With Respect

By Raymond D. Cohen

When you spend enough time in the disability community
(or any other community, for that matter) people you know are going to get old, some are going to get sick— and some of them don’t get better. Let’s say the words: sometimes people die. But why is it that when a person with a disability dies, the funeral service often takes on an uncomfortably
peculiar flavour?
I believe that it is important to say goodbye with dignity. Ritual, too, plays an important part in helping those of us left behind to find closure. So, rogue or villain, I think that everybody, with or without disability, deserves that farewell do— whether or not they are able to somehow attend at that time (and if you think I’m going any further down that road on this page, think again!).
Just last month, the disability community lost a bright light in the person of Debbie Donald. Debbie’s contributions were significant: she did substantial work in the community, provided opportunities to others with disabilities, and helped raise the bar on what is achievable. She was an inspiration to her colleagues, friends and family. Thank goodness for people like Debbie. In my life, I have been blessed by the company of many such souls, each unique and a gift to our life and times.
So, why is it that, at the end of virtually every service I have attended for a person with a disability, the presiding clergy takes license in offering consolation by saying, “At least now [fill in name here] is once again whole—free of their handicap… able to walk upright in heaven… able to see once more… able to hear… ” (One assumes at this point that attendants are not much in demand on the other side of the pearly gates.)
What does this really mean? Upon that moment of death, somehow our bodies are repaired, the limited warranty on parts and labour issued at the moment of birth is fulfilled, and we’re all able to enter the afterlife without any of the “flaws” affixed to us in this one?
Why is it that some members of the clergy have the chutzpah (so to speak) to suggest that the shallow trappings of the physical self are so important that one’s first and only notable reward is “liberation” from the physical limitations and assistive devices offered in this world? I can name dozens of people with disabilities who brought out the best in themselves, and those around them, because of who they were—not because of any limitation. Perhaps more contentiously, it is clear to me that many achievers, contributors and just plain regular folk surpassed their own goals and the norms of the able-bodied population as well, not in spite of but because of their disabilities.
The sentiment of moving forward beyond this mortal plane in full repair is as impractical as it is insulting to the newly departed, even if it’s intended with kindness and tempered with compassion. I feel a travesty was committed when, according to the Toronto Star, the pastor presiding over Debbie Donald’s service said during what was, no doubt, an otherwise befitting service, “The only comfort I could offer her family and friends was that… she always wanted to be free of her wheelchair. Her death was like freedom.”
The line between thanking god that, in death, a person is better off without their disability and wishing for—or worse, actually causing—someone’s death because of disability is uncomfortably thin—particularly when that line is embraced by our spiritual leaders. Is it so difficult for people to realize that, in Canada, many people with disabilities, perhaps the majority of them, find freedom because of the miracle of mobility devices, technical aids and new technologies? Is it too much of a stretch for people to understand that praising the fact that a person with a disability is now free of what can only be a torturous and unbearable existence
is not only insulting to the newly departed, but to everyone, past and present, who has embraced the life they have been given and become important participants in every facet of life on our turbulent little planet?
For me, when my time comes—and I am in no rush—I will be happy (if the term applies) to have my essential self merge with the infinite oneness as is—warts and all.

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