Grass. That’s all it is. But not so long ago this area was decking. Decking that I had built to encourage and enable Marc’s to get outside. Stepping, or wheeling out in his wheelchair, over the threshold onto a deck that was at the same height as the threshold, brought so much more inclusion to his days. That project was a success. The months and years pass by and sadly, Marc’s health also deteriorates and the decking lay largely unused. Damp, slippery and dangerous, with its railings and spindles, it has also become something of a prison. With Marc’s poor eyesight, he could not see the colour and shapes of the flowers, lawns and trees, but instead, he just saw the wooden spindles.
Time for a change. I planned to open up the area, enabling Marc to see the garden once again and to be enveloped by the magic that it had once provided him.
And so started the next chapter to his story. ‘Beyond the garden’ will be based upon what we did next. Lockdown had changed our world and Marc’s in particular. His well being depended upon our encouraging his integration with the world once again to stimulate his mind and create those adventures.
Adventures that, as before, started in our own garden. We encouraged Marc to walk, or to be wheeled in his wheelchair around the garden, rediscovering those plants, statues and trees that I included as triggers for his memory to recall fond memories of past adventures and laughter. Each smile he shows, bring shim closer to wanting to embrace new adventures and experiences. The scent of the rose, used so often as I help calm his fears and focus his mind away from his anxiety and onto those memories. “Remember when … ” I will suggest to him. In time, he will calm and reply, “I remember” with a smile.
We pass and talk about the tai-Haku tree and our adventure to Alnwick Garden and the tree house. a scary moment that he recall vividly, but now, after so many years, and the help and support of to workers there, he can laugh about it
now.
Onwards we walk and come across the foxglove. “Do you remember the poison garden?” I ask. “We had to wait behind big, locked gates for the guards to take us around” He look sat me and smiles once again. “He had keys” was his reply. The smallest, almost insignificant detail recalled so vividly by him. “Just like Might Joe Young” he added making a link to keys being rattled by a poacher in film seen a long time ago.
It reminds me that Marc captures far more than we may initially realise. His autistic mind takes time to process the information he is exposed to, and may, for many days, weeks or months, make no mention of that topic again, but then, his memory is triggered and recalled as if it has just happened.
Marc’s story can be read in my memoir, Marc’s Garden. The challenges he has faced and how we found ways to support him and encourage him. Our garden was key then as it is now. I am writing about how we supported him following the lifting of restrictions after the pandemic lockdown and introduced him to a world he had forgotten.
It’s a story about going back to the beginning and helping him to regain coping techniques in a world that seems to have become even less tolerant and inclusive than we faced previously. I want to share our journey in as much honest and real detail as I can in order for those reading it may have a better understanding of its like living with multiple and complex health conditions and disabilities.
