It is hard to imagine the chaos within him; how confused, how disorientated he must have been inside his own head. I didn’t want to add to it all. We used to go to Browns together every Saturday night for dinner, it was one of those things we did ritualistically. I was amazed he even remembered Browns because he didn’t seem to remember much else. Anyway, I thought I should just play along. So I said, ‘We’ll do that later, darling, we’ll go later.’
Then he pulled himself up and said, ‘No. We’re going now.’
He was forcing himself to sit upright but he wasn’t physically able to, so he was swaying in bed – wires and all – like an unruly drunk.
I sat down beside him, tried to calm him. I said, ‘Yes, sure, we’ll go in a few hours.’
He got quite animated at this point, literally yelling, ‘I’ve got to go, I’ve got to go. I’ve GOT TO GO NOW.’
And then he tried to swing his legs over the side of the bed as if he were trying to stand up. But he couldn’t feel his legs, he had no sensation, so he couldn’t do it. The more he couldn’t do it, the angrier he seemed to get. When the nurses approached to help him back into bed, he stuck his arm out, trying to stop them, saying, ‘NO, it’s OK. Jo’s sorted it.’
The nurses said, ‘Declan, sit down now, please.’
I said, ‘Dec, we can’t go tonight, they’re fully booked.’
He was shouting now, at the top of his voice, ‘NO, NO, NO, we are going NOW.’
He was yanking at his tubes like a madman, so out of control that the nurses had to physically restrain him.
Then he swore. He never swore.
‘Who are these fucking people? No one tells me what to do. Jo, can you just sort it, please? Just sort it.’
I couldn’t sort it. I wasn’t God.
I left the room and locked myself in a bathroom and I cried. Then I laughed. I laughed at myself; at my naiveté. What did I think would happen? That everything would just go back to being the way it was? When you open someone’s head and you put it back again, how can it ever be the same?
It was about a week later that Declan got it into his head that he had recovered. He didn’t want to stay in the hospital, he said. He didn’t want care and he didn’t want the drugs. When he discussed this with me, he wasn’t asking for my opinion – he was telling me. I had never heard of anything more ludicrous than a man who had just had brain surgery suggesting he didn’t need medical assistance, but I didn’t argue. I didn’t try to change his mind. I went along with it.
I did this for three reasons. One, I was just beginning to understand the level of distress he was facing and I wasn’t about to add to his turmoil by dissenting. Two, I knew that when Declan was determined to do something, he would do it – he had been that successful in his career, only because of his grit, his steadfast determination. It was his way of being, and there was no changing his mind. Three, at that point in time, I was the only person he was allowing to even come close to him. I felt it was my role to stand by him, to support him, to trust him. And I did trust him. Declan had always known best what was right for him, even in the most difficult situations – I had to believe that it would be the same this time.
It wasn’t as easy to persuade the doctors, who were unequivocal that without medical care he stood no chance of recovery. But he argued so convincingly with his surgeons – this was a man who had won three racing appeals against the implacable stewards of the Jockey Club – that they finally relented. The team at The Walton Centre was so astonished by Declan’s boldness and his inexorable self-confidence that they shook their heads in amusement and asked me repeatedly, ‘Was he always like this?’
And so it was less than two weeks after the accident that we were brought home in an ambulance. It was a very poignant moment for me because when we got home later that day, and the ambulance left and I closed the door behind us, all help as I knew it stopped. It was just me and him. I’m still not sure to this day how we managed. It was all very organic. It wasn’t dissimilar to coming home from hospital having just had a baby, someone handing you the baby, saying, ‘There we go, that’s yours, look after it now.’ And you, not knowing anything about what to do, where to even begin, thinking, What am I going to do with this baby?
You make it up as you go along.
