Dyl pushed her onto a swell, and even though she didn’t stand, she rode the wave for a good fifty metres. I rode every inch with her in my mind. I had a wonderfully proud moment as she drifted off the swell, but at the same time I felt frustrated and guilty. Frustrated that it wasn’t me pushing her in and sharing that experience with her, and guilty because I was depriving her of a father–daughter connection. Instead, she and I had to rely on other people in these situations.
But then after that wave she came racing up to me with a massive grin, with the obvious surf stoke. ‘Did you see me? Did you see me?’
I instantly felt better, and I am forever grateful that I’m still here to at least witness those moments, that I have a child and that I can watch her grow. I constantly remind myself that things could have been so much more terrible; there is always someone in a worse situation who is doing it tougher than me.
I’m keen for Bowie to play sports, both as an individual and within a team. I’m a firm believer that sport can give you plenty of tools for life – decision-making, teamwork and dealing with both pressure and loss.
We’ve started with tennis, nippers and netball. My favourite times of the week are rolling along and watching her from the sidelines, practising and playing. Another thing I’ve come to realise is that Bowie is very skilful at most things and picks them up quickly, which I’m proud of. (She sometimes shows a lazy attitude, already mastering the skill of cutting corners, which I can’t really get cross about since I probably passed it on!)
All I want to do is play – play and teach Bowie and the rest of the kids. I desperately want to pass on my knowledge, but most kids look at me with puzzled expressions, not understanding that I haven’t always been in a chair.
Caring for Bowie has also been a challenge, although she’s inherited the independent gene from me. As the years have clicked over, she does more for herself as well as helping me when needed. I’ve tried to keep her involvement at zero, but unfortunately there have been times when I’ve had no other option. Guilt rears its head here as well; she shouldn’t have to do some of the things she’s had to do at such a young age.
What does amaze me is how, from a very early age, Bowie has been able to identify when I really do need help and jump in without questions. If I’m being a bit lazy, she’ll make me do it myself.
I’m forever trying to think of things we can play together or places we can go that aren’t so physically demanding. It has been years of equal portions of joy, pride, satisfaction, frustration, anger and guilt – a roller-coaster ride of emotions. The same as every parent, I guess, just a little more intense.
Living without any hand function has been incredibly challenging, especially when I can move my arms. There isn’t a lot you can do without the dexterity of your fingers. It’s like living with oven mitts on.
Doctors got back in contact with me twelve months after I left rehab in Moorong. They wanted to explore the possibility of doing a procedure on my fingers and forearm called a ‘tendon transfer’. We met back at Royal North Shore, where nothing much had changed, except for maybe a few more holes in the ceiling. They quickly determined that I was a candidate and explained what a tendon transfer is and what I could expect the result to be.
The procedure involves borrowing a tendon from your upper arm then grabbing the dormant tendons through your fingers and thumb, and tying them all together in a double knot in my forearm. I would be able to have some type of hand grip powered by my upper arm – it sounded awesome!
It would mean two fairly complicated surgeries six months apart with about six weeks’ downtime after each surgery, during which my arm would be in a full plaster cast from my fingers to my shoulder. I was reluctant – I had spent a year at home learning how to live in this new body and moving forward slowly, and the last thing I wanted was to go backwards and be fully reliant on others again.
Reflecting on it now, going ahead with the procedure was one of my better decisions. Just having one hand with a grip has made life a lot easier in a very difficult world. My fingers don’t work independently and they look a bit strange at times. I have found some things more challenging than before the surgery, but I can do so much now, so it’s still a positive. There was an invitation to have the other hand done as well, but I decided not to pursue that, since I now have one hand with a grip that is sometimes too stiff and another one that’s supple and can be manipulated into certain positions for certain functions.
Two years after returning home, my marriage fell apart. I remember talking with one of the nurses at rehab about relationships after SCI. She had seen a lot in her fifteen years on the ward, and she said that SCI either makes or breaks the relationship – there is no in-between. I kept that conversation to myself.
Unfortunately, Aimee and I fell under the latter scenario. Obviously, it didn’t happen overnight. I knew our separation was approaching, but it was still a huge shock coming home one day to find half the house gone, my daughter gone … even the dog was gone. Total silence.
It was the moment where my heart broke forever. It had been getting chipped away in the years since the accident, and this finished it off. I lay there in bed that night on my own, unable to move, wondering how I could survive this. Hadn’t I been through enough? I’d always leaned on the fact that I had a family to get me over the line.
I wondered in the darkness what my next move was, until I made a promise to myself: just be the best father you can be. I knew it was going to be a hard slog, but I had no choice. I simply had to wipe the tears away forever and make sure to be there for my girl. It was Bowie I lived for, Bowie who I woke up for each day. My sole purpose was to be a good role model.
My social life suffered, too, but more so because of me than my friends. I still feel like I’m a burden to everyone. Plans are made to accommodate me, which unsettles me. I can’t box it up in my mind; it’s always there. It just doesn’t feel right. I want everyone to go on with their original plan and enjoy their lives.
