A Short History of Falling: Everything I Observed About Love Whilst Dying

A Short History of Falling: Everything I Observed About Love Whilst Dying
Joe Hammond

A Short History of Falling – like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and When Breath Becomes Air – is a searingly beautiful, profound and unforgettable memoir that finds light and even humour in the darkest of places. We keep an old shoebox, Gill and I, nestled in a drawer in our room. It’s filled with thirty-three birthday cards for our two young sons: one for every year I’ll miss until they’re twenty-one. I wrote them because, since the end of 2017, I’ve been living with – and dying from – motor neurone disease. This book is about the process of saying goodbye. To my body, as I journey from unexpected clumsiness to a wheelchair that resembles a spacecraft, with rods and pads and dials and bleeps. To this world, as I play less of a part in it and find myself floating off into unlighted territory. To Gill, my wife. To Tom and Jimmy. A Short History of Falling is about the sadness (and the anger, and the fear), but it’s about what’s beautiful too. It’s about love and fatherhood, about the precious experience of observing my last moments with this body, surrounded by the people who matter most. It’s about what it feels like to confront the fact that my family will persist through time with only a memory of me. In many ways, it has been the most amazing time of my life.

A SHORT HISTORY OF FALLING

Everything I Observed About Love Whilst Dying

Joe Hammond

Copyright (#ulink_037dffcf-d914-55d9-9174-e40f5151350f)

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk (http://www.4thEstate.co.uk)

This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2019

Copyright © Joe Hammond 2019

Cover design by Jo Walker

Hand lettering by E Cousins

Photographs here and here © Harry Borden

Joe Hammond asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780008339906

Ebook Edition © August 2019 ISBN: 9780008339920

Version: 2019-08-07

Dedication (#ulink_da48957d-2a02-5cca-996f-b23a7c75eb30)

for Gill, Tom & Jimmy

Contents

Cover (#u6d316e5e-52fe-5a51-94ce-4e0ebaee956c)

Title Page (#uaf6d3284-203f-573c-8a98-e9ffdbe4d92c)

Copyright (#u527700b3-db97-54e2-8f57-27c1288e0d46)

Dedication (#ud018315a-1872-5da1-8462-b776594fa7d7)

Tumbling (#u0796121c-ddc3-5a29-a70c-790f11bfa2c7)

The Body (#u83f15fa0-8cdd-559f-8886-3e2bccaef98d)

Doctor Tiago’s Hydroelectric Power Plant (#u8a1386f4-d9d9-55fd-adf5-87ba94ba8017)

Cuckmere Haven (#litres_trial_promo)

Losses (#litres_trial_promo)

The Woman Who Lived in a Shoe (#litres_trial_promo)

Gill (#litres_trial_promo)

Mooto Nuney Disease (#litres_trial_promo)

Fathers (#litres_trial_promo)

What Dying Really Feels Like (#litres_trial_promo)

Arrivals (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Tumbling (#ulink_1e5a7f0f-c9e6-59ad-babb-c3f7c6bb43f2)

If I could just stop falling over, this would be a funnier book. I’m a big man and I’m starting to cause a lot of damage. I’ve just written off a kitchen cabinet, and two weeks ago I dislocated my shoulder on the bedroom floor. Quite recently I fell into my son’s empty cot, but that was a peaceful experience. The sides of the cot snapped inwards, swaddling me in very fine, soft, white mesh. Given how unsafe I am at the moment, this felt OK. I decided to remain there, looking around. It was quiet. It would have been nice to sleep, but then my other son – my six-year-old – walked in.

If I’m near other people and I sway this way or that, it can seem balletic – like one of those trust games when a person is encouraged to tuck their arms inwards and let others prevent their fall. But often I find myself alone or out of reach, and from a height of six foot three falling always takes so long. Or it feels like it. I seem to have plenty of time to think and notice and worry in that quiet moment before impact. And that’s been quite frightening. Just observing the slowness of my descent and picking both a landing spot and part of my body that seems most capable of taking the impact. And whenever I hit the floor, or something on the way down to the floor, it’s never a funny thing or a funny moment. Never something funny that I want to write about the next day. Last week I fell and split my head open in the shower. And I just lay there. Because if I fall, I can’t use my arms to get back up. I lay there, beached and soapy on the white-tiled floor, with the water raining down turning pale pink around me. And my wife running in like a Greenpeace activist to a seal cull.

I’m getting to the point when I shall look back on these falls as moments of luxury. From a wheelchair or a hoist or a hospital bed, I’ll view these early days of motor neurone disease as a time of freedom. A time when toppling or tripping or tumbling was actually possible. Because I can put my finger through the place where muscles used to be in my legs, right through to the tendons, and can feel something like the substructure of myself emerging. And it’s not a particularly good sign, but it’s not everything. It’s just the physical body. This book is everything – the experience of my body as it changes and declines. The experience of saying goodbye to those I love. I’m scared – I know I am. But it feels strangely OK. And surprising too. I’m going to tell you about it. The story of my end, or as close as I can get to it.

*

The first I knew was about fifteen months ago. It was the sensation that I had a fresh piece of chewing gum stuck to the sole of my foot. Feet feel bigger when they don’t lift properly. My big clown foot, and the funny slapping sound as I ran for a bus. And perhaps I could have fixed this by attaching a piece of string to my big right toe. But where do you stop with such things? How much of a marionette can one person be?

I was walking like a passenger in the aisle of a plane going through gentle turbulence. It’s the walk someone would make just prior to the seat-belt lights coming back on again – that medium level of mid-flight turbulence. But not on a plane: on the ground. On the way to make a sandwich or brush my teeth. Just walking. With my palms face down, as if steadying myself on the headrests of non-existent passengers.