So we took it step by step, day by day. Time, light, darkness, day, night – it was all the same to him. He slept a lot, mostly during the day; often, he would fall asleep in the middle of a sentence, or just sitting on a chair. At night, he lay tossing and turning until the medication took over. Many times he would wake from that unnatural, induced sleep, drenched in sweat, screaming uncontrollably. When I asked what was wrong, he wouldn’t want to talk about it. ‘Nightmares,’ he would say, and then change the subject. I didn’t push it. I didn’t show any anxiety. I just pretended – like he did – that nothing had happened.
There were days when it was very hard. He had always been a strong, proud man. No matter how dire the circumstances, I had never seen him ask for help or support. Seeking help meant accepting your own vulnerability. And he viewed showing – or even recognizing – vulnerability as a weakness. He had once said to me, ‘No sane man would ever want to have a weakness exposed.’ And yet, those days, he couldn’t do a thing alone. He needed help to stand, to sit, to lie down, to get up. One of the first things he wanted to do when we came home was to shave. I tried to help him but he wanted to do it himself, even though it took him three hours.
He was very weak, because he couldn’t really eat. He could manage soft, mashed-up foods; he survived on fruit and water, really, for days on end. I had to help him bathe because I didn’t want him to slip on the wet floor. I know he hated it, and there were times when he would look away, as if he couldn’t bear to be there, as if he couldn’t bear that I was there, couldn’t bear the fact that our life had been reduced to this. Many times, I’d feel an indescribable sadness – for him, for me, for us. But we had no other option – he was still very, very injured. He had his bandages. He had the stitches. There was dried blood everywhere. Half his head was shaved. He had the long, curving 10-inch scar of the incision. Then there was the dent. It was horrendous.
One day, he asked me to put on the video of the accident. I said, ‘You can watch it if you want, but I’m not going to sit here with you.’ I walked out of the room; he watched it alone. People said that I must be a very strong person. I didn’t see it like that – from the moment I saw Declan fall, someone else was in my body. But as painful as it was for me, I cannot begin to imagine how difficult it must have been for him to come home. On some level, I’m sure it gave him comfort – at least in spirit – but on another level, it must have been hugely traumatic to cope with, because the balance of things had changed so drastically. Everything around him was the same – our house, the furniture, his clothes, our dogs, his pictures on our walls – but he wasn’t.
Ironically, what added to the whole thing was the fact that suddenly we had all this media attention. I was a professional model by now; he was a famous jockey, but somehow, Declan’s story seemed to capture the imagination of the world outside racing. My phone was ringing constantly – can we do this TV interview, can we broadcast live, can we have cameras when you arrive home? It was mad, really. A complete whirlwind. He had been elevated to celebrity status overnight, or we had, together, I suppose as a couple; because of our story, because it was one of triumph.
But I don’t know if it was that straightforward. He had survived, yes, and for that I would always be grateful. But he had changed. I never quite knew what he was thinking, what was going on inside his head, what he remembered, what he didn’t. He never spoke about it. He never spoke about the accident. He never spoke about how he felt. He became quiet, preoccupied, withdrew into himself. How do you analyse the psychology of a man who will reveal nothing of himself even to those closest to him? You don’t. You accept. You adapt. I did both. I was a new Joanna, he was a new Declan. Someone had drawn a line in the san
d and stupidly, unknowingly, we had crossed it.
When I was in my coma, I only heard one voice – it was Joanna’s. When I awoke from my coma, I only saw one face – it was Joanna’s. No one expected me to survive. But miraculously, I did. And so, in theory, for Joanna and me, you may believe that the hardest part was now behind us, that there seemed no reason why we could not rise from the ashes and continue to live the life we had lived before, together for ever.
Except life is rarely that simple.
Sometimes love stories have happy endings and sometimes they don’t. I wish I could tell you otherwise, but here’s the grown-up truth about love – it’s not always a fairy tale. I have thought about this long and hard, perhaps more so now, than then; the benefits of hindsight and perspective are a splendid thing. And here is where I come out. Love sustains life, there is no doubt about it, and that imbues it with an immortality greater than life itself.
