Dani Garavelli: Pay tribute to hero's battle with despair WHEN I was very young - about six or seven maybe - I was obsessed with Helen Keller. I'd read about her in one of those pocket books about inspirational men and women that lined the shelves of primary schools back then and for a short time I took to walking about with my eyes closed, clutching the walls and wondering what it would be like to be both blind and exceptionally brave. I thought about that again last week when I heard about the suicide of PC David Rathband, who lost his sight when he was shot by Raoul Moat 19 months ago. Rarely can a human being have captured so vividly the experience of being plunged into perpetual darkness, the confusion of walking into a room full of unidentified noises and the sinking realisation that, when you open your eyes in the morning, the canvas will remain pitch-black as it was while you were sleeping. Rathband was brave as well as articulate, there's no doubt about that. He was shot in the face and had hundreds of pellets embedded in his skull. He lost both his eyes and his sense of smell and the damage to his tear ducts meant it was painful to cry. Yet, before he had even come out of hospital, he was insisting that being blind would not hold him back. Like a man who had once read a pocket book about Keller, he set out on a mission to reconstruct his shattered life. Before long, he had set up a charity, the Blue Lamp Foundation, to help emergency workers injured in the line of duty. He made speeches, ran marathons and counted the days until he could go back to work - not as a traffic officer, but in road safety. Once there, he said, he wanted no slack cut for him; if there was an elevator, he said, he'd use the elevator. But if there were only stairs he would learn to climb them. In short, the officer seemed to believe that if he approached his new life with enough positivity, if he drove himself hard enough, he would soon be able to live as if he wasn't really blind at all. Sometimes, however, determination isn't enough. After the first wave of adrenaline passed, it seems PC Rathband began to grasp the impact losing his sight would have on his future. Perhaps it's particularly difficult for a police officer - who is used to helping people - to ask others for their support. But, unable even to make a cup of tea for himself, he began to believe those around him were irritated by his neediness, that he could "hear" the resentment in their voices. Because his blindness was caused by an act of violence, he also had post-traumatic stress disorder. Every night, he woke up cowering at the bottom of the bed at the precise time the attack had taken place. In a recent interview he said not only had the faces of his loved ones become as featureless to him "as the skin of an orange," they had been replaced by that of Moat, whose face haunted him like evil Voldemort in Harry Potter. Perhaps the saddest aspect of Rathband's suicide was that - in everyone's eyes but his own - he was making good progress. David Blunkett told how, at a fund-raising dinner, he demonstrated his mastery of his iPhone. The former home secretary tried to reassure him - as others did - that over time he would overcome those aspects of life he was finding most challenging. Sometimes, Rathband seemed to be coping. Photographs of a recent trip to Australia to see his twin brother Darren show him soaking up the sun. But he set the bar impossibly high and then lambasted himself when he could not clear it. Much of the time, he seems to have been gripped by a sense of failure and fear that he might be fumbling about for the rest of his life. Unswervingly honest about his frailties, he admitted he sometimes took out his frustrations on those around him, including his wife Kath, from whom he split last November. Like anyone in his situation, he veered from passive to petulant; from aggressive to apologetic. Sometimes he seemed grateful for public support, sometimes resentful about the lack of it. But after spells of despondency, he always tried to pick himself back up. Over the past few weeks, however, he seems to have become overwhelmed by despair. His tweets tracked his fluctuating mental state until - on Wednesday - he was found hanging in his house. For once, there are no great lessons to be learned from his death. As far as it is possible to tell, the officer had been given plenty of support from his wife, his children, his brother, Northumbria police force and many of those who read his desperate messages and alerted the authorities to his plight. Though at one point he tweeted the words "RIP PC Rathband," he told those who turned up to check up on him that he was OK. Not everyone can be plucked from the edge of the abyss. But his story, lived so unflinchingly, gives an unprecedented insight into the human condition with all its strengths and frailties. It may have ended in tragedy, but it is nonetheless a tale of a battle valiantly fought. And, though PC Rathband neither conquered nor completely adapted to his injuries, he was nothing short of inspirational.