Some great tales of courage don't come with happy endings

Jacquielynn Floyd
12:00 AM CDT on Friday, May 23, 2008


Sen. Edward Kennedy got the kind of news that gives a sober moment of clarity to those of us whose worst problems are gas prices and too much to do.

In hospitals and medical offices all over the world, doctors are having to deliver similar bulletins: You are very sick. Or, You are very badly injured. We will do everything we can, but the prognosis is not good.

Except in the cases of the very famous, we rarely hear about these grim diagnoses. They happen to countless mortal humans every day.

Maybe it's the mortality aspect that makes us so love the few that end as happy "survivor" stories: The disease sufferer whose recovery is proclaimed a "miracle." Or the accident victim who proved the doctors wrong after they said he would never walk again.

These are joyful, heartening stories, and I have written my share of them. They give us a warming flicker of hope in the face of tragedy and loss.

What concerns me, though, is how quick we are to link the statistical anomaly of survival or recovery to personal virtue. We use the language of combat: The "fighter" who swore he would be around to dance at his daughter's wedding; the stubborn kid who vowed he would rise from his wheelchair and walk.

Yes, these are happy stories. They describe people who did the hardest labor of their lives in working toward recovery.

But the plain truth is that countless others who work just as hard and endure just as much don't, in the end, "beat" cancer, or learn to walk again. It doesn't mean they were less determined or optimistic. It means they were less lucky.

I was abruptly reminded of this a few years back, when I received a reproachful message from a local writer and teacher I admire a great deal.

It was after I had written a glowing piece about a young man who lost the use of his legs in a football accident. The boy worked hard and made an unexpected recovery, then became a rehab therapist to help victims of similar injuries.

The man who sent me the message said I had left the impression that with enough courage and determination, an accident victim can "beat the odds." You just want to have to want it badly enough.

Of course, this isn't true. This man's son, who had experienced a similar injury, suffered permanent paralysis. Was he less determined, less courageous than the young man I had written about?

No. But I had fallen into the easy language of cliché, writing a happy tale about proving the doctors wrong.

The teenager about whom I had written was indeed a commendably determined young man, but I had left out the random element of fortune. I had neglected to remind myself of what we all know: The doctors are usually right.

Which is why all this discussion about Mr. Kennedy being a "brave fighter" against a brain tumor is laudable, and I wholeheartedly hope he can indeed beat the odds. He's no less brave if he can't.

One of the bravest people I ever met was a man who was dying by painful increments of Lou Gehrig's disease, a cruel, terminal illness that kills through gradual paralysis.

When I met him, his world had dwindled to the confines of his bedroom, where he worked at the computer every day, using a mouthpiece to control the keyboard.

Cooperating as his wife and a health aide dressed him and got him up every day demanded extraordinary courage. It took profound determination to allow a friend, with whom he used to go fishing and shoot baskets, to come over at lunchtime and feed him baby food from a spoon.

We all need hope, that sliver of a long-odds chance to work for.

Soldiering on with grace when that chance is all but gone? That's real courage.



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