Like Other Things in Life, Punting Was Worth the Risk for Hawking

ONCE I SUGGESTED TO STEPHEN that he might want to quit early while I went to some pub and worked on a section of our book that was marked TBD, which meant “for Leonard to figure out.” Before he could answer, Margaret, another of his carers, walked in. She wasn’t on duty but had just dropped by to say hello, as she sometimes did. My suggestion to Stephen went unanswered as she took over the room. She wasn’t one who worried about what she might be interrupting.

On this beautiful day, Margaret—twentysomething, reddish-blond, slim, and attractive—was in classic form, determined that I would have some local fun. When I told her I’d been thinking of quitting early, she announced that this was the time to enjoy some tourist activities. Why didn’t she take me “punting on the Cam”? A punt is a rectangular flat-bottomed boat about twenty feet long and three feet wide, with a small platform at the back and a hull that rises just a bit above the waterline. The “punter” stands on the platform and propels the boat by pushing against the riverbed with a long pole, while passengers sit on blankets and lean against one of the back supports that run across the bow. Margaret proposed to serve as punter.

Stephen seemed to suddenly perk up. He raised his brow. He wanted in.

That surprised me. I didn’t know it then, because this was before I knew of Stephen’s rowing days at Oxford (see photo above; Stephen's on the far right, photo credit: Hear the Boat Sing), but Stephen loved being on the river. However, I had read up enough on punting that I knew such a trip could be dicey for Stephen. If the punter lost balance and fell off while trying to push the wobbly craft along, that could tip the boat over. And I’d read that occasionally passengers fell in when boats collided or when they lost their balance while climbing on and off.

For us such mishaps could be awkward and embarrassing, presenting no hazard greater than getting wet. For Stephen, they could be deadly. His lack of muscle control—and hence of muscle usage—had many ancillary effects, one of which was that his bones were weak and brittle because they had not been strengthened by the pulls and tugs they were designed to experience each day. 

Just as important, when Stephen was not accompanied by his computer he couldn’t type, so he couldn’t communicate his often acute needs. For example, he occasionally had difficulty breathing because the stoma in his throat needed to be suctioned out, and without his computer’s voice generator he had no way of asking for that. There was also the possibility that one of us might slip while getting onto the punt. Worst-case scenario, he might fall into the water, in which case there’d be no saving him. He had to know all this, but it didn’t deter him. Once I got to know him better, I realized it probably attracted him. Danger seemed to make him feel alive. In life as in his physics, he liked to take chances.

A half hour later, Stephen’s van pulled up at the top of a long flight of stone steps leading down to the river. As the car’s lift lowered Stephen in his motorized wheelchair down to the street, Carol snatched the large black bag and the smaller silver one that held Stephen’s medical gear. Margaret had somehow procured a bottle of French champagne and some strawberries, the classic punting picnic.

Carol and Margaret lifted Stephen out of the chair.

“I can carry him,” I offered. 

I was, after all, twice their size, and it was quite a long walk down the uneven steps. Later in our relationship, I would occasionally help carry him, but this time Carol chuckled and said they wouldn’t endanger Stephen by putting him in my hands. Then she and Margaret each grasped one end of Stephen’s limp body and proceeded down the stairs, trailed by me carrying the gear and Carol’s pink purse.

For most of us, death is an abstract thought. Not for Stephen. He confronted it every day.

In a bit we were floating along. Carol would turn Stephen’s head first left, then right, so that he could gaze at the sights while Margaret propelled us and I fed Stephen bits of strawberries and sips of champagne. 

The punting trip took only an hour or two, but the normality of accompanying Stephen on this routine tourist activity opened my eyes to the way he chose to live. We returned to the boat landing with Stephen intact, and I seemed to have been the only one who’d considered that it might not end that way.

[…] 

After his diagnosis with ALS, with an irrevocable death sentence, he began to question how he spent his time. What could he do with his remaining years or months that would be meaningful? Could he have a passion for anything? Stephen told me that his illness guided him to something new.

“We all know we will die. For most, that is an abstract thought. It is not abstract for me,” he said. It inspired him to value each of his remaining days.

I could see that during our punting trip. Most of us amble through our lives without much sense of urgency. The norm in our society is to pursue career, money, material possessions. We worry about whether our clothes look right, if the car needs washing, whether it’s time to trade our cellphone for the latest model. We fill much of our time with stuff that doesn’t really matter. 

Believing that death was imminent steered Stephen toward a richer life in the days he had left. He turned his focus to things others often take for granted—not just the work he developed a passion for, but the people he was close to and the natural world that surrounded him. When Stephen gazed out at the river, I could see in his eyes how important it was to him. It seemed to affect him deeply. I could also see this when I watched him look up at the stars at night.

Knowing that death could come at any time, he became conscious of the beauty of each moment of life.

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Adapted from my Stephen Hawking: A Memoir of Friendship and Physics. Learn more about my new book here

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