MY WIFE WOULD LIKE TO RIDE HER WHEELCHAIR INTO HEAVEN

OBSERVATIONS ON THE DISABLED AFTERLIFE 

What's wrong with this picture?

A whole F—king lot, that’s what.

You see, my wife has used a wheelchair for mobility for 40+ years.

It’s a liberation device, not some prison-like ball and chain.

Able bodied people don’t get that.

This illustration, of Stephen Hawking walking into heaven. It’s pure BS.

So you say, “maybe the cartoonist was well-meaning, he/she only wanted to show Hawking free of pain and confinement.”

I say, if that’s what you think, your opinion toward people with disabilities is as bigoted and dark ages stupid as thinking a black person would like the be referred to as “a credit to his race” or a Jewish person would feel all warm and fuzzy if they overheard you saying “they are so good with money, they can make a dollar bill scream.”

I hope, even in the backsliding Neanderthal world of POTUS 45, you all cringed at the two examples above and saw them for what they are – intolerable, inappropriate stereotypes…and worse.

Well, when a person with a disability sees that image of Hawking, they see the not so subtle meaning.  Only when you are dead and ridden of your disability, are you a truly whole, complete and heaven-worthy person.

That is disgusting, wretched, wrong-headed.

Still disagree?  Okay, this for every person of color.

Say you are African American. Would you feel all gratified if a cartoon depicted you shedding all your black skin into a pile…because you truly could only be pure enough to enter the vast, joyful afterlife with white skin?

If you are Jewish. Would you rush to forward a cartoon to all your friends – that shows you casting off a star of David and setting fire to the Torah…face beaming with joy as you glance at the Christian cross. Because you must shed your faith to be worthy of the only true heaven?

If you are part of the LGBT community. How happy would you be to see an editorial cartoon of a gay person renouncing who they are…and gleefully running into a wedding scene of one man and one woman – joining a “holy” union so they can finally defeat the evil, ghastly, dirty, filthy horror that it was to be gay or  transgender? Would you not be gravely offended by folks believing the only way you could walk up those sacred steps to the promised land was if you renounced your LGBT ways?

If I haven’t showed you the soul-crushing hatred that ableism visits on people with disabilities each minute of each day, them I give up.

You are beyond hope.

For those of you that now get it. Please go forth in a world made better by diversity and know my wife is part of the rich tapestry of life…wheelchair used for mobility and all.