Fully Alive

by Timothy Shriver

  This pattern of despair continued for seven days. The doctors identified Donal’s condition as Reye’s syndrome, a rare but often deadly infection that can cause damage to the liver and brain. The doctor who attended to him at the hospital remembered that Donal was the “worst case” he’d seen in his almost forty years of practice. But Donal Page slowly started to improve. Within two weeks, the medical team pronounced him to be “out of danger,” but they also reported the status of his functioning: his brain had been subjected to such severe trauma that he was blind and deaf and had intellectual disabilities. In the space of those two weeks, Donal had gone from being a healthy baby boy to being a child with severe enough challenges that he would depend on around-the-clock care for the rest of his life. “We brought him home, anyway,” said Sean. “Me and the wife just decided that we would take him home and do what we could.”

  There was nothing easy about their decision. “For the next twelve months, he would be fine one day and the next day, he’d be in the hospital again. Right there from the start, Mary gave her whole life to him—that’s never changed. Her whole life is devoted to Donal. And over the months, he would gradually improve a bit here and there, but we’d be never knowing what was next. When it came to his first birthday, we says to ourselves we’d better celebrate because we don’t know if there’s ever going to be another one. And the other children were quite young so they all had to take second place to Donal. The first years were very difficult.”

  Sean Page recounts these moments without a break in his voice. As he spoke to me on the phone from his home near the small village of Portumna, I could hear the long groans of cattle in the background. Sean knows the land and its rhythms, birth and death, care and feeding. He trades in the raw milk and has no role in the processing. He speaks with that same freshness: raw and simple and clear.

  “Do you ever ask, ‘Why me?’” I said to him.

  “We’re lucky enough,” was his answer. “Donal’s with us.”

  In the years that followed, Donal could be in and out of the hospital at any time. When Donal was sixteen, Mary suffered a stroke, making the care of Donal that much more challenging. As the other children grew up, “they were a great help. They never complained and I’d even say that growing up with Donal helped them a bit. They understand the differences in people better than most,” is Sean’s way of putting it. “They know family.

  “When Donal was five, we took him up to see a doctor in Dublin because I thought Donal was getting a bit better. But the doctor in Dublin told me that Donal would always be deaf and blind. But that’s because that doctor didn’t give him any time to let him show what he could do. I could tell ya for sure that he could see a bit and hear a bit, and I told everyone in our village that the doctor in Dublin was an arse. And the doctor in my village told me I was right, and that’s because the doctor here spent time with Donal and me in the kitchen, and walked around, and watched him. That’s what Donal needs—a bit of time, and then he’s a good child.”

  By the time the Special Olympics World Games came to Ireland in 2003, Donal Page was eighteen years old. Beginning at the age of five, he’d attended a local school, where the teachers did the best they could. Then, at the age of eleven, he enrolled at a special school where there were several teachers with special training in the care and education of a child like Donal. When his special school started a local Special Olympics program and volunteers came in to teach the students simple activities and games, Donal was always included. And when the school heard that Donal and two of his friends were selected to attend the World Games, there was cheering all around.

  * * *

  The morning after that triumphant Opening Ceremony, reports of amazing feats of athletic excellence began to stream in from fields and gymnasiums across Dublin. At golf, Conrad Zastrow from South Africa played a scratch round. At power lifting, Amal Zeynalove from Azerbaijan lifted a personal best 303.9135 kg in the deadlift. And for the first time in Special Olympics history, when times at track and field and aquatics were analyzed, a stunning piece of trivia emerged: more than one hundred performances by Special Olympics athletes would have been good enough to qualify for the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games themselves! All over Ireland, the athletes of Special Olympics were being cheered into victories they could never have imagined possible.

  Dublin was also home to another first: it was the first World Games where athletes with the most severe challenges were given a chance to compete in the same “Motor Activities Training Program,” or MATP, that I’d observed in South Africa with Daniel and his mother. MATP is an official “sport” of Special Olympics and is designed to prove the central belief that everyone has a gift and deserves the chance to show it. No exceptions. While the skills of MATP athletes may be the most modest ever to be counted as sport, the athletes themselves rarely disappoint.

