A terminally ill scuba diver is set to have his final wish granted this Christmas, says Deptherapy, the charity that seeks to rehabilitate injured UK armed-service personnel through diving.
Colin Clements, 60, from Woodley in Berkshire, is suffering from an aggressive form of brain cancer that he knows will take his life in the near future.
Forced to give up his much-loved diving, he brought all his personal dive equipment to Divecrew to donate to Deptherapy, which a friend had told him about.
When Deptherapy Chairman Richard Cullen contacted Clements to thank him, he learnt that his dying wish was to undertake one last dive, and he set about making this possible with the help of Martin Weddell, a Deptherapy instructor-trainer and owner of the Divecrew dive-centre in Crowthorne, Berkshire.
Weddell rearranged the existing scuba-training schedule at a pool at Eagle House School in Sandhurst on Sunday, 17 December to allow Clements to make the special dive.
Two Deptherapy instructors will be in the pool to assist him, alongside Army veterans Gary Green and Chris Ganley, both from the Rifles and part of the Deptherapy programme.
For amputee Ganley the dive will be particularly poignant, says Deptherapy, because he will be wearing Clements’ donated BC – the one item of dive equipment he still needed.
“I am very sad that your life is ebbing away but through your donation you have helped some brave young men rebuild theirs,” Cullen wrote to Clements. “A thank-you alone seems a very empty and inadequate word, given the circumstances.”
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15-Dec-17
