Kimberly: The Road to Recovery

Letter to Kimberly - Chapter One

2012-01-07T14:53:00.001-05:00

Letter to Kimberly

Chapter One

January 7, 2012

Dear Love of My Life -

It’s hard to believe that in another month and a day it will be two years since you had the brain aneurysm. You don’t know what I’m talking about. ‘What brain aneurysm?’, you’re thinking or even saying out loud. I know you don’t remember it and that’s why I’m writing you this letter. You still won’t remember much or any of it; however you’ll at least have reference material. heh

Now I’m calling this a letter, except it’s a whole lot more than that. I want to write down everything I can - what our lives were like before the aneurysm, what it was like while you were right on the edge between life and death and what it’s been like during these long, long months of recuperation.

I have to tell you, it hasn’t been easy. I never had any doubt - not a bit of it - that you were going to survive a little blood vessel in your brain going Pop!, no matter how dangerous that was. From the moment the ambulance arrived, I was blissfully confident that the doctors would get you through the crisis. Blissfully confident, or I was in shock, In retrospect, it might have been more of the latter. Either way, that part was right. You’re here and alive and able to read this.

The hard part for me is not being able to take care of you. Now, you may think that you don’t need much taking care of - as you used to say, you have steel ovaries - but you do. You do need taking care of. Because of that aneurysm, you have no short term memory effectively. If you walked out of the house and went three steps down the street you might not be able to find your way back, or be able to tell a neighbour, a cop, a bus driver what your address was.

I reviewed a book a few months ago - that’s what I do now by the way, I review books - called Please Look After Mom. It’s a novel and a very huge bestseller by a South Korean writer named Kyung sook-Shin. She was very nice by the way. I interviewed her with the help of a translator. (I do that too - I interview interesting people for magazines and papers. I’ll tell you why in a bit.) Her book is about a Korean family’s Mom coming to Seoul to visit her children and becoming lost. They never find her. Her family goes through a lot of guilt and pain over that. I don’t want that feeling. I don’t want you becoming lost. I love you. Or as you’d say to me or the children, ‘I love you dammit.’

LOL - I think that might actually be a better title for this than A Letter to Kimberly. I should call this I Love You Dammit. Do you think people would be more likely to buy this if that was it’s name?

Buy this. Ah yes, I’d better tell you about that end of things. This letter is going to be a book. That means two things: One, this is going to be a very VERY long letter; and Two, the most personal and private parts of our lives are going to be part of public discourse. I worry, I worry a lot, that may be a wrong thing to do. Am I exploiting a personal tragedy for personal gain?

That’s a tough nut to crack and I’m not sure that the answer I’ve come up with - to write and publish this - is the correct one. People have advised me both ways. Even within our own family I’ve received different pieces of advice. One told me that it would be embarrassing for me to tell the world our feelings about each other, comments on our sex life, our shared observations on the world. On the other hand, your daughter and my beloved step-daughter Amanda thinks I should just go for it.

Eventually I based my decision by weighing Love on a scale. What is the most loving thing to do? Is it to keep our story private, or is it to share it with the world? I’m going with sharing. Why?

There are a few reasons. I’ve mentioned that if you were three steps outside our house you might well not be able to find your way home. I repeat that because you’ve probably forgotten what was written a page or two ago. That’s okay. I have patience for my patient (heh heh). Low-rent puns aside, the only way I can bring you home and keep you at home and make us whole again is by being able to make a living while staying at home myself. We needs us the money sweetheart. And, as I’m quite lousy at threading little beads into necklaces, or painting watercolour paintings of the Sleeping Giant, the only skill I have that can be done out of our house is writing. This.

We need the big Deal, the big Score, the bestseller that goes to the Toppest of the Poppest as John Lennon used to say. I think a lot about John Lennon these days. I’ll explain that one too. Shortly.

So there’s that. To bring you home I need to write and yours/ours is a pretty compelling story. I think it will sell. I bloody hope it will sell! Yet that isn’t enough.

Here’s the other side of it. You were a healthy person, all strong and in shape from yoga and swimming and working out to the WiiFit until February 8, 2010 when at 11:50AM you were as sick as a person can be. Our lives changed as much as lives can change short of one of us dying. Dying, I dare say, is easier. I’m glad you DIDN’T die! Dear God, don’t be getting that one wrong! Death though is the curtain closing on a theatre act. Scene’s done, re-set, on with the next. We didn’t, we don’t, have that. Instead our story goes on without any big crescendo announcing the end of the opera.

And that, as I said way back at the beginning of all this, is hard. As unique as our story is - all stories are unique - lots of people go through similar every hour, every minute, every day. Someone a person loves gets diagnosed with cancer, or has a stroke, or a car accident, or develops depression … it’s a nearly endless list. And while there’s a medical system in place for the cancer, or stroke, or accident victim, there’s that Other Person who needs help too.

I was the one left standing. I was the one who wished he’d fallen.

Do you see? You’ve always kept your love and compassion right at the surface and shared it without blinking an eye. I remember when one of my best friends for years had a relationship go - Splat! - and he arrived at our door in tears. You hadn’t even known him for that long; we hadn’t been together that long. Yet, an outside observer would never have known which of us had known him the longest or who loved him the most.

So we, or I, need to do this, to write this book. The message is simple: You’re not alone. After all, you know how much I love my Liverpool Reds footy team. I KNOW you remember how I’d sing Amanda’s baby Logan to sleep at night with the Liverpool anthem. You’ll Never Walk Alone. I’m going to reprint the lyrics so you can sing along and...as Spock said to McCoy - remember:

When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark

At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of the lark

Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown

Walk on walk on with hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone
You'll never walk alone

When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark

At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of the lark

Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown

Walk on walk on with hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone
You'll never walk

You'll never walk
You'll never walk alone.

Yes, I’m sure you remember that. And that’s why our story has to be shared, so people know that they never walk alone. If I’m wrong, I’m so so sorry. Even if I’m wrong, I hope someone someday thinks I was right, because what we’re doing helped.

I’m going to have to take a writing break soon, as our little border collie Stella needs some attention, plus my typing finger is getting worn out. there are a few things I need to tidy up in this first chapter.

By the way - do you remember Stella? That little black-and-white bundle of love sure remembers you. She was just six months old when you fell to the kitchen floor with the aneurysm. I remember her standing over you, watching the ambulance attendants. Oh, and Stella sure is happy when you’re home for a visit. When you leave, to go back to Atikokan with your parents, it is always the same thing: she will search through every room of the house looking for you, then she plunks down in front of the front door and I can’t get her to move for hours. Stella waits for her ‘Mommy’ to come home so she can be the first to greet her.

I know how Stella feels.

I mentioned John Lennon earlier. (Look back a couple of pages - you’ll find it my Love) I think about John a lot - I usually refer to him on Facebook as ‘Johnny Beatle’ even though that drives some people right up the wall. I identify with John. Here’s why:

- He was angry a lot; I’m angry a lot
- He was funny a lot; I’m funny a lot
- He was a man of peace; I’m a man of peace
- He adored Yoko; I adore you

John + Yoko = Happiness

Sometimes when I’m alone, usually late at night when I have a night off from the job I keep so you can maintain your Health Benefits for all the pills you have to take, I start playing YouTube video after YouTube video of The Beatles or John in his solo career and I start to sing along, just the way I used to sing Logan to sleep when You’ll Never Walk Alone sidn’t do the trick. What song do I sing?, you ask or if you didn’t I’m going to pretend that you did because after all I’m writing this. I sing the last single Johnny Beatle released before he was shot down; shot down the night before me Dad’s funeral. Starting Over:

Our life together is so precious together
We have grown, we have grown
Although our love is still special
Let's take a chance and fly away somewhere alone

It's been too long since we took the time
No-one's to blame, I know time flies so quickly
But when I see you darling
It's like we both are falling in love again
It'll be just like starting over, starting over

Everyday we used to make it love
Why can't we be making love nice and easy
It's time to spread our wings and fly
Don't let another day go by my love
It'll be just like starting over, starting over

Why don't we take off alone
Take a trip somewhere far, far away
We'll be together all alone again
Like we used to in the early days
Well, well, well darling

It's been too long since we took the time
No-one's to blame, I know time flies so quickly
But when I see you darling
It's like we both are falling in love again
It'll be just like starting over, starting over

Our life together is so precious together
We have grown, we have grown
Although our love is still special
Let's take a chance and fly away somewhere

Starting over...

That’s the thing. We’ll never Get Back. We can Start Over. That’s what keeps me alive.