  The RDS hall in downtown Dublin was designated for the MATP events and a few dozen athletes from nearby towns and villages were selected to show off their MATP skills. One of those athletes was Donal Page.

  Donal left early in the morning of Thursday, June 26, on a school bus with his two other mates, his longtime coach Celia Hobbs and three other staff members. His parents arranged for a friend to look after the animals so they could drive up to Dublin to watch their son compete. They left before dawn. “We surely didn’t want to be late not knowing what it was going to be like getting into Dublin and all,” remembers Sean. “So we arrived at the RDS and of course it wasn’t opened yet so we went around Dublin a bit and had a cup of tea.”

  By the time they returned to park at the RDS, what they saw was nothing short of amazing. The car park was packed and there was already a line of spectators queuing up for the MATP events. None of the other Special Olympics venues in Dublin were full at midweek, but for the first-ever World Games Motor Activities demonstration day, the hall was bursting with energy. “Sure I had no idea that there were going to be so many people there,” Sean said, “so even though we were still early, I said to the wife, ‘Let’s go, Mary, and find ourselves a spot inside. We don’t want to be out here when Donal’s time gets called.’”

  As good fortune would have it, I was lucky enough to be on my way to the RDS at the same time as Sean and Mary. My focus was on welcoming the president of Ireland, Mary McAleese, to the event and explaining MATP to her.

  To be honest, I was slightly intimidated to be hosting the president, so I was a little edgy. And beneath my anxiety about hosting a president was another fear that I would never have admitted to anyone: I was worried that the events would be disappointing to her—maybe even sad. We were so grateful to her—for her wonderful Opening Ceremony speech, and for the extraordinary support she had shown the Special Olympics movement. I was thinking that it maybe would have been better had she attended track and field, where so many athletes were performing with such unexpected skill. If she were there, she’d see great races, well-trained athletes, a display of grit and perseverance. I could just imagine her leaning over in the midst of the races and saying something like, “Oh, my! I had no idea the athletes would be this impressive! Isn’t the runner from Lebanon amazing? And isn’t that women’s relay team from Panama fast?” And I would be able to answer, equally excited, “You know, Madame President, I am just as amazed as you. Every time we hold these World Games, the athletes rise to higher and higher levels of achievement. It is so thrilling to watch!”

  But I was sure that conversation would never take place at MATP. I could just imagine what might go through her mind: “What am I doing watching people pushing bowling balls around when I should be at my office handling matters of state?” And what could I say that would make MATP sound more interesting or exciting? What I was failing to anticipate was the person who would embody “thrilling” more than any other competitor I’d ever seen in my life.

  * * *

  When Mary McAleese, the president of Ireland, entered the RDS hall and took her seat in the front row of the stands, she was g
reeted by a huge ovation from the more than 1,500 fans filling every seat behind her. She was popular in the warmest way; the people of Ireland loved her. Just after we sat down, and before I could start the requisite small talk, the announcer blared, “Next up, Donal Page from County Galway. Will you join me in welcoming Donal to the stage, where he will perform the ‘grasp and release.’”

  The crowd applauded warmly. From behind the stage, a young woman came pushing Donal in his wheelchair to the center of the riser. I could see that Donal had only the most limited control of his arms and that his body was slightly contorted in the chair. But I also couldn’t help noticing the face of the woman pushing him, her broad smile, her glittering eyes as she looked out to the crowd. She was Donal’s coach. She positioned Donal in his wheelchair in front of a small table, and she came around the front to set up a small beanbag. Once she secured the chair and the bag, she leaned over to speak to him in his ear—last-minute instructions and encouragement. Donal’s challenge was to reach over, pick up the beanbag, lift it, and move it to the other side of the table. She placed her hands on his shoulders, then down on the bag as if to capture his attention and make sure he understood. With that, she stepped off the riser and headed toward the back of the stage from where she’d come. But she paused midway and turned to watch Donal perform from a safe distance.

