About eight years ago a couple of friends and I went to visit a mutual friend in Indonesia, who still lives and works out there doing conservation research. When visiting one of the smaller islands off Bali, just like the cliched Western tourists that we were, we hired scooters from our hotel. About 5 minutes down the road, I was behind my friend as we coasted along a panoramic seascape to the left, with the road lined by endless palm trees on the right. I still remember what happened next with uncanny clarity, as if it only happened yesterday.
As we motored along I watched, almost in slow motion, as a huge branch detached for no apparent reason from one of the palm trees. It fell directly downwards in a plum vertical line, hardly otherwise moving at all. As my friend rode forwards oblivious, the branch continued downwards, with uncanny accuracy, before landing directly on the helmet he was (thankfully) wearing. For a split second I thought he would be able to avoid disaster and somehow control his forward momentum, despite the impact. But then the inevitable happened and he skidded out along the tarmac. The result was a horrendous burn-slash-graze from one foot up to his hip. We sought immediate medical attention from the small local clinic, but unsurprisingly given the tropical conditions and lack of advanced healthcare, serious infection soon set in. By the time he made it back to the UK it was touch and go whether plastic surgery would be required to save his leg. Luckily he avoided this fate and the infection was cleared, leaving him only with some-not-too obvious scars and a good story to tell about his antics managing to get home.
In the aftermath of the accident it occurred to me that in order for my friend to be hit by that falling branch, then absolutely everything that had preceded him in his life had to have happened at the precise second that it did. A delay of a second or two, at literally any other prior moment in his life, would have meant he crossed paths with that branch at a time when it would have missed him. Had we left the hotel five seconds earlier, or five seconds later, it would have just been a normal day on holiday (ignoring for now the possibility that the branch would have hit me instead). Indeed, had I not stopped my friend to advise him to wear shoes rather than sandals whilst riding a scooter (which for the record, he ignored!), then we would have left earlier than we did. Such is the irony: in attempting to help prevent him suffering a serious injury, I inadvertently helped cause him one, by ensuring that he passed under that palm tree at the precise moment that he did.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I've been thinking about this sort of thing a lot since my own rather more serious accident. What if the computer that decides my climbing partner's shift rota had put him at work that day? What if we had gone and climbed the classic route on the other side of the mountain, one that we were also contemplating that morning? What if it had been raining rather than perfect summer conditions? What if I had overslept, and we had gone up the mountain later only for some other poor bastard to have the rocks shatter on them instead of me? What if I had gone back to London to prepare for a job interview, that I in the end did not apply for, instead of staying in Scotland? What if that palm tree branch had hit me instead of my friend, diverting my life on to a different path? What if I had never gone to California all those years ago, never met the friend who introduced me to outdoor climbing and got me hooked after Yosemite showed me what the sport could be? What if I had never broken up with that girlfriend a decade ago, and most probably never discovered climbing in the first place? And so on.
As is pretty evident, this way madness lies. I can pick pretty much anything that ever happened in my life, and imagine that if only it had gone slightly differently, then I would not now be stuck in a wheelchair, living in a care home, struggling to make sense of how I can live a meaningful life anymore. And yet despite knowing that this is a hiding to nothing, I find it almost impossible not to fall into doing it throughout the day. Indeed, my current favourite waste of time is to fall asleep telling myself that tomorrow morning I'm going to wake up in my van on a beautiful day in Glen Coe. I'll shrug off the most bizarre of extended nightmares, go to the toilet like it's nothing (because why wouldn't it be?), and call my friend. Either we go and climb one of the thousands of other routes available in Glen Coe, or if we pick the fated route after all, this time at the crucial moment I will stick further left rather than drifting right. This time, the rocks don't break. After all, having one's life destroyed is a simply disproportionate price to pay for going a metre or two the wrong way - and that kind of thing doesn't happen to me. My partner follows me to the top of the mountain, we pack the rope and gear, and descend alongside the usual hill walkers, laughing and joking after another classic ascent completed. Summer continues, as it was planned. More climbing trips than you could shake a stick at, because I'm coasting off the back of a new book coming out soon. My life goes on.
Instead, of course, I wake up in a nursing home, shaking off that annoying recurring dream. It's the one where I've started climbing again, rebuilding my strength and confidence. I've only been top roping indoors (the safest form of climbing, where the rope is in situ above you and falls are essentially risk free), but I'm ready to start climbing outside again. The only problem is my mum and dad sold all my gear when I was in hospital, not to mention my van. I wake up irritated because it's going to cost me thousands of pounds to replace it all, and they should have had more faith in me that I would get better. Then I remember that I can't move my legs, or sit up by myself, or use my hands. I try to go back to sleep, at least until the night staff close their shift by sticking suppositories up my arse.
