Break on through, break on through to the other side was playing on the radio and wrapping us in our own private world. Tony forced his tight twisting neck to turn his head to the right so I could give him a spoon of apple sauce as he closed his tired eyes. The cerebral palsy was causing his muscles to tighten. It was Friday afternoon.

     Normally we ate in the school cafeteria but today he wanted to eat in the physical therapy room where we could be alone. His twisting, pulling neck was forcing his head to lean further to the right. “How you doing Buddy?” Tony said in a tired voice. I’m okay I said as Tony slowly moved his arm and pointed a curling forefinger at the chocolate cake. I broke off a small bite and placed it in his mouth.

   We sat quietly listening to the music. Tony didn’t say it but I knew he was worried about his surgery tomorrow. Surgeons were going to cut his neck muscles to relieve the constant pulling. Tony told me it was a routine surgery but something was telling me it was very serious.

     That Sunday walking across the parking lot to the hospital I tried to convince myself everything was okay but when I saw Tony’s dad in the lobby it was obvious something was wrong. Color had drained from his face and black circles were under his blood shot eyes, “He’s dead”, he said in a worn-out voice. “Tony’s dead.”

     My legs felt weak and everything seemed out of focus. I couldn’t believe it. We had been together Friday and now he was dead. It must be mistake I told myself as I walked across the hospital lobby to the door.

 A skinny palm tree leaned against a gentle spring breeze as I slowly walked across the parking lot in a daze. On the way home I passed lakes and azaleas in their pink bloom. It was beautiful in Orlando in the spring but all I could think about were the last seven months I had spent with Tony.

     I had been hired as a teacher’s aide by Evans High School in August, 1983 and was assigned to a special handicapped unit in a separate building from the high school. The handicapped students met in this building in the morning for homeroom then left to attend classes with the other students.

 During the day they came back to the unit for academic help and physical therapy and also classes. My job was to assist a student named Tony, who had cerebral palsy, with his daily activities.

     I was nervous the first day of school as the lift slowly brought Tony and his wheelchair down from the bus. My first impression was how large the wheelchair was and how small Tony looked. I was wondering if I was in over my head. He looked so fragile and his head was twisted to the side as the lift brought him down to the pavement.

My fear was that he would be very quiet and all I would become was just an extension of the wheelchair. I went over to help him up the incline to the sidewalk and he jerked up in his chair, smiled and we started talking. That first day I walked beside him as he stiffly pushed the directional stick to maneuver the wheelchair among all the rushing students.

He bumped into several students and apologized as we searched for his first period class. We got there about five minutes late and all eyes were on us as we backed up the wheelchair several times as students slid their desks around so we could get through. Finally, we were able to find a place where Tony could see the teacher.

Tony was introduced and the teacher asked him some questions and Tony in his unflappable way jerked up a little in his chair, smiled, and answered. It was amazing how he put everyone at ease and suddenly I felt real comfortable working with him. From that moment things just clicked and we had a remarkable chemistry between us. 

     This was necessary since I spent the entire day with him. I walked beside him to classes, fed him at lunch, helped him with his homework, bath roomed him and several times a week assisted the physical therapist with stretching exercises on Tony. Woven into everything we did was his sense of humor and enthusiasm.

            A lot of people put on masks in public but Tony was as honest and open as anyone I have ever known. He had a childlike innocence that saw the good in everyone and even when he was tired and his muscles were pulling, he always did or said something to brighten the day.

            Maybe he knew his time was running out…I don’t know but he really squeezed every bit of life out of every moment. He had a real joy for life. Sometimes when I was cleaning him, we would start play acting a scene from a movie Tony was planning on making.

            One of the characters I played was a Russian interrogating Tony who was an American spy. Adopting an accent, I would start asking questions but inevitably Tony would start laughing and the teacher would tell us we were taking too long. Another time I did a Frankenstein impersonation for Tony but the principal walked into the room…….  not good.

     One of my favorite times was in the morning before school started. As soon as he saw me his arms would flail up over his head while he pushed himself up higher in his chair. It looked like he was about to fly. He would smile and a look of pure joy would come over his face.

 We would start talking and several other kids would be drawn in by his contagious laugh. Usually Tony talked about his favorite T.V. show, the A Team, which had inspired him to make a similar movie. We would discuss different story plots and often laugh at some of our most outrageous ideas until the bell rang and we went to homeroom.

             That Fall Tony went to his first high school football game with some of the other handicapped kids. You would have thought it was the Super Bowl the way everyone was so excited the week before. Then on Friday, Tony talked all day about the game.

 That night Tony and his classmates went to the game and I watched him push up in his chair and flail his arms every time a roar went up from the crowd. He yelled out defense, defense with the rest of the crowd and stiffly shook a pom pom at the night sky. That night I saw what it really means to live in the moment.

            Tony’s favorite class was aviation which got into some of the technical aspects of flying including terms related to aerodynamics and also discussed some of the different types of airplanes. It was taught by a real nice man named Mr. Johnson who had been in the military and had lots of stories related to flying he told the class.

            Tony’s favorite story was about how early pilots flew before a lot of the modern instrumentation. They would actually use how long it took to smoke a cigar to gauge how far they had gone so that a pilot might sometimes smoke two cigars before he got to his destination. Tony would stay after class every day talking to Mr. Johnson.

 Knowing Tony’s love of planes, Mr. Johnson arranged for Tony to fly in a small prop plane and for several weeks that’s all Tony could talk about. Then on the day of the flight he came out of the bus onto the lift wearing an old leather aviator’s cap. I said hello and he broke out into a huge smile and pushed up so hard I thought he was going to come out of his chair.

 Later that day everyone in the handicapped unit went outside and watched Tony as he soared overhead in an airplane. The next day he was still soaring as he talked all day about his flight.

             At some point I stopped thinking of him being in a wheel chair or handicapped.  I just saw a warm, intelligent human being with hopes and dreams who wanted to go out on dates and have a car like every teenager. I’m sorry people just saw the wheelchair and never saw him because he was truly a wonderful person.

   A few nights after his funeral I was in bed when in a half-asleep state, I heard a wheelchair in my bedroom. A golden glow was all around and Tony said he wanted to tell me something but someone else was telling him he had to leave. The wheelchair turned around and gradually the sound disappeared.

 Maybe someday I’ll find out what he wanted to tell me. My friend Tony.