Strong at the Broken Places by Richard M. Cohen

Author:Richard M. Cohen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061752988
Publisher: HarperCollins

THE WALL AROUND Ben stands tall, shutting even his family out. “Ben can keep even us at a distance,” Debi said one evening. “Our son is very protective of his feelings.” Tyler, only a few years younger, rose to the challenge of breaking through. Sometimes siblings know the best angle of engagement.

Tyler’s effort came intuitively and was built on their long years together. “We always laughed together,” she said. “We cracked jokes. If we had not been that close growing up, then I don’t think we would be this close now. Now we talk every day on the Internet, or he calls just to talk to me.”

Tyler describes a typical conversation. “‘Ben, how do you feel?’ ‘Okay,’ he will say. ‘No, seriously, how do you really feel? What is going on?’ I just kept at it with Ben.”

Tyler laughed. “You have to really beat it out of him for him to tell you the truth. I think that is pretty normal, just the kind of person he is.” Tyler and I were talking in the empty gym at Holy Cross Academy in suburban Maryland outside Washington. The young woman played serious basketball in this cavernous space.

This was Tyler’s home court, her comfort zone. Tears flowed as she described her fierce desire to ease her brother’s burden. The young athlete spoke of endless assaults on his dignity. “I told my mom that I wish I could take some of his pain away, because I never know how he really feels. You never know his true pain.”

The hurt spread to the family as they watched Young Ben collapse into his wheelchair over time. “I know he is in pain when he cannot even help himself. You have to keep helping him all the time, knowing that he could not be alone.”

Yet Ben showed no fear of being alone. “Do you worry about maybe not marrying in the future?”

“Somehow I think that is how my life is going to be,” he told me. We were talking at the family house during a break from college. I flashed to a recent memory of Ben sitting alone in his wheelchair at the student center. He had looked like a lonely guy in a happy place, quietly eating supper as others in groups laughed and talked about their day.

“I may be a lonely person when I get older, because I am too scared to actually go outside my comfort zone and take a risk,” he added. His dad was well aware that his son never had the luxury of taking risks. “If I have a regret for him,” said Big Ben, “it is that he cannot take a chance, whether it is one that takes him to the edge of maybe changing his life or simply meeting a special person.”

“I know this much,” young Ben said. “Being alone is more sad than scary. If that is how it stays, I will be a really angry, bitter person, and who wants to be that for the rest of his life? Nobody does.

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