The book Fallen: A Trauma, A Marriage, and the Transformative Power of Music by Halfmoon Bay writer Kara Stanley has already swept the Coast. Before you turn a page you will likely hear from its many readers that the book is inspirational and well written and that you won’t be able to put it down. All those things are true. But they don’t prepare you for the complexity of the story.
The day that Stanley’s life changed was the day her husband of many years, musician Simon Paradis, fell off a roof at a construction site. He suffered major brain and spinal cord injuries and was not expected to live. In brutally honest and excruciatingly detailed notes, Stanley takes the reader from day one with its horror of discovery, the flight to Vancouver’s huge impersonal hospital, the gut-wrenching consultations with doctors, through the trials and pains of the years that followed.
Stanley, who holds an MFA in creative writing from University of British Columbia, will be speaking and reading from her book at the Festival of the Written Arts this Sunday, Aug. 16. She will be accompanied by Paradis, who has risen like Lazarus, and the band, The Precious Littles. (The event is sold out in a huge groundswell of local support for the couple – but you can listen from outside the pavilion in the Rockwood gardens.)
Fallen describes how a distraught Stanley keeps vigil for her husband at his bedside, how his family, including their son Eli, takes turns in supporting him. Friends rally by holding fundraisers, and one of them gifts Paradis with a new guitar which, at first, he can only work with his one functioning right hand.
It’s because music is so crucial in Paradis’ life – he is a graduate of Concordia University’s Music Arts program – that he strives to play again.
If this were a feel-good movie the story would stop there, with Paradis able to perform one song again with his band. Unfortunately this is real life and it took many months of physio before his brain was able to re-wire (termed plasticity) and send appropriate commands to his body. It took many months for his loving wife to sort through conflicting emotions of despair and hope. Along the way there were many other indignities and pain: bowel care, for example, requiring a caregiver’s help, renovating a home for wheelchair accessibility, treating pressure sores. One of the most touching parts of the book is the attempt by the couple to travel to Chilliwack to watch their son play soccer – a trip that involved finding an accessible motel and an emergency room to repair an IV drip that was warding off a potentially deadly infection. The agony is palpable.
The book poses big, personal questions for the reader. Could you or I maintain the compassionate devotion of Kara Stanley? Could you or I have the persistence and intellect of Simon Paradis to rehabilitate a broken brain?
Sadly, many families of accident victims are haunting the hospitals right now, confronting their own painful questions. This book will be especially poignant for them.
Fallen is published by Greystone Books and is available for $19.95 at local bookstores.
