Richard Cohen and "citzens of disability"

A recent guest of ours on Prime Time Radio put the world in a different perspective for me. At various times I am reminded of the truth of what Richard Cohen said to me in talking about his book Strong at the Broken Places. The truth is that people in our society who struggle with disabilities are seldom, if ever, regarded as persons in a whole sense.

He reminded me, in his portrayal of five different people, all with fatal or debilitating conditions, of how easy it is to dismiss them. As one of his subjects asks: “Why should anyone make a friend of me when there are so many normal people out there?”

One of Cohen’s subjects has ALS—Lou Gehrig’s Disease—another man non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a young woman Crohn’s disease of the intestines, another, the youngest, is a college student with a rare and virulent form of muscular dystrophy while the last has bipolar illness so severe that it can induce suicide.

All of these people are coping, in one way or another, with what is for some of them a death sentence and for others a life-sentence. Cohen copes with the latter being a victim not only of two bouts with colon cancer in the late 1990s, but an even longer life under the limitations of advancing multiple sclerosis.

I spoke with Richard Cohen four years ago in our AARP studios, He walked with a cane then. Now he relies on the cane, his vision is fading and his voice is notably weaker and shakier. Yet he copes, admittedly with the help of anger that stimulates his struggle against limits on what he can achieve physically.

What he has achieved in his latest book is a reminder that we cannot afford to overlook the myriad aspects of human character, behavior and thought that go into the making of a person.

Listening to Cohen and reading what he learned from his fellow “citizens of disability” forces thoughtful members of his audience to recognize the possibility that disability—in one form or another—is to be faced by almost all of us at some stage in our lives. It also allows us to see that disability can enrich rather than destroy a person and that focusing on the enriching factors is far more valuable, both to the disabled and to us, than pity or turning our backs on them and their diseases.

Talking with Richard Cohen, whose wit and erudition have not been stilled by his diseases, is more rewarding than talking with many, if not most, non-disabled persons. To focus only on his cane, and his vision would be to ignore him as a person—and what a waste of his time and yours that would be.