  “Start,” barked the announcer, and Donal began his task. I was close enough to Donal to see his eyes, and I could see him scan the crowd with a slight hint of a smile. His gaze moved around the hall. It was as if he was taking the whole of the place into himself; as if he was saying that he wouldn’t connect with that beanbag until he’d first connected with the people around him. The crowd was quiet. I knew nothing of his story, but it was hard to imagine he’d ever been in front of thousands of people before. At the same time, he’d lived his whole life learning how to communicate without words or motions, and he was doing that right there on that stage. There were no words and only the slightest of movements. But he was gathering us, taking us in, collecting the energy in the room for the task ahead.

  After a minute or so, without the slightest hint of Donal’s picking up the beanbag—a minute that seemed like an hour—he turned his head downward to the task at hand and, to my relief, started to focus on completing his assignment. Silence has an uncomfortable power in a room of thousands, and while I practiced it in prayer, I was ready for it to end in the arena. And Donal, it appeared, was ready to do what he had come to do. As his hand started toward the bag, one fan in the crowd shouted an unmistakable cheer—“Come on now! Let’s see it!”—and a rustle of encouragement moved through the room.

  If I had been apprehensive about the MATP event before it began, I forgot all about it. The moments of silence had brought my full attention to Donal. And with my attention, I felt a bond emerge between him and the crowd of which I was a part, and I was all in, focused completely on pulling for him to pick up that bag. Donal was now leaning into the challenge, but even though he tried and tried to move his hand to pick up that beanbag, he just couldn’t do it. Another minute went by but his body simply wouldn’t cooperate. All of us assembled could tell he was giving it his effort, but there was no movement in his arm, no grasping in his fingers. Try as he might, the level of difficulty was just too high. Thousands of people were watching him and we were frozen in disappointment and empathy. He just couldn’t do it.

  But after another minute or so, Donal’s hand moved. His father remembers thinking, “If they just give him time, he can do it. I was remembering all those doctors who gave up on him and told me he was blind and deaf and could never do a thing. They didn’t give him time. I was just hoping that the crowd there at the RDS would give him time, ’cause sure I knew he could do it.” Time—that’s what passed, second by second, and into several minutes with only the slightest movement of his arm. But the crowd stayed with him, and after the arm moved, a few fans started to applaud and a few more shouts came from the bleachers: “There you go, lad! Now grab it!”

  And so slowly, deliberately, and with a level of effort I’d never seen before and never seen since, Donal Page pushed his arm to grasp that beanbag, and the crowd exploded in cheers. It had taken him almost ten full minutes to get his arm and his hand lowered onto that bag, but the place reacted like these were World Cup finals and the home team had just scored a goal. Applause turned to stomping, shouts turned to enthusiastic howls, and whistles rang out from the crowd. Donal looked up—just a glance—and continued on his task.

  Donal Page took eighteen minutes to complete his MATP demonstration of the beanbag lift. Alone on the stage, in front of the president of his country and thousands of fans, Donal Page did what almost no one believed he could do: lift a beanbag and move it about twenty inches from one side of a table to the next. He did it with a combination of effort and focus that left us all in tears. We were all standing for the last five minutes or so, cheering, shouting, clapping, yelling, laughing, crying, and crying some more. I never once had to lean over to President McAleese and say something insightful. I never once had to worry that the competition would be unsuitably sad. It was, quite simply, the most inspiring athletic achievement any of us had ever seen. If grit had a definition in 2003, it would’ve been a picture of Donal Page. And if grit has the capacity to change a nation, it lies somewhere deep in the abundance of grace and strength that Donal Page revealed to his country at the RDS in Dublin. “They gave him time,” his dad recalls. “That’s all he ever asked for—just a bit of time. And with a bit of time, I knew he could do it.”