[more]

(There have been more than a few false starts to this book. This is the FINAL version. You're welcome to look through the rest of it, although chunks will be lifted and placed within the 'Letter to Kimberly'. Above all, I hope it helps. And if you happen to click an ad, i shan't object. Peace, love, hugs - H)

A letter to a friend

2011-02-20T00:05:00.000-05:00

Hubert O'Hearn

to X

show details 12:01 AM (1 minute ago)

(I have removed the name of the recipient of this letter, but her brother also has an Acquired Brain Injury - H)

Do you mind if I ramble a bit? I rarely get to talk to anyone who is equally close to someone with ABI (acquired brain injury) and at that it's easier when you don't actually know the person.

How is it for you? Do you find it the way I do, that you keep thinking that it will work out like a movie, or fantasy novel, or a movie made from a fantasy novel; that you'll say the right thing or do the right thing and she or he will unlock and come back into the now and you'll feel all great and satisfied knowing that you have become the Wonderwall? 'Maybe, you're going to be the one that saves me?'

Because we find ourselves desperate for that. We sacrifice like teenage cutters because there is some superstition shouting through the hallways of our beliefs that if we hurt, somehow that will help.

And then we start to grasp the rim of the Karmic Wheel and turn it, to steer the ship. Do enough good! Do enough good for its own sake and she will be repaired!

Isn't that the way it works in the movies?: Or, if not movies, isn't that what Buddha taught, or more prosaically Father Muldoon when he came to terrorize, er, instruct, the children every Monday morning from Grades One through Six? If you want good things for you, do good things for them, and then you can redeem the good like the coupons you used to peel off the backs of Salem cigarettes for the good you really want. Isn't that the way it works?

No. It doesn't work that way. It doesn't work this way, that way, any way, no way. There is nothing you can do.

Not really.

Nothing you can do that makes an .... existential difference. You can supply momentary comfort. So can a doughnut and coffee. You are a doughnut and coffee, no more and there is no less.

You become terrified of your own life. If I enjoy the day, have I become disloyal? Maybe. Therefore I must hide. If I laugh, what will people think? That I've forgotten? That I've 'moved on'? You never 'move on'. You 'move on' when you forget and you never forget. She gets to forget, because she is injured. You don't forget because you are 'well'.

So which of us is actually better off?

Still. Life continues and perhaps you find enjoyment/happiness/pleasure/satisfaction in doing some good for someone else. You can't express it. That would look like 'moving on' and you will never, ever move on. But there is a reason to wake up tomorrow. A reason besides hope.

Hope is a crap shoot dressed up in angel wings.

But you still believe the Wonderwall will open up someday. Because to believe anything else is to believe ... nothing.

And we are not wired to believe in nothing.

(Sorry if this was heavy X - but knowing a bit now of you and your brother's story...I had to release)

Kindest, kindest regards,

Hubert

Emma and The Magic Card: Christmas Story 2010

2010-11-30T02:13:00.001-05:00

Emma and the Magic Card

A Christmas Story for 2010

Hubert O'Hearn

(Every year I write Kimberly a Christmas Story. 'The Walk-Ins' is elsewhere on this site. As our thanks for all the love that has come to us this year, I wanted to share this year's edition with you and your families.

May your hearts be as warm as a comforting hearth

It would be nice to say these things happened Once Upon a Time, but that would not be strictly true. Rather, these things happened every day. Let's just pick a day at random. Here, I'll just pick up this Ledger of Storytelling I keep by my desk and … (leaf, leaf, leaf)ah yes, this will do. October 27^th. It was a Wednesday which is fitting, for it was full of woe.

We'll skip ahead to the evening. At 7:52 PM Mrs. Kimberly Darling looked over to her eleven year-old daughter Emma and either smiled or grimaced as she asked to Emma to please put down her storybook and go wash her face for bedtime. Emma's expression was much easier to describe. Definite grimace; not a whit of smiling to be found.

A bit of background might be needed. The storybook in question was 'Persuasion' by Jane Austen. Emma was a precocious child, was able to describe herself as such, and was therefore quite capable of appreciating the social commentary of a 19^th century novelist. This was a part of Emma that Mrs. Kimberly Darling and her husband Mr. Kenneth darling loved about her.

Of course there were lots of things they loved about Emma – more than you, me or a roomful of caffeine-charged accountants could count!

They loved the way she laughed.

They loved the way she swam in the bath.

They loved the way she'd stand on one hip

They loved the dimple at the corner of her lip.

They loved when she would frown and pray

They loved the smart new words she'd say -

(well most of new words anyway.)

Emma had even be named for a Jane Austen novel anyway, so her interest was natural. Both the senior Darlings knew their way around a bookshelf so when she popped into the world eleven years ago, proud Mother all full of sweat and joy, and proud Father all full of dreams and some fears looked at the little pink baby stretching about and said:

Kimberly: “I think she's an Austen.”

Kenneth: “Not a Bronte?”

Kimberly: “Definitely not a Bronte. She looks more wise than … wanton.”

Kenneth: “Good. Heathcliff would make for a terribly awkward son-in-law. All that raging about the moors.”

Kimberly: “She's just been born! We have years – decades I hope! - before we have to start planning the wedding! Could you be a darling, Darling and get me some ice chips?”

Kenneth: “Of course … so which Austen then? Elizabeth is a good name. Comes with options – Liz, Beth, Liza, Queen of England. You know?”

Kimberly: “No, I think she's an Emma. What do you think, little girl?”

She whispered to her daughter.

Kimberly: “Would you like to be Emma Darling?”

Emma: “ - - - “

' – !

Her face looked about as much like a smile with a dimple as that bit of typing, but new parents can be prone to a bit of forgivable over-interpretation, so Emma she became and Emma she remained.

Little did the Darlings know – (and by the way, writers like me ove the words 'little did so-and-so know' for it makes us seem smarter than our characters) – that in naming Emma for 'Emma' they had set a match to flash paper.

That, also by the way, is what we call a metaphor. Do not go setting matches to flash paper unless you're a properly trained and licensed magician! For magic used without proper training can get you in trouble, as you shall see presently.

No, the Darlings were in for an unfortunate outcome. As soon as she could read, Emma Darling was naturally curious about Emma Woodhouse this Other Girl for whom she was named.

There are many wonderful lessons to be learned from wonderful books if you take the right lessons from wonderful books. Sometimes, rarely but true enough in this case, one can take away the wrong lessons, Because from reading 'Emma' and the other Jane Austen novels, our Emma Darling learned to be:

Impetuous

Stubborn

A bit self-righteous

More than a bit accusatory

And quite enamored of fancy things

That stubborn business literally raised its head from its book at 7:52:15 PM, stuck out a lower lip like a pirate thrusting a dagger at a frightened hostage and said, “I want to finish my book!” The stubborn head the snapped downwards back towards the book and two blonde pigtails with little pink bows shook like twin scorpions warning the invader back, back, back away now or feel our wrath.

And so began the nightly battle as Mother and Daughter would fight it out for the WWE Title. No, they did not wrestle. The letters WWE here stand for Who Wins the Evening?

It usually took somewhere up to forty minutes to get Emma from the living room to her bedroom via the bathroom. October 27^th was relatively an easy evening. At 8:18 PM, an exhausted Mrs. Darling trudged into the living room, hot-tagged Mr. Darling by tapping him on the shoulder over the back of his recliner chair and saying, “Okay, I've done the hard part. Now you make her go to sleep.” And with that Mrs. Darling moved around to the front of the recliner chair and stood on one hip, with the clear intent of imminently taking over that chair and not moving from it for many hours, as many hours as she pleased. Sir.

Mr. Darling took the hint. He went up the long carpeted staircase to the second floor, feeling like Billy Bigelow ascending to eternity at the end of Rgers and Hammerstein's 'Carousel'. Yes, he was preferring to think about old Broadway musicals than the fight he knew he would eventually win but not without cost to a lost generation composed of, um, himself.

He stood outside Emma's bedroom, adjusted his sweater and swept a hand through his greying hair, wanting to look as Official Proper Daddy as he could, put on his biggest smile (Everything's Coming Up Roses!) and said to himself, 'It's showtime folks.' Kenneth Darling then stepped over their snoozing border collie Monsoon and entered the arena, er, bedroom.

It would do neither you or me any good to go through all the details. I don't need to recall all the grisly arguments and you don't need to hear them repeated. The first two lines will suffice:

Kenneth: It's sleepy time little girl!

Emma: No.

Your imagination can now run wild for ten minutes and I'm sure you'll manage to guess all the high points.

Anyway, after that time Mr. Darling tucked the warm light bulb from Emma's reading lamp into his left pants pocket, realized that wasn't the most comfortable place for it, put it into his sweater pocket – he was a cardigan kind of guy – kissed his daughter on the forehead rather than stabbing her in the neck, turned to leave and … tripped over her Big Red Bear causing him to land in a nest of tossed about stuffed animals.

Removing a Beanie Baby Bunny from his mouth, Mr. Darling said to Emma, “Tomorrow – as soon as you get home from school – you're cleaning this room.” This leads us to the important bits.

