The Hidden Gifts of Dyslexia, Difference and Death

Book excerpt: Can your difficulties become stepping-stones to a successful future? Can a young boy overcome a serious reading difficulty and achieve beyond all expectations? For a few gruelling years in a Catholic boys’ school, where the Brothers carry a lash under their gowns ready to strike any boy who offends their strict code, Tim struggles with maths and English, and keeps mostly to himself. But he has an observant inner life, with hours spent wandering in the cemetery his grandfather tends, learning about death the leveller and the falsity of social class and wealth. Tim has pitch perfect hearing and a voice like an angel, and is marked out by the Principal Brother to become a priest. Not him! Suffering the tragedy of losing the only three close friends he makes over the years, he experiences living with dyslexia as a cross to bear, until he finds the key to a fearless destiny as a paramedic, trauma and emergency nurse, and academic. The gift of dyslexia has taught Tim to say, “Don’t reach for the sky—hell! Go for the stars. You really can do anything you want.” Wisdom, he says, is found in the strangest places. Among these pages you will experience what Tim learnt within his grandfather’s garden, a strange place to find wisdom—among the head stones and monuments, and where, he says, you can find yesterday’s people.