The enormous privilege of life

Ian McDonald

WALKING IN our garden until night finally obscured a glorious setting of the sun, my wife showed me through tree branches the crescent of the moon riding in the black velvet of the night with a star close by like a spark from a silver fire. There are such times when life is so inexpressibly beautiful that tears come to the eyes before you can help yourself.

The enormous privilege of life is a mystery and a wonder which we cannot fathom. We should never stop thanking whatever Almighty God or Great Forcefield or Ten-dimensioned Symmetry has bestowed it on us. Everyone has a responsibility to pack every hour with a measureless delight. This underlying joy should not falter however encumbered with problems or distress life sometimes becomes. Among all that is woeful and stupid and ugly and agonising and even evil, there is a fundamental marvellousness about the one life each of us will ever have that makes it essential to find meaning and challenge and opportunity and pleasure in whatever we meet along the way, young or middle-aged or old.

The only thing that can sometimes undermine this fundamental joy in life is the thought that death will end it. That thought is unacceptable so we all fight not to accept it or, at least, not think of it for more than a flash. It was this thought, this dread, that kept plaguing the great Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy, even in the full glory of youth, health, love, and success. "My whole being aches with the need to live," he wrote, "the right to live, and the same moment I feel death at work...and then everything tells me the same story: there is nothing in life, nothing exists but death and death should not be!" He used to shout it even in the flow and ardour of his lavishly eventful life. "Death should not be!"

But of course it is. And yet that is all the more reason to welcome, to bless, to enjoy, to enrich and add to life while we have it. And all the more reason why it is difficult for me to understand, despite the powerful arguments advanced on the other side, how anyone, who stops to think for a minute, could advise abortion which deals in death and cuts short life with all its mystery and infinite potential. No argument for abortion stands up - and certainly no argument based on the mere convenience of others. Not even the argument that a child is likely to be born tragically deformed or retarded really stands up, though it is often used to justify ending a pregnancy.

Consider the case of Christy Nolan who was born with a body utterly shattered by cerebral palsy - completely incapable of speech, with hardly any control of his muscles so that he twitches uncontrollably, unable to walk or talk or feed or help himself or do the simplest, normal things.

Much better dead, you might say, much better never alive - better for himself, better for his family, better for society where he would only be a burden.

And yet you must think again about Christy Nolan. Make no such judgement on his behalf or on his family's behalf. He is acknowledged as one of Ireland's best writers. At 22 he won the Whitbread Book-of-the-Year award, one of the most prestigious in the literary world, for his book Under The Eye of the Clock.

What is he, this utterly shattered human being?

He is, quite simply, a marvellous writer, his mind as clear and piercing as any that has existed. Christy Nolan learned, gradually and with infinite pain and care, to communicate by a system of eye movements. With further infinite pain and care, he learned to tap out words on a typewriter with a 'unicorn stick' attached to his forehead and with the assistance and dedicated love of his amazing mother. She joined in the agonisingly slow task of composition by supporting his head at the typewriter as he tapped out a few words every hour.

Listen to him write about his birth:

"About death there is no secret. Joseph Mecham knows that,

after all he has been there and back. He dwelt among the Gods for his two fobbed hours but life claimed him back,

copperfastened him and called him free... Better dead said the

crones, better dead said history, better jump in at the deep

and decided her strong soul as she heard his crestfallen cry.

His mother it was who treated him as normal, tumbled to his intelligence, tumbled to his eye-signalled talk, tumbled to the hollyberries, green yet, but holding promise of burning in red, given time, given home."

I defy anyone to read those lines carefully and not feel the glory as well as the sadness of life and not feel as well how desperately important it is always to use life well and delight in it while we are allowed the privilege of going so - remembering the example of Christy Nolan with his shattered body and his gleaming mind.

In accepting the Whitbread Award Christy Nolan, through his mother, said "Tonight is my night for laughing, for crying tears of joy. But wait - my brothers hobble after me hinting "What about silent us, can we too have a voice?

In these words Christy Nolan heartrendingly reminds us that no life, however handicapped or hopeless, must never be neglected - and teaches us also, those of us who are too used to grumbling over small problems, a lesson about how we need to live our lives to fullest value.

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