This week, I reached two milestones.
To most people, neither would probably sound extraordinary. I made it to Battersea Park in my wheelchair, and I celebrated my wife Angella’s birthday.
But when you have spent much of the year wondering how long you have left to live, ordinary milestones become extraordinary. Battersea Park had been a goal of mine for some time.
My good friend Ed Jackson and so many others had put an enormous amount of effort into Miles for David, helping raise the money that allowed me to go to the Cleveland Clinic and begin the rehabilitation journey I desperately needed. So getting myself to the park felt significant.
Not walking. Not running. Not cycling. Driving an electric wheelchair with my chin.
There is still something surreal about writing that sentence. For most of my life, movement has been my freedom. I have raced bikes, rowed, skied, climbed mountains and pushed my body through challenges that at times probably bordered on ridiculous.
Sport was never simply something I did. It became part of the language through which I understood myself and the world.
Now, moving through Battersea Park meant gently pushing a control with my chin. And yet I was outside. I could feel the air on my face. I could see the trees. I could watch the world moving around me.
There was enormous gratitude in that. There was also pain. Battersea Park was full of people exercising. Runners passed me in both directions. People were playing sport. Others were walking quickly through the park without perhaps giving a second thought to the extraordinary complexity involved in putting one foot in front of another.
And then there were the cyclists. I have to admit, seeing them hurt. Every bicycle that passed seemed to trigger another memory. I know what it feels like to push hard on the pedals. I know the sound of a freewheel, the feeling of the wind moving past your helmet and the beautiful simplicity of a road disappearing underneath your wheels.
Cycling has given me some of the greatest experiences of my life. And now I have to confront the possibility that I may never ride a bicycle again. That is a difficult sentence to write.
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I would have loved to travel to Glasgow this weekend for Chris Hoy’s bike ride. There are moments when I desperately want to be back inside that sporting world, surrounded by bikes, athletes and the people who understand why cycling becomes so much more than simply turning the pedals.
But sometimes being around the thing you love also reminds you of what you have lost. I am learning that gratitude and grief can exist together.
I can be incredibly grateful to be alive while also grieving the body I once had. I can enjoy being in Battersea Park while finding it painful to watch somebody cycle past me. I can celebrate progress while still wishing desperately for more.
Perhaps that is one of the biggest lessons this year has taught me – we do not have to choose one emotion. Life is rarely that simple.
The second milestone this week was Angella’s birthday. In February, when I became paralysed and the prognosis was frighteningly short, I started creating small targets in my mind. First, I wanted to stay alive long enough to reach my own birthday in April. I made it.
Then I wanted to reach the summer. I made that too. And somewhere along the way another marker appeared on the horizon: Angella’s birthday. This week, I reached it.
There is something incredibly emotional about moving through dates you once wondered whether you would ever see.
Most of us look at birthdays as markers of ageing. I have started seeing them as markers of living. Another sunrise. Another conversation. Another meal together. Another opportunity to say, “Happy birthday”. Another day.
When the future feels uncertain, you stop demanding that life gives you years and start becoming incredibly appreciative when it gives you moments.
Of course, I still have enormous ambitions for my rehabilitation. I continue to work every day. I want more movement. I want independence. Somewhere deep inside me there is probably still an athlete believing that another impossible comeback might be possible. I will never stop pushing.
But this week, I got to celebrate two very different victories. I made it to Battersea Park. And I made it to Angella’s birthday.
Neither came with a medal. But right now, they mean as much to me as any medal ever has.
