Normal is No Longer a Choice

​After my son Miles died, I thought about the vague state of being normal. I would never feel normal again, never see the world as normal again. Normal was never an aspiration, but sometimes you just want to roll along without bumps. Many of us have read the book Good to Great that sets up the perspective that Good is the enemy of Great. I have come to believe that Normal can sometimes be the enemy of Life.
 
The man in the photograph above is a childhood friend, Brad Parks. We went to school together, Boy Scouts, threw oranges when there still was a grove in our neighborhood, and those sorts of things. Brad always had better athletic skills. I remember a church camp in Jr. High when he casually walked out to the end of a narrowing pole extended over the lake. The rest of us were lucky to pass the half way mark before falling in.
 
We all went in different directions to college. During our freshman year, Brad, a competitive skier, was in a ski accident that paralyzed him below the waist. The news was a terrible shock to all of us. We couldn’t imagine this happening to someone so well defined by his athleticism. How could he cope?! In the mid-70’s, this usually meant an end to sports, let alone the dramatic adjustments he would now have to make in his life.
 
I thought often about Brad after Miles’ death. His loss of something so vital and our misperception that a big part of his life was over with the accident. Instead, Brad had quickly taken hold of his life again through determination, help and refusal to accept the tamped down expectations for paraplegics in the 1970’s. His living example became one of the bright lights at the end of my tunnel of grief, giving me the trust that a life robbed of hope can be made new again with a stronger sense of purpose. His example helped me to trust that the most horrible loss in my life would define much of my future. It was up to me to decide how that definition would be written.
 
It turned out that Brad was broken but not defeated. He got involved with some of the early wheelchair sports. He started hitting a tennis ball around with his dad. While in rehabilitation, one of his paraplegic therapists had designed a lighter, sturdier and more mobile wheelchair. He taught Brad how to make the same chair. A company was founded to produce the new chairs. A chair that was half the weight of the “normal” chair, without the push handles for the aid of another, and an axle and seat designed for the person in it to control movement. The shift in design seemed as dramatic psychologically as it did visually. Now the person in the chair was in control and self-driven. No longer a “patient” or a “weak” person needing assistance.
 
Hitting the tennis ball around with his dad led to a small group creating the National Foundation of Wheelchair Tennis. He became the president of the new International Wheelchair Tennis Foundation in 1988. The sport grew from virtually no one in the 1970’s to 1,500 in ’85 to a sport played in 100 countries today. Brad’s skill in tennis competition and development of the sport was recognized with his induction into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and with the premier wheelchair tennis award named after him.
 
More than this, so much more than this, the new chair design and wheelchair tennis are responsible for getting thousands of people out of hidden lives. Sadness, lack of hope, shame or that terrible sense that their lives were now just an existence without the use of their legs contributed to many young paraplegics staying indoors. Brad, and others, showed that athleticism and dreams didn’t die with the loss of mobile legs – they just needed new tools and the desire to keep passions alive. I can’t overstate how much Brad’s example meant to me and to many. For paraplegics, it is now assumed that many will be able to live active, competitive lives. That wasn’t the assumption for them in the 1970’s. Without living in that time, it is hard to imagine how different the expectations were and how far they have moved. Now the “normal” chair is centered on the one seated and the question asked isn’t, “Will he be able to get around without help?”, but, “What sport will he play?” Brad and his peers forever changed lives!
 
“There will never come an end to the good that he has done,” is on a plaque in all National Parks to pay tribute to Stephan Mather, the Parks’ first Director. It is a powerful tribute to how a dream can benefit not only the dreamer, or those around him but also people in the future who may have little idea who changed things generations before. I believe it can also be said about my friend Brad. Lives have been changed in profound ways because of him. Lives in our generation and for generations to come because Brad and others refused to change their goals, refused to lie down or live the expected stereotype of what a paraplegic was supposed to be in the 1970’s.
 
I have not had a lunch with Brad since maybe a year before Miles had died. Part of it was laziness on my part but part of it was my freezing Brad as an arc type or hero for my own needs. I didn’t want to run things past him or ask for insights after loss. Maybe it is my problem, but it is how I work. As a result, I learned several things that helped me.
 
The first lesson I learned from Brad was to never think that you have to fall into line and exist the way everyone did before you with the same type of loss. “Your place” has more to do with your vision than with surrender to existence. The world before me has a huge void now – but it is still my world to live – my world to create. Existence has its struggles in acceptance of complacency. Life has its struggles in carving your own path. Life is so much more rewarding than existence. It gives you passion for your goals, determination to overcome failures, belief that your new path is worth all of its struggles, and that this life – even with its terrible loss, its shattered expectation of calm - is a life more worth living.
 
The second lesson is that great things can come from great loss. That’s what I’ve learned from Brad and it has been important in knowing that there would be some level of redemption in my loss. That was what I had to look at in my journey – not the absence of my son that would always be present. Brad is a living model of how we can bring greatness out of our tragedies. This doesn’t develop into a rainbow for me and I’ve never asked Brad how he sees his change. Miles is never coming back and neither is my choice to have my old self back. But I have learned that loss demands a better me than I ever would have been without loss. Someone who can bring more good into the world than I may have been content with in the past. Brad is an inspiration to me and an influence on how I have come to see the scholarship established in Miles memory. I want it to live on beyond the days Miles could have lived and be a blessing for the young men who receive it. Drawing out the greatness that is in you never seemed more urgent or necessary. Normal never seemed more like an enemy.
 
Miles would have been 26 years old April 17. I’ve written a letter on his birthday the last four years as a help to me and a hope that it provides encouragement to others. My thanks to Brad for letting me write about your amazing life. Thanks to all of you for reading this letter.