I was fortunate to have experienced firsthand the gentle yet powerful healing of psychologist Charles Funk, who died last April. After falling out of a tree as a young man, he spent the rest of his life confined to a wheelchair.

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer died in June after spending decades in a wheelchair due to a diving accident. Both men lived admirably after their accidents. Krauthammer completed his medical degree at Harvard, and Funk obtained a Ph.D. in psychology. Both were intelligent, witty and soft-spoken, and displayed a love of life and keen interest in others. Krauthammer’s self-reliance was demonstrated in a segment presented on television in which he drove a specially-designed van. Funk often went camping alone in his pickup truck. Krauthammer is considered by many one of the greatest conservative thinkers of our time. Funk was a highly respected therapist in Durango.

We can learn from both men. Krauthammer wrote of “the catastrophe that awaits everyone from a single false move, wrong turn, fatal encounter. Every life has such a moment. What distinguishes us is whether – and how – we ever come back.”

Once, as I was waiting for my session with Funk in the normally quiet building, a ruckus preceded two wheelchairs which came careening into the waiting room from opposite directions. I had just witnessed a race between a man in his sixties and a preteen boy. The older racer was gulping air in between peals of laughter.

When Charles and I went into his therapy room, he explained that the boy was having difficulty adjusting to life in a wheelchair and their weekly race seemed to lift his spirits. Although it caused pain in his shoulders, I suspect Charles’s spirits were also raised. Mine certainly were!

Cheryle Brandsma

Durango