His name was Rob, and a cruel twist of fate almost cut him down in his prime. But he made it through, with fortitude and wit, to become a role-model and a friend.
By Richard McCormack*
There is an old pewter ale tankard that sits on my dining room shelf that I keep dust free and polished. It has the name ROB inscribed into the front of it.
Rob, an old friend of the family, passed away a few years agoin his mid-60s, living a lot longer than his doctors ever expected him to.
When I was an early teen, in many ways I tried to take my examples from how he dealt with challenges, adversity and pain. He was a friend of the family and had endured massive trauma during a tank manoeuvres exercise in the 1950’s in Germany, after WW2.
While training recruits, he fell and was dragged behind a tank down a wooded slope of tree stumps, suffering terrible damage as a result. He lost his scalp, forcing him to wear a toupee the rest of his life, and all the cartilage in his right leg. He also lost his left leg below the knee.
The doctors, thinking he was not going to make it, gave him generous doses of Morphine for the extreme pain. He hovered at death’s door for months, until eventually pulling through and starting a long rehabilitation.
Of course, now he needed to overcome a painkiller addiction on top of everything else.
After an arduous struggle with his injuries he eventually rebuilt what was left, was fitted with a prosthetic limb, overcame his addiction and settled in South Africa. His doctors told him that the warmer, drier climate of the Highveld would be better suited for his damaged extremities than the colder, wetter weather of his native UK.
Rob always told me he had to focus on patience and being patient to get through his recovery, or his sanity would have ebbed away. I am not naturally a patient person but he, almost always, emanated a calm, unruffled air and I have tried to emulate this through the years, often failing.
Rob patiently planted seeds and helped grow my interests. When I told him I was fascinated by the martial arts he gave me his own Manual of Karate. When I started working out with weights he gave me some books on weightlifting. I still have them in a shelf in my lounge. Then there are the dumbbells he gave me l, in my gym.
He initially gave my father the two tankards so he could always get a drink there, he said. The other tankard was inscribed with my father’s name, TOM, but I lost that in a move and only Rob’s remains.
Rob always had a joke or a ribald comment to make everyone laugh. He taught an intense and overly serious young man to use humour as a coping mechanism to handle the dark times and add even more relish to the good times.
He enjoyed Kung Fu movies, and the more outlandish and improbable the feats, the fighters achieved the better. The bad dubbing just added more hilarity to the films.
At my father’s funeral, when I was 16, Rob was the only one brave enough to make a joke or two to break through the grief and put a smile on my face, if only for a moment.
My daughter is 16 and a half now, and has a great sense of humour with one liners for every occasion. Remembering Rob, I always encourage her sense of humour and her articulate, verbal Karate.
Rob could never have recovered without perseverance. His accident taught him how short and ephemeral life can be, and how it needs to be bravely faced, fought for and savoured. He was always authentic and brave enough to take a risk.
His example recently caused me to leave the safe and financially secure corporate communications world, and return to freelancing once again.
His old pewter tankard will always be with me, reminding me of his example to celebrate life and drink it down to the very last drop. Cheers, old friend, you will always have a seat at the table. Thank you for the lessons.
- This article first appeared on the Change Exchange, an online platform by BrightRock, provider of the first-ever life insurance that changes as your life changes. The opinions expressed in this piece are the writer’s own and don’t necessarily reflect the views of BrightRock.
