Still Me Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Praise for Still Me

  Also by Christopher Reeve

  Still Me

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Afterword

  Postscript

  Mission Statement of the Christopher Reeve Foundation

  Christopher Reeve Credits

  Appendix: Selected Speeches

  Speech at the Democratic National Convention

  Juilliard School Commencement Address

  Testimony Before the Senate. . . .

  Speech at the National Organization. . . .

  Photo Credits

  About the Author

  Christopher Reeve established a reputation as one of America’s leading actors, and after being paralysed in an equestrian competition in 1995, he put a human face on spinal cord injury. Reeve was chairman of the board of the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation (CRPF) and vice chairman of the National Organisation on Disability and lobbied vigorously for healthcare reform and funding of research. Nothing is Impossible, his follow-up to Still Me, was published in Century in 2002. He died in 2004.

  Praise for Still Me

  ‘Searingly honest . . . perhaps his finest performance’ New Scientist

  ‘A story which has pierced the hearts of a few flinty literary critics’ Daily Telegraph

  ‘A story of enormous depth: honest, intelligent and compelling. I have rarely read anything as moving and would offer one small piece of advice should you be tempted – read it in a room on your own so you won’t feel ashamed of weeping, and keep a box of tissues and a stiff drink within reach at all times’ Margarette Driscoll, Sunday Times

  ‘There are moments in the book when tears burst from your eyes . . . His writing is intelligent, unsentimental, and honest . . . There is a humility and determination about him, as well as blinding faith . . . He is a very convincing man and wonderful company throughout the book’

  The Scotsman

  ‘The most unusual Hollywood memoir ever’

  Independent on Sunday

  ‘A simply told tale of a generous soul’ Mail on Sunday

  ‘Fascinating and utterly lacking in self-pity’

  Steven Poole, Guardian

  ‘Reeve . . . comes across as a decent human being with a stunning lack of ego . . . thoughout his honesty, dignity and clarity of purpose, Reeve has created an involving book and a meaningful life’

  New York Times Book Review

  Also by Christopher Reeve

  Nothing is Impossible: Reflections on a New Life

  STILL ME

  Christopher Reeve

  This ebook is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form (including any digital form) other than this in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Epub ISBN: 9781407099248

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published by Arrow Books in 1999

  14 16 18 20 19 17 15

  Copyright © Cambria Productions, Inc. 1998

  Christopher Reeve has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  First published in the United Kingdom in 1998 by Century

  Arrow Books

  20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at:

  www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

  The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

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

  ISBN 9780099257288

  The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were not limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.

  —HELEN KELLER

  For everyone

  whose life has been touched by disability

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  At Random House, Harry Evans gave me the opportunity to write about the past when I was extremely uncertain about the future. Wanda Chappell, Ruth Fecych, and Ann Godoff came aboard and have taken this project to the finish line.

  Barbara Walters, Katie Couric, and others in the media have not only listened, but have helped to inform the public about spinal cord injury.

  I am especially indebted to June Fox, who became much more than a transcriber of my thoughts. I literally could not have written this book without her.

  Dan Strone, my literary agent, was always there to help.

  Scott Henderson, my long-time friend and agent; Joel Faden, my business manager; and Lisa Kasteler, my publicist, are members of a rare breed of generous and fiercely loyal allies in a business replete with fleeting associations. Each has stood by me through thick and thin.

  Marsha and Robin Williams, Steven Spielberg, the gang at HBO, as well as friends and colleagues too numerous to mention have helped me break through boundaries both real and imagined.

  My personal assistants, Michael Manganiello, Sarah Houghton, and Rachel Strife, found photos, helped me proofread, and worked tirelessly managing daily crises, which allowed me to shut the door and concentrate on this book.

  I am lucky to have an outstanding team of nurses, aides, equipment vendors, and accessibility advisers without whom I could not live my daily life, let alone write about it.

  I would like to thank my family, who have so often gone out of their way to visit even for a few hours, but mostly for providing historical details and indulging me in my perspective.

  And, most important, my eternal gratitude and love to Dana, Matthew, Alexandra, and Will, whose unconditional love, humor, joy, and appetite for life inspire me daily.

  In December of 1998 Wanda Chappell was tragically taken from us. Everyone who knew her either personally or professionally was uplifted by her talent, energy, love of literature and appetite for life. She was a champion of this book and I miss her more than I can say.

  Chapter 1

  * * *

  * * *

  A few months after the accident I had an idea for a short film about a quadriplegic who lives in a dream. During the day, lying in his hospital bed, he can’t move, of course. But at night he dreams that he’s whole again, and is able to do anything and go everywhere. This is someone who had been a lifelong sailor, and who had always loved the water, and he had a beautiful gaff-rigged sloop. Not like my boat, the Sea Angel, which was modern and made of fiberglass. In the story the boat is a great old wooden beauty, whose varnish gleams in the moonlight.

