D is for DEAF

His name was Jim. He spent almost all of his working life as a baker for Inglis in Belfast. He was a brother of my mother so by blood relations my uncle and in age terms he sat somewhere near the middle of her eight brothers though he would have been more associated with the younger siblings who always looked out for him. And he was completely deaf and dumb from birth. Obviously I only knew him long after he had left his teens but I often wondered how my grandmother coped, initially with the news of his disability and then with the realisation of the changes it would bring to her life and the difficulties it would mean for him. I'm sure the moment he was born she had her suspicions that something just wasn't right for the sounds of a baby crying in those first moments after birth are the sweetest sounds a mother hears, though they can be viewed much differently a few months down the road. For some reason I never asked my mum how he coped at home as a baby and a toddler, where he went to school in those early years and how he communicated with everyone else when he wanted to say something or was just feeling unwell. I wondered how his mum would call him for tea, how she would tell him off when he was naughty and how she could help him with his homework. But he had a wonderfully close family of brothers and a sister who must have looked after him for by the time I got to know him, most of them, but mainly the younger ones talked freely with him, using the deaf sign language, so that he was never left out of any conversation. The older members of the family, including mum, never really got to grips with the whole sign thing and though I never asked, I guess it was simply because they were older and were away from home at secondary school or working when he was still to reach his teenage years. But I used to sit in my grandmother's big house on Boxing Day and marvel at 'the boys' as they talked with each other and relayed everything that was being discussed, to Jim and he would respond with his answer written on his hands. He knew I couldn't communicate with him in the same way so when we had a 'conversation' he would spell out the letters on the palm of his hand with his index finger and I would reply in similar fashion, but usually the whole discussion was relatively short and often contained a fair few 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' , winks, frowns, smiles and head nods when we wanted to take a short cut to getting our message through.

He was a great footballer and cricketer and older people I meet who knew him when the family lived in Armagh, are quick to remember his sports skills but never forget his disability. Neither did his mother, for even though she was a firm believer on God with a great and vibrant faith, she insisted on doing the 'Spot the Ball' competition in the Belfast Telegraph every week in the hope that she might win some money to give to her son who had been less fortunate than his brothers and sister. But she never did win. I guess God was simply telling her that money is no replacement for everlasting happiness.


But life for Jim went on and through a deaf club that he visited socially, he found happiness in the form of a young girl from Ballymena who would later become his wife. I remember being at their wedding because I think it may have been my first but I was too young to now remember how the marriage service was conducted since both husband and wife to be could neither speak nor hear. Afterwards they settled in Belfast, not far from his mother and I remember going to visit them with my sister. Jim took us there from my grandmother's and he had one of those Morris Minors with the indicators that stuck out from just behind the front doors. I remember thinking how difficult it must be to drive in a silent world but also how great it must be not to have to listen to the horns of impatient drivers and the constant noise of town traffic. It probably wasn't the easiest of evenings since neither of us spoke each other's language but I guess they always made more effort than we did and I often regret not learning how to communicate with them properly. I also recall on a couple of occasions how the room lights flashed and soon learned that this was their front doorbell. But we still lived in an age when subtitles on television were still in their infancy so there were always difficulties to overcome.


In the next few years they had two children both of whom could speak and hear perfectly and I reckon they had to grow up pretty quickly because very soon they became the ears and mouth of their parents. And my grandmother was able to at last give something to her son for she would look after both the children when their parents were at work and at the same time help to nurture their communication skills . But just over twenty years later tragedy would strike the family twice when first Jim's son would die following an injury playing football and then JIm would suffer from an incurable illness that would eventually take his life. His wife and daughter still live in and around the city and are very much part of our larger family and wife and I had the pleasure of singing at my cousin's wedding just a few years ago, but I'll never forget her father who spoke to me through the message that was written on his hands.


As we approach Easter I don't need to remind myself that Jesus speaks to me through a similar message written on His hands, a message of giving, of cost, of pain, of suffering but most of all of love for me. I don't need to be like Thomas, who couldn't believe that Jesus had risen again when he said 'Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.' And those hands which held Him to a cross are the same hands that healed, comforted, broke bread and held children as He blessed them. And they even made deaf people hear again. And while Jesus is not here in the flesh, the message written on His hands makes us all hear that He is not dead but very much alive and able to save us. And if we come and ask God today to be our Saviour, He will not turn a deaf ear to our request. Remember, everyone can be deaf when they don't want to hear.