{"id":3112,"date":"2018-03-02T16:29:32","date_gmt":"2018-03-02T16:29:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/?p=3112"},"modified":"2018-03-02T16:29:32","modified_gmt":"2018-03-02T16:29:32","slug":"ill-push-you-the-other-side-of-friendship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2018\/03\/02\/ill-push-you-the-other-side-of-friendship\/","title":{"rendered":"“I’ll Push You”\u2014The Other Side of Friendship"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Justin Skeesuck and Patrick Gray<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Steve Charles<\/em>\u2014When I heard that the movie \u201cI\u2019ll Push You\u201d was about two best friends\u2014one in a wheelchair\u2014on a 500-mile Camino de Santiago pilgrimage across Spain, I assumed the hero would be the pusher. Patrick Gray, who so loves his friend that he\u2019ll do anything to help him.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s not wrong. But it\u2019s only half the story.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s only half of what friendship is, not to mention what love is. Because the real hero of the story is the guy in the wheelchair.<\/p>\n

And this is how our hero introduced himself Sunday night after a screening of the movie in Salter Hall\u2014the first words he uttered as he wheeled onstage:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry you had to see my butt crack up there.\u201d<\/p>\n

So this is a hero of a different sort.<\/p>\n

The disease that put Justin Skeesuck in the chair is called Multifocal Acquired Motor Axonopathy. Ironically, MAMA, for short. MAMA\u2019s vicious. She makes your immune system attack your nerves, tearing them down bit by bit. Justin first noticed symptoms when he was 16, six months after he\u2019d been in a car accident. The onset was slow. \u00a0He was able to pursue a career as a designer, get married, have kids. But he says he could feel the disease ravaging its way through his body nerve by nerve.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would get twitching and cramps in whatever muscle was going to go next.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe spent years trying to make him better and he\u2019s just getting worse and worse,\u201d his doctor says in the film. \u201cAnd the hardest thing is telling him what\u2019s going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Justin and Patrick have been friends since grade school. They were born a day apart in the same small town in Oregon. They practically passed each other at the hospital doors. Justin\u2019s dad says \u201cthe boys have never really gotten into trouble, but let\u2019s just say they\u2019ve created a little havoc.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are pictures of them at one each other\u2019s graduations, with their girlfriends who become their wives who become the mothers of their kids. All smiles and goofy looks.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s this picture of Patrick carrying Justin on his back on the beach some time after the diagnosis. The friendship deepens. Patrick tears up when he describes watching Justin struggle. He says he wishes it was him instead, and he says it in such a way that you realize it might be easier for him.<\/p>\n

One day Justin is watching a Rick Steve\u2019s Europe episode on PBS about the Camino de Santiago and wonders out loud if he could do that\u2014if he and Patrick could do it. And Patrick, being the friend you can always count on, says, \u201cSure. I\u2019ll push you.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the pastoral images Justin saw on the travel program don\u2019t show the 4,000 feet they\u2019ll have to climb the first day, the creeks they\u2019ll have to ford, the two days of \u201csomething a lot like Kansas\u201d they\u2019ll have to cross in the heat, or the treacherous descents. It all seems like a moderately difficult walk on film\u2014unless you have wheels and about 200 extra pounds to push up those hills, those rocks, through that mud. And part of the wheelchair breaks early on.<\/p>\n

About 3\/4 of the way, after a place they call the iron cross, Patrick cramps up\u2014his legs become twitching, painful muscle. He\u2019s lying on the road face down and some people who have been helping are trying to massage the cramps out. A family that has joined the two friends for a couple of days now has to stay longer, as the two friends are about to face one of the toughest stretches of the trail to get to the town of O Cebreiro.<\/p>\n