Emma said, “I will not clean my room. I will not clean my room. You can ask and ask until your face turns blue, but I will not clean my room.”

Kenneth: And why's that … dear?

Emma: These are my things and my room and I know where each and every thing is so why should I clean my room? No one comes into my room but me -

Kenneth: And me. And Mom.

Emma: And Monsoon too, but nobody important comes in my room, so why really should I be bothered wasting my valuable after-school hours organizing some place that is already organized to its owner's satisfaction?

Did I mention that Emma was a precocious child?

Mr. Darling was working on a rebuttal when Emma concluded with, “And besides, it will look exactly the same as it does now in no time at all so why should we bother with this fruity argument?”

Kenneth: I think you mean fruitless.

Emma smiled broadly. Her trap had been sprung. “There,” she said, “even you agree Daddy.”

There are certain very special moments in a man's life when sailing alone across the Pacific seems an appealing option to present circumstance. This was one of those moments in Kenneth Darling's life. And, there are certain very special moments in a man's life when his spirit is seized by some unknown voice and he finds the inspiration within him to speak words as wise and as eloquent as anything Pericles ever spoke. This was not one of those moments in Kenneth Darling's life.

For a brief flash of thought, Mr. Darling imagined a cartoon coyote with steam whistles sounding out its tufted ears while block letters spelling TILT replaced the pupils in its eyes.

Back to reality.

Kenneth: All right then. Until such time as you can tell your Mother and I – don't tell me, I know it should be your Mother and me but right about now I don't care. Until you can tell us that this room is clean and ready for inspection there will be no tucking in and … and I'm keeping the light bulb so no reading in bed. Good night dear. I love you. (exit)

It was the best he could do. It's not like a parent can retire to chambers like a superior court judge to mull and deliberate. Justice must be meted out quickly at a drumhead trial. But having set sentence, it could not now be broken. To do so would be to invite chaos.

Leaving, Mr. Kenneth very nearly tripped again, this time over the still-snoozing Monsoon, so he said to the little dog, just starting to grow into her wintertime fluffy black-and-white coat, “You talk some sense to her. I can't.” And away he went back down the stairs.

Monsoon yawned a squeaky yawn, stretched up her hind legs, then nudged open the bedroom door and curled up on the nest of stuffed animals. It was 9:05 PM and peace reigned for the rest of the night.

Eight. Weeks. Later. It was now December 22^nd. A Christmas tree had been bought and decorated, stockings hung, most of the presents bought and there was a massive turkey sat like a mountain in the middle of the freezer.

Emma had not cleaned her room. She obeyed the orders to empty her actual garbage bag and to leave dirty sheets outside the room and exchange them for clean sheets left outside her room, same thing with laundry, but neither Mr. or Mrs. Darling had entered this dangerous frontier since that night in October.

From time to time, the senior members of the family of Darling Darling & Darling would miss the good part of bedtime where they would snuggle up next to their little girl for a time until her eyes started to close and they would see all the sweetness inside Emma flow across her face like a warm summer breeze across a field of freckles.

And yes, she hated having freckles.

But, every now and then Mr. or Mrs. Darling would launch an appeal and ask Emma once more to clean her room, but every time she would say as she had said before:

I will now clean my room

I will not clean my room

You can ask and ask until you're blue in the face

But I will not clean my room

She seemed pretty definite in her opinion.

But here we are two nights before the night before Christmas and Mr. and Mrs. Darling were going over the final arrangements for the explosion of wrapping paper and cranberry sauce that was about to arrive. Had everyone been accounted for? Were all presents organized? Was the lock on the storage cabinet where the presents were hidden? Do you know where the key is? Well where the hell is it then? I thought you said you'd looked there already? What about the stocking? Do we need more stuffers?

Kenneth: I got something in the mail the other day … it's here on the desk … right, here it is. This is one of those swipe and pay card things – The Magick Card. It has $10 pre-paid on it. I could throw that in the stocking so the next time Emma's out with you at the mall she can pick out a little something. That would be more fun than just giving her ten dollars.

You know that line about a butterfly fluttering its wings in China and causing a typhoon in Kansas – or is it the other way around? Anyway, I'm pretty sure that butterfly had to have been sitting on Mr. Darling's head when he came up with that bright idea. For Mrs. Darling agreed, the Magick Card was slipped into a red ticket envelope and placed near the toe of the stocking, next to the toothbrush and resting on the mandarin orange...

On Christmas morning, the Darlings sat around the Christmas tree that had been whimsically decorated with old ornaments from Kimberly and Kenneth's childhood, new ornaments picked out by Emma – including a miniature snow globe of two Victorian ladies having tea; why they would have tea in a snowstorm is beyond my understanding – and on the top of the tree, an ornament of retired Boston Celtic great Larry Bird shooting a jumper. It seemed like a good idea at the time but loses some of its charm when you see it in print.

Next to Mr. Darling was a green garbage bag that had tipped its load of torn wrapping paper onto the floor, where Monsoon alternated tearing more of the paper held between her paws and gnawing at a gigantic bone the size of a softball bat. Mrs. Darling was resting on the couch in her feature present: a custom-made robe sewn from the softest green fabric that could be found, with Nature Girl scrowled across the back in a gold silk thread picked to match her gold silk hair. Emma was sat on the small plastic stool that came with her new music keyboard, reading a new book: 'Curiosity' by Joan Thomas, set in the time and home county of Jane Austen herself. There were cookies on the coffee table, two half glasses of champagne and one glass emptied of ginger ale and orange juice and you know everything might just have turned out okay if Monsoon had waited just another few seconds before snuffling up the red ticket envelope and drawing it to her mouth with one paw.

If it had been a few seconds later, Mr. Darling might have not seen Monsoon and the envelope and he then would not have said 'Mon-Soooooon! No!' in that stern dog owner voice he hated to use. The envelope would not have been swept away in Mr. Darling's hand and given over to Emma who would not have used it as a marker in her book.

And so too, if 'Curiosity' hadn't been such an intriguing read for Emma, who loved the story of young Mary Anning bringing fossils up from the coasts of Dorsetshire, she might not have insisted on bringing the book along with her when she and Mrs. Darling in a fit of madness decided to drive to the mall for the Boxing Day Sales.

But none of that didn't happen; therefore all that did happen, did happen.

Now, Emma and Mrs. Darling didn't really drive to the mall for the Boxing Day Sales. No, they got about as close as the next postal code over and hiked the remaining two blocks or so. They made a lovely picture: tall Kimberly Darling and tall for her age Emma, hand-in-hand with matching berets and scarves tossed over one shoulder – purple against a gold coat for Mrs. Darling and stripey candy cane over a pea coat for Emma. Emma's left hand clutched a canvas New Yorker book bag with 'Curiosity' wrapped inside. Mr. Darling didn't get to see that picture. Liverpool was playing Blackpool at 10AM and an earthquake wouldn't move him from his chair and television. Mrs. Darling understood – they referred to the Boxing Day football fixtures as Daddy's unwrappable present.

Because Mrs. Darling and Emma weren't dropped off at the mall and because they had to walk two blocks on a snappingly cold day, they headed straight for the food court when they arrived. So had most of local humanity, but they were able to drop down and capture a table, smiling like two cats who had caught a large fish.

Kimberly: Okay, now Emma I don't want you to move from this table and don't you talk to anyone while I go and get us something.

Emma: No, Mummy. You don't move from this table and don't you talk to anyone while I go and get us something. And it's my treat. So there.

Kimberly: Are you sure? You'll be all right?

Emma: Oh Mother, I am eleven years old.

Most definitely eleven years old, but this was one of Emma Darling's charming qualities. She actually was a quite generous little girl and she enjoyed doing little extra things for her parents, with the important proviso that these benevolent acts were at a time and form of Emma's choosing. On this day, Mrs. Darling wasn't going to argue. She would need all her strength to charge the lines of the stores that surrounded the sunken food court like massed armies about to sweep down the hills.

Emma went to get two crullers and a large hot chocolate for her and a large double-double coffee for her mother. And then Emma reached into the canvas New Yorker book bag to take out her embroidered clutch purse when she noticed the red ticket envelope sticking out from page 183 of 'Curiosity.' It was page 183 because Emma made sure to note the page number when she withdrew the red ticket envelope and the Magick Card inside it. 'I think I'll use this,' she said and swept off into the crowd of gnawers and sippers, smackers and slurpers to purchase the snacks.

Including the Harmonized Sales Tax, the bill paid on the Magick Card came to $4.83. This is reasonably important, which is why I point it out. And while under normal circumstances with a normal credit card, Emma would not have been able to use it. She was a minor, although she would dispute the slightly demeaning terminology. But the Magick Card existed in a hazy financial island somewhere between credit cards and debit cards and so the banking authorities allowed anyone to use it. That too is reasonably important, which again is why I point it out.

