sat at the local pub with a mate later that night, he was excited about something and was chatting away. A warming beer sat in front of me, I was stunned with myself. Having an inkling of what had happened earlier in the day, yet not sure how to put it into words. I quietly sat and drank my beer, with a slight smile on my face, pretending it was all fine.
This cycle repeated itself half a dozen times over the next couple of months. Each time I reflected, now however getting angry and frustrated. There are mean, hurtful and rude comments directed at me often. Usually about how my hands and feet look. It isn’t unusual to have one comment a week, and it isn’t uncommon to have a couple of months without a single comment and then having multiple in a week. There isn’t a way to be prepared for them other than to be ready at all times.
I’m sure some people don’t mean to be hurtful; hurtful is still difficult to deal with. I did a lot of work to get to a stage in which they didn’t hurt anymore, and to suddenly have that ripped away was crippling. I walked everywhere without shoes for a month to get used to the stares and standing up against the comments. I had uncomfortable conversations with family, friends and strangers. I forced myself into a position where dealing with it was the only way. I turned my heart into stone to bounce off mean people. No more hiding my disability. I turned this disability into my identity. The best thing that had ever happened to me.
It was now back with a vengeance, ready to fight and destroy everything I’d ever worked for.
In the depth of one of my fitness trends, I got up at 5 am to run before the heat of the day and 12 kilometres in I stopped at a start. My feet grinding to a halt, my hamstrings straining under the unexpected pressure, sweat running down my entire body. The sun just beginning to rise. It was all because my Grandfather Lolo had passed away.
He was part of my strength, and with him gone I’d lost just what I needed to be that version of myself.
I unlocked a memory, a wave of grey clouds rolling in over the harbour. Getting pulled back against my will, the past, I’m resisting. I’m sitting at my grandparent’s kitchen table. I’m 10, and my grandfather asks about my hands and how people treat me. I tell him everything. This becomes a running theme throughout the years. He would curse and say something along the lines of ignore them, you can do everything they can do and more. I remember the kitchen being remodelled; I remember the slightest changes in the house. The slightest changes in our relationship. As the years went on, and I grew older the conversations started to get more serious, with more curse words — always in Spanish as if they didn’t count when spoken in Spanish. I recall having the conversation in some different places. Always private, always ending in the same way. He’d take my hand a squeeze it, look off into the distance and come back and kiss my hand. I’ve never told anyone. These moments felt too pure. Always thinking back to them when someone was mean.
This acted as a reminder. This created a centre. This made me feel I had a forever supporter. No one else talked to me in this way.
This conversation didn’t happen every time I saw him, but every now and then. Twice a year, maybe more, maybe less. It wasn’t until a year after he died that I realised how important this was. I think that is why it mattered. I’d lost the piece which had made me strong about the situation in the first place.
Death takes away some strange things.
Losing the safety net, the piece that held everything together for me.
My disability went from the best thing which had ever happened to me when my Grandfather was alive to the worst.
Now I had to go out into the world and generate that part on my own and I honestly didn’t feel ready for that. The unfortunate truth about death is in most cases it forces you to grow up, and in my case, it forced me to man up and do this thing alone.
It wasn’t easy to start, there were days in which I cried, there were days I looked for distraction, there were moments I gave up. I went deep and reflected on those conversations had throughout my life, the part in which had changed is I simply stopped believing those things which were said were true. I needed to go back to believing those things from him and myself.
And then one day it all clicked. I’d regained my steps. Reclaimed part of me which had moved on.
The number one thing I learned is this whole thing is a journey. It’ll never be done; I am going to need to put work into this until the day I die. And that’s okay.
I lost someone important to me, and I lost the part of me which allowed me to accept myself with a disability. Except it wasn’t lost, it just felt that way as I mourned a man I loved.
I needed this lesson, a reminder of the journey. A reminder of wanting to speak up in the disability space. A reminder of who I am. And when a student this week called my hands disgusting, I simply replied with that’s your opinion with a smile on my face.
Death changes us for the better, often igniting us to become better versions of ourselves. Inspiring us and reminding us we might not get a tomorrow. The moment we have now matters.
Life is inspiring, and death is just as inspiring because it reminds us to live our own lives.
We never stop learning, lifelong learning speaks of the mindset we all must have towards our lives.
My heart no longer felt cemented in stone, but free to pump until it can't anymore.
Once again my disability being the best thing that ever happened to me.
Tim Hart is a teacher, writer and outdoor enthusiast. He’s a sad song loving Australian living all over the country. He is constantly chasing the next adventure and thinks you should be too. You can subscribe to his email list here.
