A banner raised to the glory of friendship (Jean-Dominique Bauby)

On December 28, 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby woke from a stroke-induced coma, mentally aware of his surroundings but physically paralyzed with locked-in syndrome.  He wrote The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by blinking his left eyelid as code, letter by letter.

   I receive remarkable letters.  They are opened for me, unfolded, and spread out before my eyes in a daily ritual that gives the arrival of the mail the character of a hushed and holy ceremony.  I carefully read each letter myself.  Some of them are serious in tone, discussing the meaning of life, invoking the supremacy of the soul, the mystery of every existence.  And by a curious reversal, the people who focus most closely on these fundamental questions tend to be people I had known only superficially.  Their small talk has hidden depths.  Had I been blind and deaf, or does it take the harsh light of disaster to show a person’s true nature?

   Other letters simply relate the small events that punctuate the passage of time:  roses picked at dusk, the laziness of a rainy Sunday, a child crying himself to sleep.  Capturing the moment, these small slices of life, these small gusts of happiness, move me more deeply than all the rest.  A couple of lines or eight pages, a Middle Eastern stamp or a suburban postmark… I hoard all these letters like treasure.  One day I hope to fasten them end to end in a half-mile streamer, to float in the wind like a banner raised to the glory of friendship.

--Jean-Dominique Bauby,

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

In 2007, Bauby’s memoir was made into a film by Julian Schnabel and starring Mathieu Amalric.

Image source:  https://feministdisabiltystudiesblog.wordpress.com/tag/the-diving-bell-and-the-butterfly/