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Category:
Health/Wellness
Publisher: Alan Greenhalgh
Type: Non-Fiction
Copyright: 2014
ISBN-13: 9781291834307
Price: $0.99 (eBook)
A Short Story How Men's
Sheds Save Lives
Saving Bill Bailey is a short story based on real life events.
Struggling with the Black Dog of depression after finding himself on life’s scrap heap following involuntary retirement due to illness, Bill understands he is in a downward spiral that can only end in one place: suicide.
As a former cop he has seen what suicide does to those left behind and knows he must do something about his situation quickly.
Realising there are literally thousands of desperate men in a similar situation he sets about establishing a unique place where men can go to find the help and support they need while at the same time contributing to the community.
Bill establishes a men’s shed and registers it as a health promotion charity. Soon he is inundated with members and the shed makes a valuable and practical contribution to the local community.
Excerpt
Sixty-year-old Bill Bailey reckoned he’d reached his use by date. Who wanted a clapped-out old fart forced out of the workforce by a succession debilitating health conditions? Answer: no one.
Unemployable and unwanted he’d joined the sad, ever-growing pile of baby boomers languishing on life’s scrap heap. But for Bill, the worst part was losing contact with the adult male world, along with his usefulness to society. Despite living in a metropolis of one million people he felt as lonely as a desert island castaway. “I should change my name to Robinson bloody Crusoe,” he mused.
While Bill’s wife Jill luckily enjoyed good health and managed to achieve fulfilment from a job she loved, poor old BB wiled away his days at home trying unsuccessfully to seek purpose in mundane household chores while battling chronic pain. Although he tried his hardest to remain cheerful, prescription drugs and constant pain had taken their toll. He’d become like a ball in an endless game of doctor ping pong being bounced from specialist to specialist without relief. All this toing and froing had contrived to make him a grumpy old bastard.
As time progressed, Bill’s sense of isolation, loneliness and self-worth worsened. The Black Dogs of depression snapped with increasing frequency at his heels. At three in the morning when the pain was at its worst he’d gaze at into the pantry at the valium bottle and wish he could end it all. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending upon one’s point of view, Bill refused to take this path. As an ex-copper he’d witnessed first-hand the devastating effects of suicide too many times to do that to his family.
“What’s the point of it all?’ he enquired of his once handsome image one morning while scraping off the sandpaper-like stubble that unlike him retained a virility only rivalled by his burgeoning nostril and ear hair. Looking back over his life Bill reflected on his a hard, miserable childhood. As the youngest of three boys he’d been physically beaten, bullied and mentally abused, not only by his father but his elder siblings who’d taken their lead from a parent who lived by the adage that “children should be seen and not heard” and certainly not praised, indulged or encouraged to realise their true potential.
While Bill’s older siblings also suffered from their fathers’ iron-hard fists and foul temper, they at least were able to relieve their own sense of injustice by venting their spleen on little William who at the bottom of the familial pecking order had no way to seek relief or discuss the unending misery he was forced to endure. While his mother was a kindly, loving woman, she had enough problems of her own and was missing in action when it came to sibling injustice.
In later years Bill would come to understand that he was not unique with respect to his childhood. Consequently, he didn’t expect any sympathy and understood that like it or not, what happens in one’s formative years often determines the direction one takes for the remainder of life.
Kicked out of home as soon as he was of employable age by a father who regarded him as nothing more than a financial burden, he’d fended for himself from the tender age of fifteen, living in various seedy boarding houses in Sydney’s western suburbs where he’d once nearly been raped by a recently-released inmate from Callan Park Mental Hospital, struggling free from the sash cord binding his wrists and ankles and screaming blue murder while another pervert looked on and guffawed stupidly.
While those few terror-filled moments and the necessity to fend for himself had soon made him streetwise, he often look back over those times and considered it a miracle that he’d survived his teenage years without being arrested, killed, committed suicide or become an alcoholic. Alone, broke, poorly educated, virtually friendless, and with no self-esteem he would have been classified “at risk” and by the yardsticks used today.
With a maturity way beyond his years young Bill had understood that while kids raised in stable homes by wealthy, loving supportive parents who build their children’s self-esteem don’t always turn out as model citizens, the likelihood of them reaching their true potential is much higher than those who have a poor education, suffer financial hardship and are physically and mental abused. He also knew that those who are abused are obviously much more likely to turn to crime or become abusers themselves; while on the other hand, some simply have their spirits broken and are so demoralized that they never permit themselves to dream big dreams or have the courage to dare. Few do anything memorable in the way of building a better society or to even try and realise their potential simply because they don’t have any understanding of their hidden capabilities. In other words, they are beaten before the even hear the starter’s gun.
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