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Alex Revisited
 I
don’t feel like writing today. I just read one of those books
that make 
you feel like you’ve nothing left to say. If you haven’t read it,
please do.
It’s a tiny book called
Alex: The Life of a Child, by Frank Deford, first published
more than twenty years ago now. I reread it every few years, and it never
fails to bring tears. It’s Deford’s account of how his little
girl died of cystic fibrosis.
Such a story is bound to be sad,
but it didn’t have to be beautiful. But Deford is a gifted writer, best
known for his way of capturing the human workings of sports. He has his
ups and downs: On a bad day he is merely very good. On his best days he is
unforgettable.
One of his most inspired sports
stories was a true account of a boxing match that ended in a
fighter’s death. He began by telling the reader that one of the two
young men would die, but not telling which one. Then he wrote profiles of
both young men, showing each as lovable, admirable, full of hope, and
unaware of impending tragedy. This simple approach created terrible
suspense and pathos. All you knew was that the end was going to be
heartbreaking. And it was.
That fight convinced Deford that
boxing should be abolished. No mere argument could have made his point as
powerfully as this plain narrative of two sweet boys, punching each
other’s heads. They might have been the best of friends. Deford
turned each into a vivid character. Fictionalized, this might have been a
great short story about war; as it is, it’s one of the most moving
sports stories ever written. Once you’ve read it, it’s hard to
watch boxing with a clear conscience.
![[Breaker quote: A sad modern masterpiece]](2004breakers/040422.gif) In
similarly plain style, Deford tells the story of a little girl, who happened
to be his daughter, born with a wasting disease that would kill her at age
eight. Her whole life was a painful effort to stave off death. Once again
the reader learns the tragic ending at the beginning, and this only
intensifies the suspense.
For Alex lives. Her parents know
she’s going to die young, and she comes to realize it soon enough,
and every day of her life is one of torment — a painful, incurable
lung disease, held at bay with painful therapy — and her father
describes it all, including his own feelings, in an unsparing,
matter-of-fact way, not without humor.
He admits he’s
sentimental: “I cry at weddings. I cry when people lose on TV quiz
shows. I cry when people win on TV quiz shows.” His and his
wife’s feelings are very much part of the story, but he lets the
details of Alex’s fate speak for themselves.
Still, this poor little victim
turns out to be anything but passive. She insists on living her life as if it
might be as it should have been.
Alex plays with dolls, makes
friends, asks why girls can’t do the things boys are allowed to do,
fights with her older brother (though she adores him), and plans on
growing up. “I won’t have to do therapy when I’m a
lady, will I?” she asks her father hopefully.
But the sense of doom is always
there. Alex laughs a lot, even though it hurts her lungs; and after one bout
of laughing, coughing, and choking, she sits on her father’s lap and
says, “Oh, Daddy, wouldn’t this have been great?” She
shuns self-pity, not wanting to upset her parents, but she can’t help
feeling a bit wistful when she “imaginates” — her own
coinage — a normal life, “just what it would be like not to
have a disease.”
Pitying those who pity her, Alex
tries to cheer others up; she feels it’s her responsibility. She
learns early to bring out the best in people, even other children. But,
pretty as she is, she is ashamed of the way her disease has wasted her
body and slightly deformed her fingers. She confides her special
“secret” to an adult friend: She balls her hands into fists
“so I won’t have to see my own fingers.”
Rarely since J.D. Salinger has a
child been brought to such vivid life on a printed page. Frank Deford has
given his child the gift of literary immortality. How touching to reflect
he’d rather not have had to. Alex would have been 33 this month.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2004 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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