Elizabeth was the girl with everything: good
looks, high and active intelligence, and a wealthy family. Beyond these
advantages, she bubbled with life, she loved people and people loved her.
She was confident after the final school exams,
relieved they were over. All those years of school finished now, the excitement
of university, a career, a family, travel; these things were hers to choose.
But tonight was a night for letting her hair down, so Elizabeth was happy to
join her friends as they drove off to celebrate.
No-one
accused them of drinking to excess, or speeding, although they did have too
many passengers in the car. Put it down to youthful exuberance and lack of
skill. Elizabeth, sitting on her girl friend's lap, unrestrained, was thrown
forward by the impact, and snapped her neck at the fourth vertebrae. She would
be lucky to live. Or perhaps unlucky in the eyes of some, because she would
certainly never walk again, would spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair,
would have minimal control over her body functions, would require constant
attention and nursing.
She was a road victim.
“I didn’t need you to tell me that everything
in my life, even this, was there because I chose it. Not that I believe that,
of course, it just seemed to be the only productive belief to choose. It got me
off my grief and anger and denial, and from that moment life got better, not
worse.
“I prayed a lot, and everything changed when I
changed my prayer from ‘Why me?’ to ‘Show me!’
“I mean, it doesn’t seem much of a life, does
it, in a wheelchair for the rest of my life, my body has spasms that exhaust
me, I am totally dependent on other people. So I could sit here and be bitter,
and gather people around me who sympathise with my plight, and blame my friends
for what happened; and I did that for a while. But that’s a pretty dark, narrow
dead end, it leads nowhere. What happened, happened. And I really got pissed
off with people treating me like this poor victim, and they were pissed off
with it too, and embarrassed. They thought I was helpless.
“The only way forward is to take responsibility
for it and for the future. So choosing to believe that I chose it gave me the
power to choose the future. Choosing to believe that it was the best thing that
could ever happen to me, because I chose it out of love and wisdom for myself,
gave me the power to look at the future positively, to look for the value in my
situation.
“So I concentrated on what I could do, not what
I couldn’t, and now look at what I can do! I live in a world of can do, not
can’t do. People talk to me about what I can do, not what I can’t do, and we
all get excited about it. I live an exciting life.
“I’m insane, aren’t I, to think like that! But
it works for me. And the more I choose to believe it, the more I believe it.”
Elizabeth has very little control, even
movement of her body below the neck. She has learned to work her wheelchair by
knocking the controls, by moving her hands a few centimetres, which is all the
movement available to her. With the same movement she paints.
Her paintings are full of wonderful movement.
She illustrates books and win exhibitions, and nowhere is it mentioned that she
is a quadriplegic. Her paintings stand on their own merit, Elizabeth pours life
into them.
Elizabeth chooses a life of beautiful
expression that most of us believe to be beyond us. She is an artist.
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