Hi Bill

My cousin Bill never learned to ride a bike or throw a rock or drive a car or drop a cannon ball into a lake. Instead he was strapped in a wheelchair with Cerebral Palsy. We were about the same age he and I. That’s how it was for Bill, an existence dependent on someone else to care for him. In battle with a body that fought him at every turn. Absolutely nothing was wrong with Bill’s mind though.  

     This is about my regret and how I didn’t have the courage to see through Bill’s disability to the person locked inside.  

     Every year on the second Sunday in July I’d see Bill at the family picnic. Always parked in the shade close to the picnic tables, his father or mother in a folding chair nearby. Everyone said, “Hi Bill,” but no one really tried to talk with him that I observed. And usually, Bill would garble out a “Hi,” back and fight to smile. There is no easy answer to why none of us, besides Bills family, made the effort to give Bill more than a few seconds of our time. I think it was fear. Fear of saying or doing the wrong thing, fear of becoming entangled in what we perceived as his sad condition. No we looked away from frustration and pain. Easier to just say, “Hi Bill.” I do not say this as a judgement of anyone, I was no better at finding that courage and that’s where my regret lives all these years later.

     Bill was thin as a wisp, fighting his body’s constant spasms. His mom would push his wheelchair into a circle of conversation, ask him questions and treat him with the respect he deserved, the rest of us tried to act as if he weren’t really there struggling to be a part of it.  

     I had sixteen aunts and uncles and 51 cousins along with their assorted spouses or partners although attendance thinned dramatically with time. Borst Park sits a hundred yards from a freeway on-ramp and a stones’ throw from an Outlet Mall promising factory pricing. There is a muddy little lake and a pioneer log structure and some baseball fields nearby and most every year it was hot. Relatives swapped stories about a salmon fishing trip, berry jam and golf scores. Recent surgeries or heart attacks, who was having a baby and who wasn’t getting along. What great gas mileage their car was getting. There was horseshoes and pinochle and arguments and hurt feelings, slaps on the back, hearty handshakes and lots of laughter and booze.  

     I don’t know what anyone could have done differently. Outside of talking to him, being physically present, letting him know we saw him and wanted to try and understand what he would have wanted to say to us.  Easier to just say, “Hi Bill.” I know for certain everyone felt bad for him and his parents and family who shouldered his care. They didn’t want our pity or worthless prayers. They would, I’m guessing just have wanted us to treat him like, well, one of us.     

     And if any of the aunts and uncles or cousins or their spouses at Borst Park were being honest, they would say it was easier not to look. Easier to disengage than to engage with Bill. “Hi Bill,” was all we could muster. That we could live with that.  After all it wasn’t our brother or son and they felt bad, sure, but what could we possibly do that wasn’t already being done? Bill was a sad fact of life.

     Cerebral Palsy is an incurable condition. There are some treatments now that didn’t exist for Bill.  Imagine being a prisoner in your own body, capable of thinking and feeling, but incapable of even the most basic functions. Bill couldn’t wipe himself or walk to the mailbox, go to school or make love. You can’t catch CP from the air or from drinking the same drink by mistake, but witnessing it will surely break your heart.

     When Bill was in his late 30’s and he’d lost his mother to brain cancer, his sister Margaret took on his care. Bill was lucky that he had someone who showed amazing commitment and love while managing to raise her own small children. And then a group home was found for Bill. My cousin Johnny told me he used to pick up Bill from the group home, stuff his wheelchair in the trunk of his car and take him to concerts and spend time with him. I wish I had hung out with Bill and Johnny, helped with his wheelchair, took the time to show him I didn’t think of him as sad. Johnny took the time to see Bill’s humanity underneath all his struggle. “Bill was really great,” Johnny told me. “It was a hassle, but well worth the effort it took to get him out and about.” That says everything anyone needs to know about Johnny too. 

     The family picnic faded off into the sunset along with video stores and disposable cameras, the last of my aunts and uncles not long after that. Cousin Bill passed away when he was 37. I hope there is a special place in Heaven for people like Bill. So I regret I didn’t have the courage to get to know him all those years ago. I’d be better for it. That, well, that I know for sure. 

     Looking back there are a lot of things I would have done differently. I got busy helping raise our family, trying to navigate life’s up and downs as best I could, but I could have taken a little time for Bill and I would have been so much the better for it.  

Kirk Boys lives with his wife in Seattle. His work, non-fiction and fiction has been published both nationally and internationally in over 16 different journals and magazines. Most recently in Chicago Story Press and Portland Magazine.

Image credit: Kelly Wright via DALL-E, Ideogram, and Midjourney