Yesterday the blogosphere erupted with links to an exceptionally touching autobiographical radio piece by Howard Dully, who in 1960 became first patient in the US to receive a transorbital lobotomy. He was a 12 year old boy.

It’s an entirely unique experience, to hear a lobotomy victim share his story. To feel the delicate honesty of a voice that finally assembles the courage to research his tragic past. A secret history that he has, for 40 years, been afraid to address. At the forefront of his saga are the feelings of inadequacy, for obvious reasons; a struggle that haunts him every day of his life.

As an onlooker, or an eavesdropper, it’s much easier for us to, for example, see a person missing an arm and begin to imagine how our lives would be permanently altered if we too were struck with this same fate. But with a piece of our brain gone, our very faculty for imagining and thinking is altered in ways that none of us can even comprehend—much less visualize.

Nonetheless, what truly makes Howard Dully a hero is his compassion and forgiveness. His stepmother, now dead, orchestrated the entire operation. The pivotal moment in the piece occurs when Dully finally confronts his father about the heretofore mutually-ignored topic. Painfully, his father never apologizes; yet Dully returns only love and gratitude back to his father. He is thankful merely for the opportunity to finally speak with his father about the horrors that were unleashed on him, unwittingly, as an innocent child. It is particularly striking in light of less handicapped folks, like myself and my friends (if you can call that freakish lot normal), who continually neglect to forgive their parents for damages of much a much less explicitly brutal nature.

NPR : ‘My Lobotomy’: Howard Dully’s Journey.

[via Boing Boing]