After two hours of shopping which produced exactly one sweater (that neither Darling was wildly keen on but fit Mrs. Darling, so what the heck it was 75% off the ticket price), a small bag of Mrs. Darling's favourite skin cream and blush, and a box of festive water glasses that would be forgotten in a basement cupboard when the decorations were put away and would never see the light of day again … after all that effort for so little result, Mrs. Darling and Emma decided to get out while the getting was good. They headed for the entrance but … there was a kitchen store there so Mrs. Darling wanted to take just a quick peek in the window.

Kimberly: I won't take a second!

Next to the kitchen store was the Interac money machine. Bored, Emma stuck her Magick Card in and entered the pin number. The screen offered two choices: withdrawal or account balance. Emma chose account balance.

Whirr whirr whirr whirr flicka flicka flicka flick Out came a white ribbon showing Emma's remaining balance.

Emma: Mummy?

Kimberly: Yes dear?

Emma: the account balance is what you have left to spend, correct?

Kimberly: That's right. You know, I really like that water jug. It'll go well with the water glasses. I think maybe we'll just drop in here.

And yes, the loyal water jug keeps the water glasses company to this very day. The ribbon of paper was dropped into a litter bin so Mrs. Darling never saw that Emma's account balance was at $14.83 and not the expected $5.17. Emma had managed to turn a profit on coffee, hot chocolate and crullers...

School resumed early that year. Everyone was back at their desks on Monday, January 3^rd. Nothing at all important happened at school that day, so we can skip over the events between 9AM and 3:15PM, except that Miss Manley had the children take down all the Christmas decorations which eliminated any doubt that the fun was over and this year was going to be just as bloody awful as the one just passed.

On the way home. Emma stopped at Alley's Corner Store, mostly to just break the walk up a bit. If Boxing Day had been snappingly cold, January 3 was shearing cold, which is much worse I'll have you know. But as long as she was there warming up, Emma thought she might browse a bit. There were Wunderbar chocolate bars on sale 2 for 1.49. Well, why not?

She actually hadn't considered the Case of the Mysterious Magick Card since Boxing Day. There had been more pressing concerns, like just what to pack for the annual holiday visit to Grandma and Grampa's home two hours' drive away. And the packing had been up to Emma as her parents were still not entering That Bedroom.

Yes, it had become That Bedroom in the family lexicon.

So Emma reached in her coat's zippered pocket and pulled out the Magick Card and gave it to the nice old man who ran Alley's Corner Store. He swept it through the debit and credit card terminal – beep beep … beeeeep – and Emma had her chocolate bars.

Emma: Can you tell me what the balance is on this card?

Nice Old Man: No, but the Interac machine behind you can.

Emma: Thank you!

She put the card in the Interac machine, entered her pin, asked for balance and …

whirr whirr whirr whirr flicka flicka flicka flick

$16.51

$16.51!?! Emma thought excitedly. Now the cost of the chocolate bars and the Harmonized Sales Tax had been added rather than subtracted.

Now at this point you might be thinking that Emma was being dishonest, scurrilous, a right proper little reprobate headed right for a future composed of bad waterfront bars and dubious associates for not immediately forming the first responsible adult of what was going on. But Emma truly didn't think she'd done or was doing anything wrong for two reasons:

Reason A): The Magick Card might build up to a pre-ordained amount and maybe the Magick people had sent a card with $100 on it rather than $10 as Daddy thought. Good deal and finders keepers.

Reason B): The news had been full of governments and 'stimulus packages.' Maybe the government was giving out money to people so they'd buy things and put the economy straight, as Daddy would say. Another good deal and another finders keepers.

Emma did not even consider that the Magick Card might actually be a – a – a – A – A – A! (deep breath) Magic Card!!!!!!! She didn't consider it and neither should you. That would be silly. Magic cards, never heard such folderol …

Anyway, Emma knew she was on to something that required exploring, much like Mary Anning and the fossils of the Dorsetshire coast of England. Emma would provide the same effort as Mary did, minus the hauling of massive prehistoric creatures in wheelbarrows up cliffs and sandy paths.

“Hmmm,” Emma thought, “The hobby shop down the street sells dinousaur models.”

One purchased plastic model later costing $14.79 on her Magick Card and Emma now had a balance of $31.40 to spend. How much and how far could this spending reach?

Pretty far as it turned out. After she had returned home and put the tissue box size modeling kit in her room, Emma came down the stairs and sat at the computer. There was a bay-sitter present at the house from 3:30PM until Mr. and Mrs. Darling came home from work around 5:20 or so, but Mrs. Palmerston was old and was honestly much more interested in catching up on what products Oprah was flogging than in what her young charge was actually doing. Therefore, when Emma started logging on to:

eBay

Amazon

The Shopping Channel

Sears

Toys R Us

among others, Mrs. Palmerston was oblivious to what the young girl was getting up to. Specifically, Mrs. Palmerston was oblivious to Emma setting up a PayPal account with her Magick Card and was starting to buy and buy and buy.

By the end of the first day, Emma's account stood at $678.30. And no, it didn't stop there.

Within two weeks, packages started to be delivered to the door in brown trucks, blue tricks, red-white-and-blue trucks. Conga lines of delivery drivers started high-fiving one another as they passed on the house steps as padded envelopes, boxes and even the occasional carefully sealed insulated pack from Omaha Steaks were dropped off in the front porch. Mrs. Palmerston started to feel a bit sorry for Emma, what with the poor child having to haul her parents' luxuries (so Mrs. Palmerston thought) up the stairs and off to the … oh look, Tom Cruise is on 'Oprah'.

At the end of two weeks: Emma's Magick Card balance was at $34,678.89. In other words, she had enough to buy a comfortable car, which was duly delivered to the curb right outside the Darlings' tall, skinny white house.

Kenneth: The nerve of those neighbours. Why do they have to park their car right outside our house?

Kimberly: You should talk to them dear.

Kenneth: I will! … Next time I bump into them.

Three days later.

Kenneth: I was just talking to Haroun next door. You know that's not even his car?

Kimberly: Then whose is it then?

Kenneth: He doesn't know.

Emma: I'm going to take Monsoon out for a walk, woof and widdle!

Kenneth: What? Oh, all right Emma.

Monsoon: Woof squeak yawn woof.

So where was all this stuff being kept?, you might ask. It all went in Emma's room. All of it, except the car of course. At night, Emma would open her door and climb a small mountain of – stuff! - until she was able to squeeze between the ceiling and the pile where she would snuggle in to her very cozy new sleeping bag guaranteed thermal safe up to (or down to) – 50 degrees Celsius.

Here are some of the things Emma had bought:

(deep breath) a shelf of Barbie dolls dressed as classic sitcom characters, a leather bound set of the works of Jane Austen, a silver tea service, two dog beds, Laura Ashley's spring collection, yes all of it, parasols, floppy hats, shoes in three styles and in three colours, a saxophone, a clarinet, and something called a clavinet, clocks and crocks and Elton John singing Crocodile Rock, the sunglasses Audrey Hepburn wore in Breakfast at Tiffany's, the Bible Katharine Hepburn carried in The African Queen, bracelets and necklaces, rings for her fingers, bells for her toes, and a snazzy pink iPod so she could have music wherever she goes, porcelain french hens, crystal turtle doves and a portrait of a pear tree.

That was some of it.

January's balance: $163,000 exactly and to the penny. Emma was impressed that it ended on such a round number. Fancy that.

But she kept buying. Emma Darling was becoming the eleven year old saviour of the North American economy.

She bought a knighthood.

She bought a plot on the moon.

She bought the rights to name a star. (“I shall name it Monsoon, a brand new dog star.”)

She bought the rights to 'Monday, Monday'.

She bought the autograph of Tuesday Weld.

She bought a Mayflower, a June bug, a bust of Augustus Caesar and if the month of February had a product associated with it Emma would have bought that too.

On February 13^th, the day before Valentine's Day, Mr. Darling and Mrs. Darling were in the kitchen preparing dinner when Mr. Darling looked up and commented -

Kenneth: You know, I think we're going to have to get someone in to check this ceiling. It's starting to look a bit warped to me.

And yes, Emma's room was right above the kitchen. Emma's room was filled to the gills with (oh dear) $1,054,988.81 worth of -

Stuff.

At a certain point, if you have enough things they cease to become individual things and it all just becomes a great big pig pile of Stuff.

But where was Emma? Mrs. Darling called from the kitchen -

Kimberly: Em-ma! Dinner's ready!

Mr. Darling called from the base of the stairs -

Kenneth: Emmm-maaaa! Time for dinner!

Monsoon called from the top of the stairs:

… well you know the sounds a dog makes.

Mr. Darling walked to the kitchen as Mrs. Darling walked to the living room and meeting in the middle they said simultaneously, Where's Emma?”

Ding dong!

Oh now who in blue heck could that be?

Ding dong!

