Learning To Fly

Many years ago, I had a dream about my friend Greg. We were sitting side by side in a small airplane, and he was teaching me to fly. We soared above the landscape, and earthly things receded, and Greg was perfectly free.

He was intrigued with flight. For him, it was a metaphor. He yearned to transcend, and he yearned to learn, often quoting lines like this from Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull: “Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding. Find out what you already know and you will see the way to fly.”

But Greg had been cruelly thrust to earth. He had joined the military in 1966, shortly before his 19th birthday, did well on the Officer Candidate School test, and was on the path to becoming a helicopter pilot, certain he’d be sent to Vietnam. On December 19, 1966 (a date he forever after referred to as Hurt Day) while driving home for Christmas leave with his then-wife Tina, his VW Bug overturned on a windy stretch of highway between Gila Bend and Yuma, and he was paralyzed from the waist down.

“The accident certainly changed my life,” he once told me. “Maybe it even saved my life. I was planning to die in Vietnam.”

That was Greg’s bravado. He liked to say outrageous and provocative things. But who knows what would have happened had he gone to Vietnam? And even had he returned, who can say what influences might have shaped him differently? Instead, he faced a different kind of war, and the inability to walk was the least of it. Very few people realized how much pain Greg endured every single day, how much strength and will it took to get around as he did, and the extent to which secondary damage and ongoing health problems accompany a spinal cord injury.

Undaunted, Greg reinvented himself. It didn’t happen right away. He could barely remember the first few years after the accident, and he said he was hell to live with. But over time, a remarkable transformation occurred. His irrepressible spirit emerged and honed him into someone absolutely unforgettable, impossible to keep down, and hard not to love. He was generous and irreverent, inspiring and opinionated, an indomitable soul who refused to be defined by disability. He dressed well, was immaculately groomed, and became an icon in Orange County. Known affectionately as The Bot, he spent decades in public service, served on the board of the Orange County Transportation Authority, founded an organization to foster independent living, and became an advocate and activist for the disabled. (“Ironic,” he would say, “because I don’t like cripples any more than I like old people.” And there he was again, being outrageous—the curmudgeon with a bigger heart than anyone we knew.) He called himself a cynic but none of us believed that. His kindness was the most revealing truth, and the value he placed upon friendship.

Sometimes, when my daughter was little and I was being a stay-at-home mom, I would meet Greg for coffee at Newport Center, and we would sit beneath an umbrella outside watching people and commenting on the absurdity of things. I might show him a dress I had bought at a little apparel shop on the plaza, and he would tell me I had a weakness for murky flower prints. I seldom kept these garments––I changed my mind and returned my purchases so often, Greg diagnosed me as having shopping bulimia and said I was going to put the store out of business. My daughter would sit there patiently looking at picture books and wearing a pair of pink jellies that he bought for her. His sturdy booming presence is surely among her earliest childhood memories.

Meanwhile, the fountains sparkled, magenta bougainvillea tumbled over polished walls, and comely blondes in yoga pants pushed expensive strollers along. Outdoor vendors sold trinkets and scented candles, and everything moved in sunlit slow motion. For years after, Greg and I referred to these as our days of sweet ennui.

But Greg was present for serious matters too. I will never forget how kind and understanding he was during some of the most profound emotional crises of my life, and how often his good company and spirit inspired me to focus on possibilities rather than limitations. He boosted people, he was the up to their downs, somehow managing to show up energized and impeccably dressed, despite whatever behind-the-scenes hurdles he had to surmount to make those appearances. He made it look easy. It took a lot of energy to be The Bot, but people counted on him. I know I did.

It was a two-way street. He valued his interactions with people more than anything, and apart from his son Steven, his most cherished relationships were his friends. He had a family of long-term beloved friends, and he delighted in them. They know who they are. “I'm like the hub,’" he told me, “and the spokes go out from there, and my friends recognize how much I value them.” It’s staggering now to contemplate how much he will be missed.

The years took their toll, as they always do, but the effects of fifty-plus years in a wheelchair on an aging body are exponential. Greg’s pain worsened, his ability to maneuver diminished, and he admitted he was tired and discouraged. He would hear of someone dying suddenly. “Lucky bastard,” he’d say. Maybe he meant it, maybe not. We wanted him to keep on being The Bot.

One day he was listening to old songs, getting nostalgic, looking back on his life, pondering what he had missed. I suppose it was just a mood, but he was so hard on himself, it broke my heart. I wrote him a letter, and I’m so glad I did, and here is a part of what I said: “I want you to have it in writing here to remind you: you are an amazing person! You missed a lot, through no fault of yours, but you were brave, and you survived and transcended, and you have ended up accomplishing a lot more than many of those who were out and about in those long ago days. You have no idea how great your influence has been, and what a ripple effect it has on the world. I just had to say this. You are very loved, and you have been very important in my life.”

That letter was dated March 14, 2019. I hope he knew that this was a message that would never expire. And I wish I had called him more often and said those things to him again and again in the year that followed. I thought of him every day, and I hope I didn’t take him for granted, but he was faraway, and the virus came, and at some point, if you are not careful, even people you love become background fixtures in your life, context, threads to be picked up and resumed a little later. Greg was supposed to live forever. He would always be there, ranting and railing from his wheelchair, inspiring the rest of us.

He was hospitalized later in 2019 and remained in the hospital for seven months. Seven months in a hospital bed, and the pandemic meant he could have no visitors. It was such a long, bleak ordeal, and yet, when we talked on the phone, he still seemed undefeated. Weary, but not yet beaten. He was looking forward to going home, even if he had to get a caregiver, which is something he had always managed without.

“I guess you have to be realistic and brave enough to face hopelessness,” he said. “But I won't allow the dark side to win out.”

I don’t remember much about our last conversation, but it was only a week ago. When this virus thing is over, we were going to get together for coffee and ennui, like old times. He teased me about my Pollyanna tendencies, but being that way has always been my role, and Greg was a hero who allowed me to be starry-eyed. Did I say “love you” at the end? Monte thinks I did.

And now my friend is gone. He made it back home, and perhaps this was the exit he wanted. The problem is entirely ours, for we are left without him. But he is at last in flight, and perfectly free.

“He was not bone and feather but a perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all.”