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THE REEVE LEGACY:
HOW TRAGEDY EMPOWERS
Journal of Healing – March 15, 2006

By Mary Koch

The lives of Dana and Christopher Reeve may remind us that no amount of good looks, talent, wealth, celebrity – not even great works or a healthy life style – can make us immune from tragedy.

But if that’s all we conclude from their untimely deaths – hers just 15 months after his – we miss the lessons they really taught the world about life, its paradoxes and mysteries.

Not being much of a celebrity buff, I had no idea who we were talking about during one of my husband’s physical therapy sessions those many years ago.

“Did you hear what happened to Christopher Reeve?” the therapist asked.

“Who’s he?” I responded.

“Superman!” the therapist explained, somewhat amused by my ignorance.

“Missed the movie,” I shrugged.

The therapist, interested in Reeve’s injuries from a clinical viewpoint, told us about the riding accident. My husband was in the early years of therapy following his paralyzing stroke. I was too wrapped up in his suffering and my own concerns to have more than a passing interest in the injuries of a distant celebrity.

* * *

THEN I HAPPENED to catch Larry King’s initial interview with Dana Reeve. I was dumfounded. She was calmly candid about every issue in their post-accident life, from their sexual relationship to financial problems.

I was writing a weekly newspaper column for a small-town, close-knit readership, and I hadn’t dared to bare the truths that Dana Reeve revealed to a national television audience.

Later we watched interviews with Christopher Reeve and read his first book, “Nothing is Impossible: Reflections on a New Life.” Both Reeves held nothing back, but their public statements were never a bid for sympathy.

They were purveyors of hope. They were generous in their candor, pulling no punches in telling the world what it is like to be paralyzed, what it is like to care for a paralyzed spouse – and how it could be better. They created a foundation that has poured millions of dollars into research and direct assistance to people with paralysis.

* * *

YET IT WAS the smaller gestures that heartened and empowered me and certainly thousands of others who deal with paralysis – those who are disabled and those who care for them.

When Christopher Reeve made his dramatic appearance at the Academy Awards, glamorous in his tuxedo, it was well publicized later that the only way they could get him and his wheelchair on stage was through the kitchen and up a service elevator.

I think of that every time I have to wheel my husband through a back door or up a makeshift ramp, or scariest of all, recruit a cadre of muscular volunteers to lift his chair up a flight of stairs.

If Christopher Reeve did it, we can too, I tell myself. We’re moving toward that perfect world where wheelchair users won’t be relegated to the back door, where medical research will be brought to the next level. The Reeves’ openness brought that world closer much sooner than it would have without them.

But their legacy is not just about access or cures either. It has more to do with the paradox of pain and suffering. There’s no meaning in the bad stuff that happens to us, no meaning in tragic accidents, cancer or stroke.

The meaning is in how we respond. The bad event in our life may be just the ticket that takes us to a better place – not in the ever-after, but in the here and now. It’s not an easy or pleasant journey, but Dana and Christopher Reeve showed the way.

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