Mrs. Darling went to the back door to see if her daughter was out playing in the snow while Mr. Darling went to see what annoying person was ringing their doorbell at 6:30 at night. There stood a tall man with a neat military mustache and carrying his homburg hat in one hand and a sleek black leather portfolio in the other. He shifted the portfolio under his left arm and held out his hand for a dignified handshake. “I am Harley Davidson (no really) of Barkley's Bank of Boston and Bermuda and I'm here to see a Miss Emma Darling. Would she be home?”

Mr. Darling looked at Harley Davidson with the puzzled look of a man who has just seen a shadow run across the corner of a darkened room.

Kenneth: Emma? Our daughter? Well we're not sure just where she – is – and – is there some kind of problem Mister Honda?

Harley: Davidson.

Kenneth: Sorry.

Harley: May I come in?

Kenneth: I suppose you'd better.

By this time, Mrs. Darling had returned from her unsuccessful search of the backyard and the three of them sat together around the dining room table, Harley Davidson sat at its head like it was a board room meeting. To spare you a lot of back and forth and how people liked to take their coffee, let's jump to what their guest told the Darlings.

Harley: You see, we've made a bit of a banking error. They happen. Not often! Barkley's Bank of Boston and Bermuda was been established and well-established at that since 1958 and I assure you we have an error rate of a mere .0001% of all transactions. We take pride in that. Great pride. But, well, heh heh heh, there is always the human factor to consider. While our banking programs are perfect and our security unmatched in the industry, we do on occasion promote a junior member of our institution to take on added responsibilities.

He continued.

Harley: It seems that our junior was tasked with promoting our Magick Card, the easy and quick solution to everyday consumer needs. Well – heh heh heh – it seems that one of those promotional cards was programmed in error. And that card would be, well, yours.

Kenneth: The one I gave Emma for Christmas?

Harley: Aha! Christmas! We thought as much. That explains the timing of the purchases.

If Mrs. Darling was not a person and instead was a lioness, peacock or wiggly desert lizard, her fur, feathers and spinal scares would have been erect and threatening. Instead, being a person and a Mom person at that, she spoke with the Angry Mom voice that can turn any man into a weeping bowl of warm strawberry jelly.

Kimberly: What. Purchases. Are you. Referring to?

Harley: You see, our $10 promotional cards are actually set to -

Kimberly: What purchases!?! Answer me NOW!

Both Harley Davidson and Mr. Darling simultaneously thought they saw a machete appear in Mrs. Darling's hand before it became invisible while still retaining its formidable imaginary presence across the dining room table.

Harley: I will Mrs. Darling! Right now! These cards are supposed to be set at not just $10 but actually ten point zero zero zero zero zero zero one dollars, just to be sure that covers any ten dollar purchase. Its technical but it works well. Well, it's programmed to work well. But, ahem, our junior made a small error. He thought the decimal point should be set after the last zero instead of after the ten.

Kenneth: So … ?

Harley: So the card you gave your daughter actually has an approved limit of $10,000,000.10 you see. Not ten. Ten million. And Emma has spent over a million dollars of that. So we'd like to collect what we're owed.

In life, there are certain times when time stands still and everything and everyone freezes as though waiting for an old 19^th century picture to be taken. Those times seem to last forever, but actually they pass by quote quickly in real time.

Kenneth: WHAT?

See what I mean? The frozen moment had passed. And the freeze had been replaced by heat - lots and lots of heat - heat such as would emanate from flamethrowers carried by parachuting dragons launched from a volcano kind of heat. Most of the heat came from Mr. Darling's mouth in the form of fiery words.

A brief pause.

Children – for I assume that children will at some point read this – it is never appropriate for you to use inappropriate language. This is why we refer to it as inappropriate language. All right, if a car door closes on your thumb, we'll let you get away with it, but just this one time mind you. But adults sometimes need to, shall we say, emphasize the argument they wish to make. It's sort of like writing in italics or in boldface. Mr. Darling was speaking in italicized boldface, metaphorically of course.

Besides words like 'newspaper' and 'lawyer' and 'wait'll the government gets hold of this', Mr. Darling made the emphatic point that as Emma was a minor and could scarcely be expected to know better, and as the error was the Bank's in the first place (what a beaver builds) it, then how in (hot undesirable place) did Harley Davidson get off suggesting he should pay, tell me that (place where poo comes out)?

Harley: Oh really Mr. Darling? Might I remind you sir, that you are an adult, the card was sent to you, and you irresponsibly gave it to a minor. How is that reasonably foreseeable by the BBB and B?

Mrs. Darling raised her hand and as she was a Mom and therefore had incredible powers over men – who really are still little boys who happen to have jobs – the argument ceased.

Kimberly: Where is Emma?

Everyone blinked at one another like cartoon cats. Where was Emma? Might she have hopped a plane to Tanzania? Or Tasmania? Or even Transylvania? Or good heavens, what if she's gone to – Detroit?

Of course it took the family dog to make sense of all this. Monsoon stepped lightly down the first few steps of the stairs leading up to the bedrooms, peered between the banister rails, uncurled her long tail with the little white icing on its tip and said, “Ewe ewe ewe Ahh-ewwwwwwwwe!” She then went back up the stairs, before turning back, trotting to the same spot she'd been and gave the three adults a hard stare with her bright gold eyes as it to say, “Well? Do I have to send you a memo on this?”

Kenneth: She's in her room! That Room!

Mr. Darling ran up the stairs, followed by Mrs. Darling. Harley Davidson stayed sat at the dining room table, but had his Blackberry poised, his thumb over the speed dial to the Bank's retained law firm, just in case something truly awful was happening upstairs.

Monsoon scratched at the bottom of Emma's door.

Kenneth: I'll handle this! … Emma! Daddy's coming in!

He turned the door knob.

A giant deluging wave of gifts, boxes, wrapped things, rolling things, things with eyes and things to hold ice would come flowing over Mr. Darling -

usually -

Except in this case, there was so much Stuff that it had all wedged together into something that looked eerily like the combining of modern sculpture with a Borg Cube.

Nothing moved. Nothing budged. Finally, after the Darlings had done a good deal of gaping, a tiny voice was heard.

Emma: Daddy? I'm stuck.

It was true. Either a passing truck or a low-flying plane or maybe just Newton's Laws of Thermodynamics had caused Emma's great vault of swag to shift against both the bedroom door and the bedroom window. She was stuck next to the ceiling, right beside the light fixture.

Mr. Darling said, “Honey, I think I'm gonna need some gloves and we're gonna need some crates.”

It took the better part of a half an hour to free Emma. It had to be done carefully for two rather important reasons. One, if there was the merchandise tidal wave Emma could really get hurt from broken glass, china and heaven knows what else was buried in there; and also there was still the possibility that the Darling's might have to actually pay for all this Stuff.

When Emma Darling was finally lifted off the now-dwindled pile she was none the worse for wear. There was not a scratch on her, nor a single thread pulled on her smart new lounging outfit of just the sort that Mrs. Darling had always wanted but never would spend on herself. Each parent Darling took one of Emma's hands in a gesture that was equal parts love, equal parts ensuring the prisoner didn't take it on the lam.

They marched her into the dining room where Harley Davidson stood, bowed slightly, and offered his handshake and business card to Emma. After the adults briefly explained the situation to Emma, she had stayed quite calm through it all, she put her right index finger next to her dimple and said simply, “This is a situation best resolved with tea. I'll put the kettle on.” She turned back in the kitchen doorway and added:

Emma: Mummy, there is a nice box of shortbread somewhere upstairs. Don't worry, the change from the original ten dollars would cover it and after all, what's a box of cookies in the greater realm of things?

Nobody was going to argue the point, because they were all exhausted by now. So Mrs. Darling went upstairs and came back with the box of shortbread in a green and red tartan box, followed closely by Monsoon who knew treat potential when she saw it.

I mentioned some of the things that the Darlings loved about their daughter, but perhaps above all they loved (and were occasionally terrified) by how wickedly smart she could be at times. Reading a book a week for five years will do that to you, or for you I should say. Once the tea was ready and served, Emma sat at the opposite end of the dining room table to Harley Davidson, her mother to her left and her father to her right. She absentmindedly swung her left foot back and forth as she spoke.

Emma: It seems to me I can fix this problem. First, you of course have my apologies for any distress this has caused. Granted, I did ask you Mummy about the account balance right at the start, but I suppose I should have tried harder. My bad. As for the money owed to the bank, well as you can see everything is intact, undamaged and can be returned. There's just three of us and you have a whole bank of employees so my thinking is that you are the best person to handle that. That will cover the bill.

Everyone looked quite relieved, to the point that Mr. Darling and Harley Davidson even gave each other chuckling Man Smiles and the latter said, “Quite a little girl you got there, Ken.”

Kenneth: Heh heh.

Kimberly: Oh Emma, what are we going to do with you?

