MY FATHER’S MOTHER died when I was seven, in her late eighties, so I hardly knew her. She was from another generation with different values and a different outlook. Her many grandchildren, including myself, were inspired with a family story of how she proved faith and conviction could move mountains and showed how nothing should be accepted at face value.
In 1928, when my uncle, then aged seventeen, was paralysed in a rugby accident at school, she called in London’s most respected orthopedic surgeon, a man with many titles and who had treated royalty. He told her: ‘I have bad news for you, your son will be dead within a week.’
She said, ‘What is your fee? I will write you a cheque but do not cash it yet as I do not believe you.’
He said, ‘What are you going to do?’
My grandmother replied, ‘I am going to take him home and nurse him.’
The famous man said, ‘You are a murderer, Mrs Parsons.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘a murderer I will be.’
Later in her life, the doctor came and apologized, saying it was the only time in his life he had been wrong in assessing what care and conviction could do.
My uncle did die eventually but he lived for more than a year even though he couldn’t move or feed himself. But all of her grandchildren have taken away the lesson that strength and conviction is more important than titles, fame and so called expertise.
Charlie Parsons has won many awards for creating groundbreaking television programmes, including two Emmys for Survivor, the first reality show on television, which 10 years after it began is still on CBS in America. In the UK, he was responsible for The Word and the Big Breakfast. He is also a journalist and theatre producer.