  In his dream he sails down the path of a full moon, and there’s a gentle breeze, perfect conditions—the kind of romantic night sailing that anyone can imagine. But by seven in the morning, he’s back in his bed in the rehab hospital and everything is frozen again.

  The dream is very vivid. And as time passes it becomes even more vivid. At first it’s just a dream, and he recognizes it as such. But suddenly one night he finds himself actually getting out of bed and leaving the hospital, fully aware of walking down the corridor and out the door, then into the boat, which, magically, is anchored not far away.

  And he gets on board
and goes sailing, long into the night and the moonlight. Soon these voyages become so real to him that when he wakes up in his bed at seven in the morning, his hair is soaked. And the nurse comes in and says, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t dry your hair enough last night when I gave you a shampoo. You slept with wet hair.” He says nothing, but he’s thinking that his hair is wet from the spray when he was out on the water. One time he comes back still wearing his foul weather gear, and he has to hide it in the hospital room closet because the nurses are going to wonder where it came from.

  Now his wife and family, his wife and children, have been very distressed all along because, since he became paralyzed, he has not been able to pull out of a serious depression. He has shut them out of his life. His children are afraid of him because he is not himself and they don’t know how to be with him, and his wife has been talking to the doctors and the psychologists at the hospital about what to do because he is apparently unable to cope or to come out of his shell.

  But as he continues to go sailing in his dreams and as these dreams become more and more real, his mood begins to improve and he seems less withdrawn. In the mornings he is more content and much more communicative. His wife notices the change, but she can’t understand it, and he won’t explain it. It’s not something that he can talk about. He’s not sure if he’s going crazy. He thinks that he may be losing his mind. But since the family is feeling the benefit of his improvement, his dreams are making their life together happier.

  He sails in Tenants Harbor, or a similarly idyllic spot in Maine, and there’s a fellow there, an older man, who always turns on the light in his cabin down by the water when our man is sailing. He doesn’t sleep very well, and he always gets up to watch the younger man go out in the wooden boat. Sometimes he comes down to his dock, and we can tell from the yearning in his eyes that the sailboat is something he loves and admires. Not that he’s jealous, but he never misses a chance to see the boat sailing so beautifully in the moonlight.

  Well, there comes a time when our protagonist realizes that these voyages offer a way of escaping from his paralyzed condition, that he could just sail and sail on happily—it’s what he loves most in the world—until one night he would go out into the middle of the ocean, and he wouldn’t take supplies or anything. He would just sail until he dropped. And he would die happy. He would just go sailing down the path of the moon, as far as he possibly could go, and leave everything and everyone behind him.

  And one night he starts to do that. He just decides he’s going to go, with no idea where; he is going to sail away forever. But then, as he is heading out to sea, he starts to think about what he has in his life, how grateful he is for his wife and his children. Because, during the days, you see, he’s changed. His kids are less afraid of him, and they’re playing with him, and his wife . . . they’re clearly in love. He is coming out of his depression.

  So here he is doing the thing that he loves most for himself, thinking that he could sail on and forget the world. But along the way he begins to realize what he is leaving behind. He turns the boat around and comes back. And he goes straight to the dock of the older man who has always loved this boat. He ties up right at the dock, and when the old man comes down to greet him, our man says, “Here, this is for you.” He gives up the boat. He no longer needs it. And he goes back to the hospital, and he wakes up, and he’s frozen and he’s a quadriplegic again. But he has an entirely new basis for the future with his family and toward recovery.

  That’s the gist of it. Of course the story comes from my experience, but it’s not my story. I’m different from this man because my family saved me at the very beginning. When a catastrophe happens it’s easy to feel so sorry for yourself that you can’t even see anybody around you. But the way out is through your relationships. The way out of that misery or obsession is to focus more on what your little boy needs or what your teenagers need or what other people around you need. It’s very hard to do, and often you have to force yourself. But that is the answer to the dilemma of being frozen—at least it’s the answer I found.

  Yet these dreams of being able to move and to live again in your former life can be very real, very powerful. When I was in denial about my condition, they were even stronger. And it’s always a shock in the morning when you wake up and realize where you are. You think: This can’t be my life. There’s been a mistake. It took a lot of adjustment. It still does. Less so now than it did.

