The Diving-Bell & the Butterfly

At the risk of plagiarism (I confess not to knowing the exact guidelines protecting a writer's work), I'd like to share this excerpt from the book entitled above. It was written by the former editor-in-chief of Elle magazine, Jean-Dominique Bauby, when he was literally imprisoned in his body following a massive cerebro-vascular accident. This left him 'paralysed, speechless and only able to move one muscle: his left eyelid'. He wrote this book blinking out each alphabet, and I think that act alone, plus the contents within, bears strong testament to how the human spirit can endure through even the greatest trails. This is for all those who think they have it hard. Enjoy...

From the chapter 'The Photo'...

"The last time I saw my father I shaved him. It was the week of my stroke. He was unwell, so I had spent the night at his small apartment near the Tuileries Gardens in Paris. In the morning, after bringing him a cup of milky tea, I decided to rid him of his few days' growth of beard. The scene has remained engraved in my memory. Hunched in the red-upholstered armchair where he sifts through the day's newspapers, my dad bravely endures the rasp of the razor attacking his loose skin. I wrap a big towel around his shriveled neck, daub thick lather over his face, and do my best not to irritate his skin, dotted here and there with small dilated capillaries. From age and fatigue, his eyes have sunk deep into their sockets and his nose looks too prominent for his emaciated features. But, still flaunting the plume of hair - now snow-white - that has always crowned his tall frame, he has lost none of his splendour. All around us, a lifetime's clutter has accumulated; his room calls to mind on of those old persons' attics whose secrets only they can know - a confusion of ancient magazines, records no longer played, miscellaneous objects. Photos from all the ages of man have been stuck into the frame of a large mirror. There is Dad, wearing a sailor suit and playing with a hoop before the Great War; my eight-year-old daughter in riding gear; and a black-and-white photo of myself on a miniature golf course. I was eleven, my ears protruded, and I looked like a somewhat simple-minded school-boy. Mortifying to realize that at that age I was already a confirmed dunce.

I complete my barber's duties by splashing my father with his favourite aftershave lotion. Then we say goodbye; this time, for once, he neglects to mention the letter in his writing-desk where his last wishes are set out. We have not seen each other since. I cannot quit my seaside confinement. And he can no longer descend the magnificent staircase of his apartment building on his ninety-two-year-old legs. We are both locked-in cases, each in his own way: myself in my carcass, my father in his fourth-floor apartment. Now I am the one they shave every morning, and I often think of him while a nurse's aide laboriously scrapes my cheeks with a week-old blade. I hope that I was a more attentive Figaro.

Every now and then he calls, and I listen to his affectionate voice, which quivers a little in the receiver they hold to my ear. It cannot be easy for him to speak to a son who, he well knows, will never reply. He also sent me the photo of me at the miniature golf course. At first I did not understand why. It would have remained a mystery if someone had not thought to look at the back of the print. Suddenly, in my own personal movie theatre, the forgotten footage of a spring weekend began to unroll, when my parents and I had gone to take the air in a windy and not very sparkling seaside town. In his strong, angular handwriting, Dad had simply noted: Berck-sur-Mer, April 1963."

If you've read this long, Berck-sur-Mer is the island on the French Channel coast where Jean-Dominique was hospitalized. I'd like to leave this chapter for each person to interpret in his/her own way, relate it to your current life if you would.

"...no one said life was a straight road, but that doesn't mean it can't be beautiful..."