It should be obvious from all of this that in a very real sense I am not coping. It has been nearly eight months since I realised that climbing was gone forever for me. So why the endless fantasising? Why the recurring dreams? Why the multiple episodes a day when I start thinking about the fact that I will never climb again, and can't stop myself from tearing up? (For what it's worth, writing that sentence produced the same effect.)
One answer, I suppose, is that I'm still grieving. That might sound strange. After all, nobody died. But as various professionals have said to me, what I'm going through is nonetheless a kind of bereavement. I have lost the person I used to be. But I have also lost the future that I planned on living, had long expected to be mine. And as of yet, there is nothing to fill that void; my life is in limbo. My occupational therapist in rehab told me one morning that I need to give myself time to grieve. And ultimately, eight months just isn't that long for grief to pass. In other words, I – one of the most impatient people you could ever meet – once more must accept the need for patience.
But it is also more than that. Back when I was vegetating in the hospital in Whitechapel, the psychiatrist who often came to speak to me introduced the idea of radical acceptance. The idea here is to uncouple two things that we normally think go together. In the case of ordinary acceptance, we accept something because we are happy with it, or at least OK with it. They're basically two sides of the same coin. The idea behind radical acceptance, by contrast, is that you accept that something is the case, whilst simultaneously not being OK with it. That is what makes it radical. And you can see why a psychiatrist would sensibly introduce me to this concept. After all how can I ever be OK with being quadriplegic, let alone happy with it? But if I can nonetheless accept it and move forward with my life, then I will do much better than if I refuse to accept reality.
And in some ways I am gradually getting there. I’m not happy about, or even particularly OK with, being doubly incontinent, having reduced sexual function, not being able to walk, being at risk to a host of serious medical complications, and all the rest of it. But I am gradually starting to accept that this is my reality. The fact that I live it every single day inevitably helps in this regard. But where I am absolutely not making progress is in dealing with the fact that I will never climb again. The moment I think about this, the fact that I am not even remotely OK with it overwhelms any progress towards acceptance. I want to pound the walls and scream it's not fair at a God that doesn't exist, a universe that doesn't care. Or else I simply want to curl up and cry, overwhelmed by the pain.
Which might seem strange. When one of my closest climbing partners came to visit me in rehab, he was surprised when I almost broke down whilst telling him that more than anything I just wanted to go climbing with my friends. He had assumed that because climbing nearly killed me, the last thing I would ever want to do again was climb. And I understand why someone would think that. After all, if the love of your life stabbed you in the heart and walked away leaving you to die, then surely she would stop being the love of your life? Turns out it's not that simple – especially if you knew all along that whilst beautiful, she was also a psychopath, and so there was always a chance that it might end this way.
The truth is, I'm simply not a climber anymore. I haven't touched chalk or tied in to a rope for over 8 months. And I never will again. Anybody who even glances at me now can know this instantly. No more adventures. No more travel. No more training. No more wilderness. No more challenges out in the mountains of Switzerland, or on the sea cliffs of Wales. No more certainty about how this was the passion that would fulfil me for the rest of my life, that I was so lucky to have found. Acceptance? Not even close. Rage and self-pity? Plenty of that left in the tank.
Only to say - 8 months to mourn such a loss? It’s NOTHING. Takes much longer.
Hi Paul. Once I have dried my tears I have to admire your writing. It is beautiful. Your metaphor about the beautiful, psychopathic girlfriend is brilliant.
For several decades I had a boyfriend who was clearly a psychopath. He was rugged and dangerous, fearless and unpredictable, except you could always predict that he would let you down, lie to you and betray you and when you remonstrated with him he would shrug his shoulders and say: 'Well, you already knew what I was like'. After he had broken my heart and stolen my money and my good name, more than once, at last I managed to finally break with him. My family and friends think I should hate him but I don't. I still think of him with love and regret. When I was with him the world was a more exciting place, my heart was lighter and I never knew what would happen. It was more than that but I can't explain. Now that is all behind me the world is duller and safer but I know that I will never forget but I forgive because that is his nature and his nature is what I loved.
Well, I know it's not relevant to you but I thought you might enjoy hearing about it. All my best wishes to you as always.