Growing Up

There are moments in life when lightening strikes and you suddenly grow up into being and more importantly understanding what it is to be a real adult.
I remember one such moment today
I was a young 27 year old nurse, who worked hard and played hard
I had just started my career on the spinal Injury unit and found myself working on the readmission Ward which catered mainly for patients who suffered from the complications of long term paralysis, namely skin problems , urological dysfunctions and carer issues.
There I became friends with a big gentle bear of a chap called Noel.
Injured in a car accident two decades earlier , Noel lived with his family in a small rural Norfolk community . He was paralysed from the neck down and required full time care even though he could drive a car and had attended a local university.
He was a strangely sanguine man, with a calm good natured dignity to him.
I liked him immediately ,
On reflection I fell for him immediately.
Noel was on bedrest due to skin problems but his enforced captivity never seemed to get him down , indeed rather conspiratorially he suggested that I lay down next to him one morning when I was suffering from a dreadful Leadmill nightclub induced hangover.
We became firm friends.
A year later, after Noel's skin issues had healed and long after he had returned home ,I caught up with him for tea, when I was on a flying visit to see another friend who lived in Cambridge
Noel was his usual gentle natured self.
His health wasn't good , but he blossomed with the care his sister and her family gave him, and when we sipped our tea, she and his grown up niece disappeared off to do some shopping.
" She's not my real sister " , Noel eventually told me as we chatted  and caught up "they are not my real family.....my family abandoned me after my accident"
He then told me the whole painful story of a dysfunctional family who had turned their back on a newly disabled boy of twenty who had been confined to a wheelchair .
Almost from nowhere a local family with two small children offered to give Noel a home and when Noel was 25 they officially adopted him into their family without any fanfare or ceremony.

" They saved my life" I remember Noel saying in his usual calm and reasonable way
"They didn't have do it ........I wonder to this day why they did!"
And As I watched him struggle a little with his emotions , I realised just why they had done it
This gentle sweet man had given them as much happiness as they had given him
I held his hand briefly even though I knew he couldn't feel it.

And as we drank our tea outside a tearoom in Bury St Edmunds, I grew a little older......and wiser