  Late that night, the bus carrying Donal and his teammates returned home to Portumna. They were accompanied the whole way by a police escort of the national force, the Garda. The flashing lights of motorcycle officers signaled celebrities on board, and the roads were cleared of traffic to let the bus pass by. When they finally arrived home after nightfall, a final surprise greeted them: the town square was full. News had spread of the great achievements in Dublin. Donal was lowered off the bus with his medal around his neck, and the square filled with cheers. “That’s a day we’ll never forget. There was Donal in the middle of the town and the lights flashing and him and his medal and everyone congratulating him and telling him, ‘Well done,’ and Mary and me—well, we felt a light in our son that we’d never felt before. He’s a good lad and we always knew it. But there he was, and this was his day, and God, he was glorious.”

  * * *

  Over the course of those two weeks in Ireland, the athletes amazed crowds again and again. There were so many moments of athletic greatness we couldn’t keep track. But in my mind, none of those moments outshone Donal’s.

  In a later poem, Seamus Heaney wrote of a drive along the Irish shore and the beauty of the inland swans and the color of the sea and the movement of the light on the stones. As he paused to take it in, he realized it was just a moment—

  Useless to think you’ll park and capture it

  More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,

  A hurry through which known and strange things pass

  As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways

  And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

  That was Donal’s gift to me and Donal’s gift to his family and to his village of Portumna and to the great nation of Ireland. He caught our hearts off guard, and with his grit and his fearless effort, he blew them open. Ireland will never be the same.

  FIFTEEN

  Humility and Simplicity

  No matter how many times someone like Donal Page catches my heart off guard and blows it open, I still find myself waking up a few days later to reality. In the “real” world, I remember, Donal is a sympathetic figure but not a person who can lead a nation. Donal isn’t in control of power and influence like real leaders are. “Real” leaders climb the ladder and gain control of companies and countries and societies. They’re ambitious and hardened and tough and make decisions based on the interests of individuals and groups�
��and based on their own interests, too. I can’t expect someone like Donal Page to be on a par with politicians and captains of industry and scholars and generals. He’s an inspiration, of course, but he isn’t a “leader.”

  And every time I think that way, I try to remember it’s wrong—that there are many kinds of leaders and that all the greatest leaders have one thing in common with Donal: they lead from the heart. And no one showed me the meaning of real leadership—and Donal’s—better than Nelson Mandela. If there was ever an individual who had the credibility to understand what it takes to be a leader, it was Mandela. And thankfully, he explained his secret to me.

  Mandela’s story is the stuff of legend. He grew up under one of the most repressive regimes of the twentieth century, South Africa’s apartheid government, which imposed a system of race-based segregation that disempowered and oppressed the majority of its citizens. In the 1960s, Mandela led efforts to resist this system. He was arrested and stood trial, while many of his companions were tortured and killed. Despite an international outcry, Mandela received a life sentence and spent the first eighteen years of it in the brutal Robben Island prison, surrounded by the icy, shark-infested waters of the south Atlantic. Mandela was forty-six years old when his sentence began, and like all the prisoners, he lived in a tiny cell with only a single thin blanket and a straw mat for bedding, and no indoor plumbing. He was subjected to hard labor and given little opportunity to communicate with friends, political allies, or family. During the majority of his imprisonment, he was allowed to write and receive a letter only once every six months. Once a year, he was allowed to meet with a visitor—for thirty minutes.

  After twenty-seven years, the nightmare ended. On Feb 11, 1990, the shackles were released, and Nelson Mandela walked down the driveway of Victor Verster prison in the town of Paarl, near Cape Town, to his freedom. Mandela insisted on walking out of the prison alone, and the image of him striding down the abandoned prison road remains among the most powerful of the twentieth century. He was met by thousands of supporters and massive worldwide media coverage. He paraded to Cape Town and addressed millions around the world from the balcony of City Hall. Along the way, the world noticed his resolute posture, his singular stride, his dazzling, enveloping smile.