Fifty Years

Half a century ago today my parents, riding a motorcycle, were involved in an accident that changed their lives forever.
My Mum had an extensive period in hospitals, finishing at Stoke Mandeville, the then spinal injuries specialist unit.
She never walked again.
My Father had just about every bone below his waist broken but amazingly nine weeks after the accident he was discharged and came home.
It had a marked effect on my family’s lives, I was already in the RN and was granted compassionate leave to look after my brothers and sisters. I fell behind in my apprenticeship but was back classed and passed out three months later than my contemporaries.
Gary, at sixteen, was just joining the Parachute Regiment, it made an already tough training regime tougher but he sailed through and visited Mum in his ‘Red Beret’.
Susan aged 15 couldn’t cope, she ran away from home and we never saw her for around seven years.
Jacqui was 12 and she too found it hard, money was tight and she never visited as often as she would have liked but she coped and became really close to our parents.
Adrian, the baby of the family aged just 3, he has no recollection of that period and has no memories of our Mum walking.
Mum and Dad - they lived another thirty-seven years together with hardly a day apart. They travelled the world, saw their children married, saw grandchildren arrive and marry and then great grandchildren completed things.
Never once did I hear them complain.

(As a footnote; our Mum died in February 2012 and the coroner ruled that her death was; “The result of a road traffic accident which occurred in 1971”)