That is compounded by the fact that I’m usually freezing and uncomfortable, and I struggle with body language and not being understood properly. I can’t mingle freely in large groups, so I end up feeling like a mushroom somewhere off to the side. When I do engage in talking – or yelling, in my case – people can hardly hear me over the noise, which exhausts me more than pushing for a couple of kilometres.
Even though I’m with friends, being out isn’t a great experience anymore, so more often than not I choose to stay out of the picture.
I used to love spending time in the water with my mates, sharing what we’re all so passionate about, talking boards and general life stuff.
I still enjoy going down to the beach to watch when it’s pumping, but that’s all I’m doing – watching – and I can’t get to a lot of places on my own as they are mostly tucked away. But, again, I don’t want people changing their plans just so I can come along. I miss surfing terribly, my long-lost love.
Sparkes: I don’t think Dazza’s accident changed my view of surfing. I take it as one of those freak accidents. A million-to-one shot. We’ve all broken boards; we’ve all landed on boards. I still can’t work out how it actually happened. If someone asked me, I don’t think I could answer.
But it changed me in other ways. I was single. I didn’t have any cares in the world. Some of my friends had kids, and I’d seen Dazza with Bowie, but I never thought, ‘Oh, I want that.’
I was happy just surfing and travelling, but the accident stopped me in my own way. It made me think that there’s more to life than what I was doing. Then I met Arna.
In the past I’d met girls but never wanted a serious relationship, but Dazza’s accident made me realise that life is short. We could’ve lost him in the blink of an eye.
I have to admit that it changed my life – for the better. I’ve got my son, Sam, and another bub on the way, and I don’t know if that would’ve happened without the accident.
During those walks from the hos
pital in Singapore, and even when I got back home lying in bed at night, I’d think, What am I doing? I’m in my mid-thirties and all I do is surf and travel. When am I going to grow up? I was living a good lifestyle – don’t get me wrong – but it was time to look for more.
It didn’t change my view of surfing, but it did change the rest of my life. Daz and I used to surf a lot, more than our other friends, and I was always asking, ‘What’s wrong with them?’
But now? I haven’t surfed for five months or so. I don’t miss it. When you’ve got family, things can change. Before we had Sam, I’d be surfing constantly. Now, if I do get spare time, I want to spend it with Sam. The whole of last summer I was out in the water with Sam, and I absolutely loved it. It was the best time I’ve ever spent in the water.
Being in the ocean was my life, and I often wondered what I could do to get back in the water. I always enjoyed paddling around, so I thought I could go paddling again if I got the right board. I could spend time in deeper ocean water, or cruise around on flat water in a lake or on a river. A couple of friends helped me out the first time, and I surprised myself at how natural it felt being in the water, even if I was drifting, feeling the water moving against my arms, splashing over me, or gazing through to the ocean bed. It was like coming home.
On one of my paddles, I tried catching a wave as we were coming back into a river mouth. I was with a few friends and thought I’d just give it a crack. The board I was paddling was designed for that purpose, definitely not for catching waves. The wave was only small, but it was at my favourite beach where I spent so many hours growing up, where it slaps down hard on the bank.
I caught it with a little push from my friends, before going arse-over-head over the falls and getting smashed. My friends came rushing in and I popped up with a big grin on my face. We shared a loud laugh before they picked me up and threw me back on the board. So far it’s the only wave I’ve caught since my accident.
After leaving hospital I threw myself into the business again, doing as much as I could, before I realised that there was a lot more physical activity involved, which I never thought about before the accident. The frustration tormented me. I had to rely fully on my staff to read my mind or take my instructions without being able to get in there and help. I’ve always tried to lead from the front, to get my hands dirty with the team, but now I was in danger of barking from up the back. It also came at a cost, since I had to pay for extra labour to cover for me. The GFC had come and gone, and we were still picking up the pieces from the fallout, which was significant, as well as the impact of our time away. Not having me in the water talking up surfboards also had a huge impact – it’s where I made a lot of sales, and it was something I enjoyed immensely, passing on knowledge that had been passed to me – so we were hit from multiple fronts.
When Aimee and I broke up, she left the business, along with my manager just a month later. This left me feeling even more isolated and alone. For a while I really didn’t enjoy spending time in the shop. It felt like I had one too many punches and I was knocked out on the canvas, wondering if I should get back up.
One of my suppliers had been flirting with the idea of opening another store in Kiama using their branding. At first I wasn’t interested, since I wasn’t enjoying retail, but as time went on it seemed more and more attractive. Eventually I decided to take the plunge and see where it could go. The second store presented exciting challenges. Looking back now, it was what I needed to keep my mind ticking.
I’ve always had plans to travel, and not just with a big bag of surfboards. I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it until much later in life. At first it seemed very daunting, leaving my safe space at home, where I had most things if something were to go wrong. Travelling to different parts of the world comes with extra problems when you’re in a wheelchair. You have more equipment to take. You have pressure issues while you’re seated in one position for long periods of time, like on a long-haul flight. You have the dreaded Russian roulette of bowel management to contend with, and then there’s adjusting to other places that may not be well suited to wheelchairs (which seems like everywhere). I quickly realised that I couldn’t travel alone anymore.