Emma: However -

This was another of those frozen moments I mentioned earlier. Mr. darling broke the ice.

Kenneth: 'However'? What however? This situation is solved. Emma, we don't need any 'howevers'.

Emma: Yes we do Daddy. For you see, our problem is solved. Mr. Davidson still has a greater problem that we should help him with.

Harley: I do?

Kimberly: He does?

Kenneth: And we have to help him with it?

Emma: Yes, yes and yes. If – or should I say when – this scandal gets out the government will insist that you recall every Magick Card out there. Now what you will have to do of course is tighten down your product and don't go putting ten million dollars on cards that children might use. But in the meantime … Barkley's Bank of Bermuda and Boston -

“Boston and Bermuda,” Harley Davidson corrected.

Emma: Sorry, Boston and Bermuda – well, whether its in beanpots or Bermuda shorts your bank stands to lose quite a lot of money doesn't it? Plus – you really should eat with your mouth closed Mr. Davidson – what of the emotional trauma I've endured? There might be long-lasting effects? I feel a case of the vapours coming on …

Harley Davidson realized he may well have met his match. This little girl was capable of turning Donald Trump into a weeping shell of bad hair. So what did she want?

Emma: Not a thing for myself. If there's one thing I've learned from all this it's that there really is such a thing as having too much stuff, regardless of the opinion of conservative people on the news. So I want your bank to make a promise to build a school a year for ten years in Africa, Rwanda and Sudan in particular for girls. And I want you to name the schools for Mary Anning, because if she can do it – be a science pioneer – they can do it. You do that and mum's the word from us. Besides, it's tax deductible. Do we have a deal and may I pour you more tea?

She had a deal but Harley Davidson had already been teed up and driven over the fence. After three calls up the corporate ladder, Emma Darling had a deal. Ten schools over ten years.

And that was another reason why Mr. and Mrs. Darling loved their daughter.

That night, Emma peacefully went to the wash up and peacefully went to her room, and peacefully put on her nightclothes and peacefully waited in bed for her good night kiss. Mrs. Darling came in and sat at the foot of the bed, looking in wonder at her dear little girl. She noticed Emma's Big Red Bear sat in the corner with Emma's used socks from that day draped over its head. Mrs. Darling mentioned that the next day they should work on doing a final tidying of the bedroom, which no longer would be referred to as That Room. To which Emma replied:

Emma: I will not clean my room. I will not clean my room. You can ask and ask until your face turns blue, but I will not clean my room.

The End

(Please feel free to share this story, or print it out and give it as a gift.

Love,

We Enter the Mirror: Formal Introductions

2010-11-13T02:50:00.004-05:00

We Enter the Mirror

A Novel

by Hubert O'Hearn

Formal Introductions

This is a novel that began as a blog that emerged from a near-tragedy. Anyone who followed that blog, Kimberly: The Road to Recovery knows that my beloved wife was hit – very much the correct term – by a brain aneurysm in February 2010. The result, my attempt at understanding the whole experience was posted on the web. This too is that story.

Except where it's not.

I always intended to turn Kimberly's story into a book, but I delayed starting the final draft because I started to wonder if it should be fictionalized. I spent a month thinking about that. Which would be better – truth written as truth, or truth written as fiction?

Fiction won.

Why?

The late Graham Greene, who I still miss terribly for his excellence in style and subject, passed along a piece of advice in one of his memoirs which I in turn have passed along to many learning writers. Greene said to take a scene that one has lived and change one detail. If it actually happened in the kitchen, move it to the living room; if there were only two people present, put it in a crowded restaurant etc. Thus the creative imagination is engaged rather than the detailed diarist.

I have changed many of the people in this book from those who witnessed the saga in life. For one thing, I respect people's right to privacy. For another, I am now allowed to combine characters and so streamline the story. For another, now you won't know how it ends.

Which is fair. I don't know how it ends either.

I am leaving Kimberly's name alone. Call me a silly sentimentalist, but I just wouldn't feel right if I spent 200-300 pages writing about another woman.

As for myself, or he who shall be me, I've shifted about a few things on that front. In particular there is one thing which comes to mind that was suggested to me as a coping mechanism. I didn't follow the advice, but I think that Scott Hunter will.

Who?

So he that will be playing me is Scott Hunter and soon it will be his voice you will be reading. I've known Scott a long time as a character. He appeared in the first scene of my first play and he has had strong guest appearances in various fictional works over the years. I think it's time for Scott to carry the ball.

I should tell you a bit about him, because he's uncomfortable describing himself. Not that he's modest; just uncomfortable. He, on the other hand, will happily describe Kimberly at great length and in short order.

Our boy Scott isn't a boy any more although at times he thinks he is. He's 51 going on 32 mentally when all this begins. He works late, late nights as an auditor at a comfortable little hotel and he writes a weekly television column for the local paper. Local is Thunder Bay, Ontario. Thunder Bay finds the rest of Canada by stretching one arm west for eight hours drive and finding Winnipeg, the the other arm east for eight hours and tickles Sault Ste. Marie under the chin.

Most of the rest Scott will tell you. If he doesn't, I'll butt back in. If I do, I'll write in italics so you can recognize me. At the very least, I'll meet you at the end. In the meanwhile, you may not enjoy the journey, but Scott and I hope you appreciate it and can learn from it.

And I told him he'd better keep it interesting or he's fired as a character.

Chapter Two

Who we were

'It had not been a hard winter, and by February 7^th one could bet that the worst of that was over. There would be the usual spring storm or two; he always said that they existed as God's reminder that there is no hope. But he measured winters from the time the grass is completely covered with a lasting snow until the first brackish circles of grass could be seen beneath the green skirts of a pine tree. He played an annual game with himself, guessing how many weeks winter would last. He'd called this one to be a 12 week winter. That Sunday, February 7 marked the end of week 11. The worst was over. Good.'

I hadn't even realized that I'd written that until nine months later – the length of a human pregnancy – until I started putting together the stack of printed out emails, the stack of blog postings, the four spiral notebooks and all the doctor reports, therapist reports, pension statements, and on and on and on and on and on.

Whoever said we live in a paperless society? When I look at it all, filling the head place on the dining room table next to my desk, well, I wonder how it is that there's a tree left standing anywhere on Earth. If I counted it all, I'm sure there would be at least 600 pages on or about or referring to Kimberly. And that was just my stack. Every doctor, therapist, pension bureaucrat etc. etc. would have their own stack.

Just one patient.

But that bit I'd written about the weather … I'm not even sure just why I'd written it that Sunday morning. It doesn't look much like the lead for a column (although you never can tell with me). And it would be a pretty boring lead for a story or a book.

And I'm sure I wasn't planning on writing a book, not on Sunday morning February 7, 2010. At least, not any more than I'd ever planned to write one. I'd just never got around to it and at 51 years old? Not bloody likely I'd start one now.

That was something Kimberly had always wanted me to do – write. When I'd quit my job as the Marketing Manager for a bizarre little Internet company, she'd urged me to take the time between jobs to do nothing but write. 'Now's your chance,' she'd said. 'I'm working so you'll have the whole house to yourself. No excuses this time!'

Look Honey, I'm writing!

And that makes me wonder when and if she reads these words if she'll understand any of them. I hope so. She always loved it when I'd mention her in one of my television columns in the Thunder Bay newspaper. I used to call her the Nature Girl.

Matter of fact, that was the first Christmas present I ever gave Kimberly – 6 months after we'd met, two months and a bit after we first officially became a couple on Thanksgiving weekend, four and a half years before the events I'll be telling you about. A friend of mine – Val - had a clothes design business so I asked her to make something very specific:

'I want a full length robe, like a wrestling entrance robe, in Irish green but very soft, with Nature Girl scrolled across the back.' No problem, Val said. And on Christmas morning, in the little basement apartment beneath the little tabletop Christmas tree, she opened the big dress box. She loved it and wore it daily …

… through February 7, 2010.

We'll get to that. I suppose I'm delaying the story a bit. The true reason is that I know how much it is going to hurt, to rip, to bleed going back through all those notes and drowning in the water of memory to put it all down here. I don't like pain. I'm not good at it.

But I'm going to pretend that this is all Necessary Background Information put together, cooked and garnished with coriander for your dining and reading pleasure.

The Nature Girl robe suited Kimberly. At fine foot nine with broad swimmer's shoulders she well carried the robe's length. Its lettering was the same gold as her hair. (It wasn't until I met Kimberly that I realized that a true blonde – and she is a true blonde – can spot a dye job blonde from across a room in dim light. Like a banker who can spot a counterfeit bill at a glance.)

As for the green, a bright Kelly green as fresh as a spring lawn, there was just no question that the robe had to be green. Kimberly Gallagher may have been born in Canada, raised in Canada and never been off the North American continent, but she was Irish as Guinness-laced poetry. Her whimsy, her wit … her absolute focus at winning an argument …

She couldn't have been more Irish if she was the love-child of William Butler Yeats and Sinead O'Connor.