In the depths of the crevasses of a glacier is an ice of a crystal blue, with a purity and a clarity that is startling. And yet the outer surface of most glaciers appears black from the residue of volcanic ash, or the stones and rocks, that have settled on it over time.
We are an imperfect people in an imperfect world.
And sometimes, even love is flawed.
When I woke from my coma, I didn’t remember Joanna in the way I was meant to.
I knew her, I drew more comfort from her than from anybody else, but she had morphed into someone from my childhood.
I loved her, but she felt like a sister not a lover. I was twelve years old in my head – what did I understand of romantic love?
Of course, while I had gone back into my past, she had stayed here in the present, in the same place that I had left her. And when I came back, my present had become my past. The unfairness of this consumed me. I ached to bridge the chasm, but I didn’t know how.
And while I was acutely aware of the turmoil in my head, I couldn’t make sense of it. I couldn’t bring myself to talk to her about it. How does one swallow the shame; how does one summon the courage – to do this?
But you can’t pretend feelings. You cannot live a lie. She deserved more than that, and what she deserved I couldn’t give her – that privilege was taken from me. When the surgeon cut open my skull to save my life, he also did something else. He cut open our lives and tore out pages of the story that should have been ours to have.
There is an enormous sense of loss when you’re meant to feel something that you just don’t feel. I cannot be so bold as to presume what Joanna was feeling when we went our separate ways, but the pain I felt was unlike any other kind of pain I had felt before. It threatened to drown me in a sea of my own incomprehension, leaving me with an emptiness so vast, I couldn’t even see the shore.
Nobody understood the magnitude of what Joanna did for me in those black months following my accident. I don’t think she fully understood it herself. Sometimes you don’t realize the impact of what you are doing, because you are just too busy doing it. When I came back from the hospital I was as helpless as a baby. I was starting to pity myself. I was starting not to care. I was starting to give up. Had it not been for Joanna, I could not have risen above that.
Joanna fuelled my inner strength to such an extent that I convinced myself that no adversity was going to bring me down. Adversity was not going to affect me. I genuinely believed this. She ensured that even when I was in my lowest place, my confidence was intact. She stood by me when no one else did, at the darkest moments of my life, and, if not for her, I would perhaps have never seen the light. And try as I may, I cannot fathom how it must feel to be consumed like this by the responsibility of someone else. Joanna was by my side when I took my first gasping breaths without a ventilator; she held my arm when I had to learn to walk again; she consoled me when I fell, beating my sticks against the ground in frustration. My sorrows were her sorrows; my joys, hers. Every step I made towards recovery was not just my achievement, but hers, a collective victory that ought to be celebrated. Another dawn breaking was one more day further from my fall.
I never had the chance to express the full extent of my gratitude to her. I don’t have a good reason for this. It’s very easy to get lost in yourself. But I say it now – my thank you – and I say it in a tide of emotion so strong it almost sweeps me away.
Sometimes, I cry.
I cry from within.
In gratitude and grief.
In happiness and praise.
In honour and tribute.
I cry from within, for the wonder of you.
Thank you, Jo. My life, I owe, to you.
There is no book without love. Because there is no story without love. My story had love and her name was Joanna.
Mr Turpin and the Grey Stallion
If there is only one thing you take away from my story, let it be this:
The first step towards conquering adversity begins with the will to do so. It starts from within. You have to want to. You have to need to. You have to. That’s all. There is no disqualifying the sins of our past. But to dwell on them is to delay the ability to rise above them. Fairly or unfairly, we might find ourselves on the receiving end of forces outside our control, but we have total control over how we choose to move beyond them. We have to take charge of our own lives. We have to take responsibility for our actions. We have to make decisions that we believe in and then, no matter how hard it might be, we need to own those decisions. There are no excuses. The dog never ate it.
I don’t think anybody knows the power within them until they are thrust into a situation when that is all they have to depend on. I had nothing other than the power within me that said if I willed myself strongly enough, if I shouted loudly enough, if I believed deeply enough – that I could do it, I would do it.