I’ve been lucky to have visited Europe, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and Hawaii, along with both coasts of America – some trips with Bowie, some without.
I got to visit my beloved Arsenal in London and watch a couple of home games, along with some other matches.
Being an Aussie abroad gave us plenty of laughs, doing things the unconventional way, things that people wouldn’t normally do in a wheelchair: bouncing up and down old stairways in castles, carried like some sort of Egyptian king above the heads of regular subway travellers, thrown over the shoulders of Gooners walking down the long stairs at Finsbury Park station in London.
It’s also great for the people I’m travelling with. I always go to the front of the line or get to enter through secret doors and down unusual routes. While visiting the Louvre, we were taken through many passageways and rooms that are normally blocked off from the public but show off magnificent views and hidden treasures. I have sat in the golden room at Wembley Stadium, a place reserved for the royals, off limits to common folk but the only way for me to lift the FA Cup on display.
I got to take Bowie to visit my special place: Hawaii. I had a great time showing her all the spots I’d loved over the years. We had a trip to Disneyland, where I spent every minute watching her eyes grow wide with excitement, a constant smile on her face. I probably looked the same.
Navigating the streets of New York and Central Park with Bowie on my lap was one of the highlights of my life. Everywhere we turned we recognised places we’d seen before on the screen. Travelling has opened up a world that I thought I would be cut off from, being in a wheelchair.
One particularly funny moment happened in Las Vegas when I was exploring the strip with Bowie and my niece, Sienna. We were in an elevator when Sienna tried to climb up onto the rail. She stepped on the back of my chair and flipped me over, sending me crashing onto my back. The doors opened and the girls ran out, not knowing what to do, before the doors shut again, leaving me helpless on my back. Luckily, the lift hadn’t moved and I could hear the girls crying outside. I was trying to yell, ‘It’s okay! Just push the button again!’ But they couldn’t hear me.
Luckily a family noticed the girls, who said between sobs that I was stuck in the lift. They opened the door, not expecting to see an upside-down wheelchair and legs sticking up in the air. I heard a ‘Bloody hell!’ They flipped me up pretty easily, and I came out of the lift without a scratch, reassuring the girls I was fine and thanking the family for their help.
We were about to head off when, in typical American fashion, a security guard came flying around the corner on a segway, blowing a whistle and strongly insisting on a report of what had happened. I reciprocated in typical Aussie fashion, ‘I’m fine, mate. See ya later,’ and we left, laughing while the guard was still blowing his whistle.
In the ten years since my accident, it’s been a constant learning experience of how to adapt to my injured body and how to overcome obstacles that seem at first to be impossible.
I have experienced human behaviour like a weird social experiment, how different people react – or in some cases don’t react – to someone living in a wheelchair.
I find it hard to get offended, but I’ve been pushed to the edge by some behaviour that I know wasn’t intended to come off that way. And I’ve felt warmth and compassion from others where I had expected the worst.
I’ve almost accepted the continual stares you get in all sorts of places while just going about your day. Then there’s the constant remarks from people who don’t know what to say, but who are hoping to come across as helpful or cheerful or who have forgotten that it’s only my body that’s paralysed, not my brain!
I still discover new things about myself every day, things I don’t think I would have discovered had I not been
injured. Overcoming tiny things that I struggled with at first gives me great satisfaction. To this day, I give things a go and still come away with wins, albeit sometimes slowly. I gain inspiration from hearing all the good stories and happy endings in the world; it generates enough energy in me to keep pushing on.
I can’t ignore the cold hard fact that I need to live in a wheelchair for the rest of my life, and the feeling that life has ripped me off, but it also gives me extra fight. The task each day is to search for silver linings. I’ve learned patience, acceptance and resilience on a greater level because of it, and I look at life in a whole different way.
First and foremost, I focus on being grateful that I’m here. Learning through a crisis and being blessed by struggle allows me to strip back all the unimportant noise. It lets me focus on the very simple things in life that give me great joy: the energy from the sun, watching the ocean move, reading and learning about new things, and of course the laughter of my precious girl, Bowie.
When I look back on my life, I feel proud of what I achieved and the experiences I had before my injury, as well as what I’ve done since. It feels like I’ve already packed a lot into my life.
If I were granted one wish for a day it would be to piggyback Bowie down to the beach with a ball and a bunch of surfboards. I’d play with Bowie all day and share the surf stroke, teaching her all about the longest and deepest relationship I’ve had in my life before heading out on my own and blowing away years of frustration.
I really only have two regrets. I always wanted to have more than one child, and I feel guilty that I couldn’t father a brother or sister for Bowie, to give her that best friend for life. The other regret is that I really wish I had concentrated more on that bail-out in the Mentawais on 20 May 2008. I occasionally reflect on what my life could have been if not for the accident, but it’s more with puzzlement rather than anguish. I see no point on dwelling on the what-ifs. The milk has been spilt, and there is no gain in crying over it.
Owen and Eleanor Make Things Up Page 26