A side note: Kimberly's Dad, Colonel John Gallagher (ret.) was and is a skilled amateur genealogist. He was quite distressed when he discovered that his branch of Gallaghers were – oh no! - Scottish. From one of the books I reviewed I was happy to discover and pass on the information that what we know as Scots are actually descendants of the Irish who crossed the Irish Sea. If that disturbs any Scotsmen reading this, look at the bright side: you're one more degree of separation removed from being English.

But I'm rambling, just rambling. I need to tell you something that at least pertains to the events, the narrative, the story. Here goes.

Both our cars passed away due to transmission coronary in November of 2009. Two cars within the space of two weeks, dead. Having no desire – or money – to pour into the rotting corpses, we had them towed away and we became Public Transit People. Not a bad thing at all in winter.

The nearest bus stop to the hotel where I work is about three blocks. I vividly remember walking past the big, shiny Shoppers Drug Mart one night in January and thinking that I was afraid for Kimberly suffering a stroke or brain aneurysm.

I swear this is true. The thought so shocked me that I kept coming back to it in the weeks leading into February 7.

It wasn't groundless, this fear of a catastrophic arterial crisis. Kimberly's blood pressure had been absurdly high for years – 180/120 – but it had not been until that autumn that a doctor had actually taken the time to prescribe medication for it. Until then, her irregular physicians had always attributed the readings to 'white coat syndrome.' She had checked her blood pressure regularly at those self-same Shoppers Drug Marts and the readings were always violently high. And she had no family doctor, no General Practitioner. Thunder Bay didn't have enough to go around for 30,000 of its 110,000 citizens. We both worried what the effect had been of the expansive, wall-weakening high pressure on her system for most of her 43 years.

There. That gives you something to go on.

Still, a worry is only a precognition in retrospect. But at 11:50AM on February 7, 2010 it sure as hell crossed my mind.

That Sunday morning was just another lazy Sunday. I'd been off Friday and Saturday night and didn't have to be at work until 11PM that evening.

Damn.

I just felt a wave of guilt. Wait a moment and I'll explain. And then: a lesson to be learned.

What I loved about working the late,late shift as I had been doing for just about one year – 11PM to 7AM, five days a week at a Comfort Inn – was that by and large I had the place to myself for the better part of three hours. Newspaper Guy who comes around at 3AM once said that I had my own living room there. It was true. TV, computer, desk, comfortable chair, all the coffee and tea I could absorb, and on occasion sneak a blueberry muffin or a frozen waffle out of the breakfast room. I'd write my television column once a week and read.

Great. Non-stressful usually. And I thought at the time that I was under a lot of stress. (Ha! I say now.) There was of course a downside. It would. What doesn't? In a life of observation and blathering on at length about those observations both in print and small bore asides, I have learned that the Chinese were absolutely right with their Yin-Yang theory. Everything that can be done, said, used, hammered, watered, peeled, fried or hung on the line to dry has a good side and a bad side.

I found that thinking that way helps. But that's not the lesson I was referring to.

That lesson is:

Lesson Number One: There will be times during the extended crisis which becomes your life when you will be as awash in guilt as Laird Hamilton under a breaking giant wave. Whether or not that drowns you or you survive is all up to you. What you have inside you; what you absorb into you – that's what you have to work with. Good luck with that.

Yes, when the person you love more than anyone, anything, any idea you have ever known is living The Lady and the Tiger and the door has been chosen which will determine whether or not she lives or dies you will look back at the entirety of your time with her and your memory will never, ever again be so high-definition clear as then. You will look back at a thousand moments of your lives together and judge each one on the basis of Did You Do Your Best?

It is a battle between past reality and future desired. The former is the Prosecutor, the latter the Defense. While she is lying there in a hospital bed -

Wait.

I see what I'm doing. I'm starting to deal in the impersonal in order to avoid the pain of the personal. I'm sorry. For this story to be of any value to you as preparation for what may or may not ever be, you have to know what it is like to have lived it. You have my apologies.

While Kimberly was lying there in her hospital bed in what I will describe more fully as a Star Trek sick bay, I'd sit in a corner on a stiff molded plastic chair and look at her and see not her as she was at that moment but as she would be in the years to come. Such fun we will have, such joy and dancing. In Tom Robbins' wonderful phrase, we will laugh like cartoon mice. We will answer in the affirmative all the questions posed by The Beatles' When I'm 64. I will so take care of you my love …

A flashback: It couldn't have been more than three weeks before that day in February when Kimberly and I were both in the same kitchen where she would collapse. It's an average enough kitchen with elderly appliances – the stove clock stuck permanently at 4:20 – the square patterned mocha linoleum is dinged in places where our daughter Emma had firmly (and literally) dug in her heels. The plain wood kitchen table was full, as usual, of things other than food and the generic wood cupboards had the camouflaged organization that only two people could understand.

I'd been recovering from what I only just was starting to realize had been a bout of full-blown clinical depression, but living with a depressive can kind of shake your confidence in a person. So Kimberly had said to me, 'You know what I worry about? If anything ever happened to me, would you be able to take care of me?'

Think I've re-played that little scene more than a few times?

Yes, that is the voice of the Prosecutor. I think I'll put him in a powdered wig in one of those Old Bailey court rooms that John Mortimer so used to love.

'M'Lud, the defendant claims to be a man of good character and incapable of doing harm. The Crown shall present evidence – which we believe to be overwhelming – that not only is Scott Hunter not a man of good character he is in fact a laggard who will not even go to the Metro store on a Sunday morning!'

'What?', thinks Horace Rumpole for the defense, burping out a little cloud of a noon time claret.

'What?', says the reader, thoroughly confused and wanting his own glass of claret.

Having to work on Sunday night meant that I approached the rest of the day with a cautious reserve, as if knowing I had to drive 300 miles on ¾ of a tank of gas. It can be done, but not if I started racing about.

And, to be completely honest about it, Arsenal was playing Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. I'm a dyed red in the soul Liverpool man, but honestly Arsenal is the football team I love to watch. They're like Barcelona served with hollandaise. That game had kicked off at 10AM.

(I never thought of this until now. If kick-off had been at 10:30, 10:15 or even 10:10 … my Kimberly would not be alive today. If Theo Walcott had gone down with muscle cramp and referee Mike Dean had added more than a minute of extra time to the first half, Kimberly would not be alive today.)

Kimberly and I had plans to go grocery shopping that day, but when I came downstairs from the TV room at 10:47AM to put on fresh coffee, I whinged a bit about feeling a bit of a cold coming on. Sniff sniff. Kimberly said there wasn't much to get, so she didn;t mind doing it on her own.

'Are you sure Sweetheart?', I asked. I was happy inside then. Guilty would replace happy later.

'No, that's okay,' she replied. 'I'll just brush my teeth and then I'll catch the bus.'

That was the last normal, boring, forgettable as the fifth beer moment in our lives. Everything would change. It would take me months to realize everything always changes.

Heroes

2010-10-03T03:29:00.000-04:00

Of course it would be Thanksgiving weekend. Kimberly is being released from hospital this Friday, October 8. The 8th - precisely 8 months after she went into surgery. And October, firmly into the fourth season that began in winter, carried through spring, then summer and now the leaves drift down forming curly quilts on the Thunder Bay lawns.

I was at my friend Hugh Hamilton’s house last night. You might find this a strange thing for me to say - me who puts his life on the internet and shops it to publishers - but I rarely talk about how I feel. For one thing, I have a phobia about grammatical inaccuracy and one is more likely to get it right (write) on a keyboard than through smiling or gritted teeth. But Hugh, master of the musical keyboard, is an exception. He listens well and replies even better than he listens.

So I was reminding him last night that when I was back in Thunder Bay in February attending to business before heading back to Toronto, I’d also been over at Hugh and Laurel’s house. At that time, Hugh had asked me how long I thought Kimberly would be in hospital.

I thought a moment. No, actually ‘recalled’ is the better verb. It’s not like I’d thought of much else for the previous two weeks. Either way, I replied that she would probably be in an intensive care or other acute care facility until April or May, then a period of rehabilitation, then ...

‘This being us, it’ll probably be Thanksgiving.’

I don’t bring up the story to sound smart - my record of prognostication is on the same level as a racetrack tout clad in a plaid jacket stolen off the back of the horse, which he bet on and lost. Rather, I bring it up just to marvel again at what a ... story this whole saga has been. In this past eight months I’ve read close to one hundred books. God pulls off stuff in his narratives that one hundred authors wouldn’t have the clankers to attempt.

Thanksgiving has always been Kimberly and my special holiday. (Well, that and New Year’s. New Year’s is infinitely superior to Christmas. Christmas you spend knocking yourself out making everyone else happy. New Year’s is the happy selfish holiday. But I digress.)

