Stories/Lived Experiences
Author: Ross Coleman is a Translator, Writer and Disability Rights Activist from Dublin
“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically”, thus opens D.H Lawrence’s famous novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, published in 1928 in which a bored unfulfilled housewife embarks on an affair with the gardener on her husband’s estate. Clifford Chatterley, Lawrence informs us, is a cripple, badly injured from serving in the front. Since his injury, he has become cold and unfeeling, absorbed in books and his intellect, only going outside to toot along in his electric bathchair. When I first read the book a few years ago, I dismissed it as a bygone relic of an ableist age. And yet, despite that, I was forced to admit a single harrowing fact: nothing has really changed.
I require a Personal Assistant (hereafter referred to as a PA) in order to help with daily tasks that I cannot do myself: getting dressed, going to the bathroom, showering. At the moment, my parents provide this support and have been providing it since I was born. If I want to go out, I either have to go out with my parents or just not go to the bathroom. Neither of these are desirable solutions. I should not expect, neither do I want, my parents to accompany me to every social function, but nor can I just not go to the bathroom.
Continue reading “The Tragic Age: Life without a PA”