Pat Hogan was the king of the point-to-point world in Ireland, an internationally renowned bloodstock agent and a very keen huntsman.
My family had been associated with Pat Hogan for a long time. My uncle rode with him, my brother Pat started riding with him and then later, when Eamon decided he wanted to be a jockey, he would go up to ride Pat Hogan’s horses on his weekends. Often, I would accompany Eamon on these occasions and that’s how I first met him. It was Pat who got Eamon a job with Kevin Prendergast on the Curragh, and it was because Eamon was riding for Kevin Prendergast that I went up to the Curragh in my summer holidays. This is where I would meet Kevin Prendergast myself and then a year later, at his insistence, get my amateur licence and go on to win my first big race on Prom. So perhaps, if you think about it like this, my story as a jockey really started with Pat Hogan.
Once, quite early on – I must have been about seventeen at the time – I happened to be at a point-to-point race at Kilmallock, where I witnessed quite the peculiar little sight. Pat Hogan’s horse, Mr Turpin, was running the race and instead of turning the bend, he went straight on – he actually galloped off into the countryside with a terrified jockey on his back!
It was an experienced jockey riding him, but Mr Turpin was feral. He shot like a bullet through the wing of the fence, and ran around the field like a horse in the wild. No one was able to calm him enough to bring him back.
They say history never repeats itself, but the following week at Thurles, Mr Turpin gave the historians (and the bookies) a proper run for their money – quite literally speaking. This time, the unfortunate rider aboard Mr Turpin was Pat Hogan’s jockey, Enda Bolger. To the dismay of the jockey, to the frustration of Pat Hogan, and to the amusement of the watching crowd, Mr Turpin pulled the same trick again!
I, like everybody else, wondered at the bold waywardness of this horse.
One week later, for a reason I never understood, Pat Hogan thought I might want to ride Mr Turpin in a point-to-point at Nenagh. Why he thought I would have any luck with the prodigal horse when far more experienced riders had failed, I wouldn’t know until later, but I was thrilled.
I had only ever ridden in three point-to-points befo
re then, but how could I turn down such an adventure? Pat Hogan was an institution in himself and the excitement of riding for the king of the point-to-point world was an opportunity I simply couldn’t walk away from. That it was the unpredictable Mr Turpin on offer made it all the more compelling.
I was in my last year at school doing my Leaving Certificate and under no circumstance would my mother have let me interrupt my studies to ride the race. So I took the easy way out and decided not to tell her about it at all! I was the youngest boy in the family, the apple of her eye, but this didn’t preclude her from being extremely strict about my studies. School always came first. And so, as is often the case with these things, it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission – and that’s exactly what I did. Eventually, I knew I would find a way to win my mother back. I did, however, ask permission from my father – my willing partner in crime – and he drove me to Nenagh to ride the horse, perhaps even more excited than I was.
Notwithstanding the fact that ‘fun’ was my primary motivation for being there, I did still want to win, and I won’t lie, it was tricky from the start. There were only six runners in the race, making it a challenge to keep Mr Turpin covered. Enda Bolger, the jockey who had attempted to ride Mr Turpin at Thurles, was in front of me, riding the favourite in the race, Moncai for Christy Kinane. At the first chance I got, I buried Mr Turpin behind Moncai, so he couldn’t see any daylight. In my inexperience, I thought I had the horse covered, but as we approached the third last, Enda Bolger moved across the fence in the hope that my horse would unexpectedly get daylight and – predictably – run out through the wing.
But it didn’t happen.
There is a saying we grew up with – A horse spooks at two things: one, things that move; two, things that don’t.
Mr Turpin was clearly an unsettled horse, easily spooked, and a scared horse is a dangerous horse. But if there was anything I had learnt from my pony-racing days, it was that the first step towards increasing a disillusioned horse’s confidence is to manage your own emotions – if the rider is afraid, the horse will be doubly afraid.
Centaur Page 17