  I wake up in the morning. I sleep with my mouth open, so my throat is excruciatingly dry because of the drugs I’m on and the lack of humidity in the room. I may have spasmed to a very uncomfortable place, and my neck is often twisted into a painful position. And I’m lying in this narrow bed, alone, because it’s not big enough for Dana to share, though she always sleeps in the same room with me. She has a single bed next to me so we can be near each other and talk and wake up and know we’re together.

  * * *

  * * *

  On Memorial Day 1995 I was headed down to Culpeper, Virginia, with my horse, Buck, to compete in a combined training event. I was getting to be a pretty good rider; I had taken up the sport about ten years earlier, when I was cast as Vronsky, a captain in the cavalry in a film version of Anna Karenina and wanted to do some of my own riding. I had been allergic to horses since childhood, but to prepare for the part I loaded up with antihistamines and took daily lessons at a barn on Martha’s Vineyard, where I usually spent part of the summer. By the end of a month of intensive training, I could walk, trot, canter, and gallop fairly respectably. The horse was a huge Trakehner stallion named Good Boy; but when Charlotte, my instructor, would say “good boy” in a praising tone, she wasn’t talking to me.

  I went off to Budapest in the fall of 1984 to begin filming and quickly discovered that the other riders in the movie were members of the Hungarian national equestrian team. One of the highlights of the story is a steeplechase in which Captain Vronsky’s horse is injured and he has to shoot him on the spot. I didn’t feel quite ready (to say the least) to jump four-foot hedges at twenty-five miles an hour, but I did feel prepared to gallop on the flat along with the team rather than use a double. In the nineteenth century races had no starting gates; the riders walked their horses around in a circle, and when the starter dropped the flag everyone turned from the position he was in and started down the track. I asked the team coach how I would know when to start if I was facing away from the flag, and he replied, in his thick, broken English, “When your horse sees others are going, he is going too.” This proved to be a major understatement. The cameras rolled; the flag dropped; the professional riders spurred their horses; and suddenly I was flying down the course in the middle of the group, going so fast we outran the camera truck that was supposed to keep pace alongside us. After a couple of takes the director gave the truck more of a head start.

  The whole experience was absolutely exhilarating; I was bitten by the riding bug. I realized I had been in over my head in Hungary, so when I came home I decided to take up the sport properly. I began to train at a small barn in Bedford, New York (where we have our home today), and to build up time in the saddle with good friends in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where I often appeared at the theater festival. In the fall we would usually go up to Woodstock, Vermont, for three days of trail riding in the Green Mountains. I learned a lot from riding many different horses, especially from Hope, a mare I rode briefly who was one of the meanest and most unpredictable four-legged creatures I’ve ever come across. Whenever I came into her stall to feed her or put on the saddle, she would turn around, stick her rear end in my face, and pin her ears back—a sure sign that she was about to kick me in the teeth. Once in Vermont I sat quietly on a hilltop waiting for the others to catch up. As I loosened my legs and dropped my feet out of the stirrups, Hope spun around for no good reason and dumped me off her side. I began to think her name was particularly apt, because you could only hope to catch her in a good mood and have a decent ride.

  By 1989 I h
ad progressed to the point where I could consider competing in combined training events. This aspect of the sport appealed to me because it has three phases: dressage, stadium jumping, and cross-country jumping. The challenge is to develop such a strong bond between horse and rider that you can succeed in the precise maneuvers and tight control of the dressage ring, then take sizable jumps at a gallop out in the woods a few hours later, which requires speed, accuracy, and confidence. I had various horses over the years, and whenever I went on a film location I found the best trainer in the area and surreptitiously took lessons, hoping that the producers or their insurance company wouldn’t catch me at it. In this way I had the benefit of working with some of the best riders and teachers in the country—Mark Weissbecker, Brian Sabo, Mike Huber, Stephen Bradley, and Yves Sauvignon, to name a few.

  Each trainer had a slightly different approach. Mark Weissbecker emphasized the quality of the canter in approaching every jump: the hindquarters, the “engine” of the horse, must be fully engaged in order to jump successfully. Brian Sabo gave me a mental image that helped build my confidence when approaching challenging fences at speed. He asked his students to imagine that there was a steel spear strapped to the breastplate of the horse, and that the rider’s intention was to go at the jump and make splinters out of it with that weapon. In other words, you think of going through the jump rather than over it. This usually results in finding the perfect distance for takeoff; the horse, naturally preferring to go over the fence instead of through it, will jump nicely.

  My allergies disappeared. I was smitten with riding and wanted to do it as often and as well as I could. But as I learned I always kept in mind the advice of my first flying instructor, Robert Hall, just after I received my license: “The successful outcome of any maneuver must never be seriously in doubt.” As an avid sports enthusiast, particularly attracted to activities that some would consider risky or even dangerous, I took this almost as a mantra.