Patrick is \u00a0struggling with his soul as much as his body\u2014he regrets taking a job that has taken so much time that he doesn\u2019t see his kids as much as he used to, that he isn\u2019t there for his wife, who earlier in the film calls Patrick \u201cmy best friend.\u201d Everyone else in the film has called Patrick \u201cthe kindest man I\u2019ve ever met\u201d and \u201cgenerous to a fault,\u201d but when Patrick is first thinking about helping Justin do the pilgrimage, his wife says, \u201cWhy not?\u201d As \u00a0if the next line could be, \u201cYou\u2019re not here anyway.\u201d Patrick remembers times he\u2019s been dismissive with his kids. His need to control things, putting others at a distance. Insisting he can do things by himself. And it\u2019s weighing on him more heavily than the 10 or 12 times a day he has to lift his friend out of his wheelchair.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when more friends show up. Friends along the way. People who have heard about Justin and Patrick, know the difficulty of this particular section, want to help them make it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a tough moment for Justin. He\u2019s used to letting Patrick help, but now all these strangers?<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I\u2019ve learned that if you don\u2019t let people help, you rob them of the joy they find in that,\u201d he says. \u201cThe joy we find in helping one another.\u201d And the next scene shows Patrick walking in the lead unfettered by the chair, all those friends doing the pushing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the first time since we got here that I haven\u2019t been connected to the chair in some way,\u201d Patrick says. He seems disoriented.<\/p>\n

But the scene at the top of the hill is joyous\u2014all those friends taking turns pushing, encouraging, hugging, laughing. The very heart of the film. And only because Patrick can\u2019t do it all by himself and Justin\u2019s true humility allows others to step in.<\/p>\n

When the friends reunite with their families at Santiago de Compostela, Patrick embraces his wife and says something to her, but we don\u2019t hear it. It\u2019s all tears and smiles.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s this line from a guy who was with Patrick and Justin their first week on the Camino, an EMT:<\/p>\n

“In my work I see people on the worse day of their lives; they call me when they don\u2019t know who else to call. I\u2019ve watched people die. What really matters at the end of the day, in that moment when your life suddenly changes, is the people around you, and the relationships you\u2019ve built throughout your entire life. Taking the time to stop and be there for a friend, in whatever capacity they need. We can all do more of that in our lives. We can all take that time.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>After the film screening<\/strong> in Salter Hall Sunday night\u2014after Justin\u2019s opening crack about his crack\u2014Patrick told us what he said to his wife at the end of that journey: \u201cI am so sorry for all the times I\u2019ve broken your heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

His wife\u2019s response: “If you never broke my heart, how would I be able to love you more?”<\/p>\n

He has since left the job that took him away from his family, and he and Justin now tour with this film and write full-time. Patrick\u2019s marriage, and family, rejuvenated.<\/p>\n

The half hour Q and A following the film was the most honest\u2014at times funniest\u2014public conversation I\u2019ve heard in 22 years here. And it continued at the book signing, lots of words of encouragement, lots of laughter.<\/p>\n

The philosopher Jean Vanier writes: \u201cWe human beings are\u00a0all fundamentally the same. We all belong to a common, broken humanity. We all\u00a0have\u00a0wounded, vulnerable hearts. Each one of us needs to feel appreciated and\u00a0understood; we all need help.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vanier also believes that people like Justin\u2014who are living something we\u2019ll all go through in our own way one day\u2014help us to see that deepest truth.<\/p>\n

Justin says in the film: “It\u2019s a hard pill to\u00a0swallow, and it\u2019s something that I\u00a0continually work through in situations where I have to rely on others to move\u00a0me forward. I can\u2019t\u00a0do anything. I feel helpless. I kind of feel like a burden\u00a0in some ways. And that\u2019s a natural way of thinking.<\/p>\n

“I have to continually\u00a0let it go.\u00a0I have to continually\u00a0trust and love and let them find their joy in it.<\/p>\n

“Because they love it.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A group of students<\/strong> who walked the Camino last spring with Professors Dan Rogers and Gilberto Gomez as part of a Wabash class had a long lunch with Justin and Patrick on Sunday. Dan says they mostly swapped stories about the people they met there.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Camino is never just about you,\u201d one of the friends in the film says.<\/p>\n

There were about 160 people at the screening on Sunday evening, a good number of them students, and many of those students stuck around after the Q and A to talk.<\/p>\n

You\u00a0wonder how this film, meeting these guys, will fit into their liberal arts education, their understanding of what it means to be a man.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This event was funded by alumnus Larry Landis and other donors to the President\u2019s Distinguished Speakers\u2019 Series, as well as the Lecture and Film Committee.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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