It is super sad. The death of Christopher Reeve sends a shock of grief through the most cynical and jaded of us all. His entire life was a poetic metaphor, an epic hero’s journey, where he gave us the heady meaning and illustrious example of bravery, and how the courageous must sometimes fight face to face with circumstance.
What is impressive is the glorious activist he became, in the wake of tragedy, where most would have suffered silently, unable to handle the cruel irony thrust in their path. If I had met the same fate, thrown from a horse and unable to move on my own, I am sure I would spend my days torturing those loved ones who stuck by me, punishing them for their walking legs and hugging arms, breathing fire and insults because my head was the only thing that still worked.
I don’t appreciate my healthy body, but I know that if I were somehow deprived of it, all that would remain is blustery anger, an apocryphal rage, left behind when all else is gone. Instead of furthering the cause of stem cell research, doing battle with the forces of ignorance and fear of change, I would be barking orders from my state of the art wheelchair, and if I could not throw things, I would get people to throw things at each other, because paralysis is the ultimate excuse for bad behavior.
I hope that Reeve’s mission will continue, and his death is seen as reason to work harder, to stand taller, to leap all these cultural obstacles with a single bound. If anything, being unable to save Superman is a mournful loss of opportunity. Science being held hostage by religious zealots and dead wrong politicos has kept us from making life better, from making life last longer, from curing the afflictions that life will inevitably cause. What is most insidious is the vast majority of conservatives who don’t really believe in the moral conundrum of stem cell research yet vote to limit its use in order to get a stronger foothold in the ‘Dumb Zone’ – the league of voters whose beliefs tend towards limiting the rights of women, gays, minorities due to their misguided, prejudiced and dumb beliefs.
The Dumb Zone isn’t anything to boast about having on your side, but then again, the conservatives are not a proud bunch. They would rather have numbers than ethics. What would have been truly ethical and right is if we had the freedom to utilize stem cell research to its best advantage, and been able to apply our newfound knowledge to help those who in need. Christopher Reeve could have lived and perhaps walked, ran, flown once again.
There are a number of poignant political cartoons out today, one shows an empty wheelchair, and the powerful, iconic silhouette of Superman bounding upwards into the sky. I hope that he is happy, and free from the bondage of the frailty of the human body. I hope that his family is glad and relieved that he is now able to be everywhere all the time. I hope that his incredible example soars above the incomprehensible stupidity of this world, and that a shift of consciousness, an expansion of the collective mind, a demolition of archaic thought forms and a spring loaded leap into a glorious future is his ultimate redemption.