When did we first become a couple? Thanksgiving.

When did we move back into the house after 11 months from the time of the house fire? Thanksgiving.

When will Kimberly be released from hospital? Thanksgiving.

Incredible. I might as well just book the wedding for next Thanksgiving now. Trends are your friends.

Because ... yes it is still going to be awhile. Kimberly still requires 24 hour supervision and I am unable to provide it, except on my days and nights off. While it is true that my income has increased from writing - three different columns on three different topics a week, book editing and this blog has found serious interest from a well-established publisher interested in the book version.

While that is true, it hasn’t increased enough where I can offer Kimberly security. So, ultimately I have failed. So, Kimberly will be in Atikokan with her parents and sister to care for her except when I have days off. So, I am completely happy, completely miserable and completely accepting of the logic behind the decision.

As complete as I might be, the story isn’t done. There is a book to write, a story to tell, a story to sell. And the most beautiful woman in the world will continue to recover her sense of who she is, where she is and when it is.

And when it is done, yes, we can be heroes ... just for one day.

But until then ...

F. Scott Fitzgerald was the greatest writer the English language has yet produced. He knew how to end a story and leave you not wanting more, but wanting within. The closing lines of The Great Gatsby follow. Good night everybody.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning ——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Four Poems

2010-09-15T11:11:00.000-04:00

Progress

Like a caterpillar crawling a mile
Up a three degree incline
Into the mists of mirage

Pictures

To see a little girl sat on a couch with her sister
One impish smile certain of the good things to come
Is in the present a picture seen by eyes
That understand the questions of faith.

And then to see the same smile
Breaking like the first sun after Noah’s Flood
Is to understand the answers of faith.

On an Irish Honeymoon

I walk straight up the stairs each morning
So sleep another day alone
And sometimes they ask me
What you dream about
When your day is spent dreaming alone

I see thatched roofs
And donkey’s hooves
I see Irish honeymoons

And I just want to dance a merry old dance
To the sound of a Celtic violin
While leprechauns laugh and play cards in the back
And the old gents are talking craic

And I want to see a toasting Druid queen
Give her blessings from a cloud above
On rings that shine like dew on shamrocks in a field.

I see thatched roofs
And donkey’s hooves
I see Irish honeymoons

A Spring Sighting

Toronto was blessed with an early spring that year
I felt blessed by Toronto’s early spring
Waiting for the streetcar on Dundas West
For the long night’s ride ending at the long amusement park
Of The Danforth’s sports bars and tapas, knickknacks and souvlaki

Waiting for the streetcar on Dundas West
Outside a Macdonald’s conveniently located
Across from the hospital
Placed to cash in on bravado
“Those people have heart attacks,
Not me sir, not me”

Waiting for the streetcar on Dundas West
Looking forward to the ride through the cool blue light
Of the giant television screens standing above
Toronto’s cooler Times Square North
Shining faces of newscasters and fashion models
Become giants, become titans, become gods

Waiting for the streetcar on Dundas West
Bundled comfortably in my eight dollar
Honest Ed’s decaying lime ski jacket
I was greeted by a sight I’ll never forget

Along came three young men all dressed in black tails
All riding bicycles,
All in top hats
All with lit chandeliers suspended above

And they rode west on Dundas
Until they vanished down an alley
And I decided to take it
As the first birds of spring.

The Banana Boat Song

2010-09-10T22:46:00.000-04:00

A genius who somehow enters into this update

First, because Stan Freberg was one of the great comedy geniuses and under-recognized as such because he primarily worked in advertising; second, because in case you don’t remember The Banana Boat Song you are going to need to; and third, this is just great fun on a day when I’m in a very good mood. Click below because ...

THIS is required viewing.

Quite a lot has gone on since the last update. Kimberly and I flew to Winnipeg and back by air ambulance to get the vision in her left eye restored. That went quite successfully. At most she will need a standard corrective lens with run-of-the-mill 20/40 to 20/70 vision in that eye.

It was only 36 hours start to finish but what of course was also lovely was that we were able to spend 36 hours (minus two hours for surgery and prep) together for the first time since ... well, it would have been that first day, February 7-8. And yes, to repeat, it was lovely.

Release from the hospital looms large on the horizon. Not sure yet if what has been sighted is a palm treed island, a volcanic rock or an iceberg. Obviously release back into life is a welcome goal achieved, but the need is still there for 24 hour supervision and that problem needs to be solved. Still, Kimberly’s CPP Disability Pension has finally come through in the nick of time to prepare the house.

Dear God. Prepare the house. Does anyone have Hercules’ Twitter account? I want to trade for the Augean Stables. But I’ve called on kind and helpful Facebook friends to help on September 25th, so I know it’ll get done. Plus I’m cooking. I pray for a nice day so I can make strip loins with the special Nature Girl Sauce that I make. there are alarms and locks to be installed; guard rails and grab bars attached and there must be no clutter. Not quite to the level of Simon Cowell’s house - I read that his sitting rooms have drawers and cupboards and cases ... all with nothing in them. But close to that.

Still, in a strange way it will feel good to be physically involved again. Today, or particularly this morning also felt particularly good.

I’ve been thinking a lot about alternatives to the current therapy. And I know it is horribly simplistic to say that because it is the right hemisphere of Kimberly’s brain that is undamaged, therefore her creative side is clean - its just her logic which is askew. So I guess we’ll be taking our lumps as euchre partners for years to come. I can hear friends over on Machar Avenue laughing from here.

In any event, it seemed logical to me that Kimberly’s creative side needed to be stimulated and strengthened. And yes, it helped that I’d spent years training actors from ages 10-60, besides doing improvisational theatre from about 1994-2003 or so. I wanted to give it a shot.

My intent was to start with music. It is both creative and simultaneously logical. Also, I knew that the post-aneurysm Kimberly remembered songs quite well. We’d been singing in the Winnipeg airport waiting for the air ambulance. My feeling is that research would show that musical memory being strong is not unusual - wait for the book version, I’ll do it then.

Now, if the act of remembering a tune meant activating and using whatever the channels are that consciousness uses to retrieve memory files, as it were, that would mean that those channels in turn might stay open for a time. getting Kimberly to remember something meant that she might remember more about other things. Do you see?

So, there have been a number of rote questions that Kimberly has been asked and struggles with:

Our address
Our phone number
Her father’s middle name
Her mother’s full name

This morning, we had some extra time after breakfast, showering and dressing before physiotherapy began. I thought, ‘Now’s the time.’ I hadn’t been able to find the basic Casio keyboard I wanted to buy for her to tinker with, but singing would do. So we started The Banana Boat Song. Great fun and Kimberly was happy.

I asked, ‘What’s the address of the house?’
‘What house?’
‘Our house.’

She said it.

‘What’s our phone number?’

She said it.

Kimberly the told me my cell number. I frequently forget it as I rarely call myself. Then, she struggled a bit with her dad’s middle name, so we sang us a little Banana Boat and then she knew.

And to think, they cut music programs in schools.

Be seeing you.

The Walk-Ins A Christmas Story

2010-08-21T10:38:00.000-04:00

(Things have been a bit heavy on this blog lately, so I thought I'd give readers a break. Following is the Christmas Story I wrote Kimberly for 2008. Hope you enjoy, and if you do - please share! - H)

THE WALK-INS

A Christmas Story

By:

Hubert O’Hearn

T’was the night before Christmas and all through the hotel, not a creature was stirring, at least for a while. Outside, snowflakes were falling and the streets looked cold and miserable. Frankly, I was glad to be at work.

No, it was just another December 24th, of no interest whatsoever to anyone outside the mainstream Western religious traditions. I certainly had no one at home wrapping gifts or stuffing stockings. This of course may well be the reason why I was working a midnight audit shift at a small hotel on a night when most of the world was tucking Mama in her kerchief or some such and waiting for the arrival of Santa.

Me? I had no expected arrivals. There were only 10 guests in the whole place and I was looking forward to an uninterrupted eight hours of solving crossword puzzles. But that’s life for you. You never get what you’re looking forward to…and I apologize for leaving my participles out dangling in the winter cold.

You can imagine my surprise when as I was attempting to deduce the answer to an eight letter word for ‘electrically charged (adj.)’ a two foot tall stuffed red bear and a one foot tall stuffed grey hippo came waddling into the lobby. It was a shocking experience, comforted only by my instantly solving the crossword clue.

I resorted to my well-honed response, ensconced in me through careful training in the hospitality industry. “Ummm…” (Okay, the ‘ummm’ was not strictly part of the training) … “How can I be of assistance?” And if that seems a weak response to the situation, I ask you, would it have been better for me to have screamed, shouted, or rolled about weeping on the floor? No, I didn’t think so either, although those possible reactions were considered.

In any event, the Big Red Bear responded, “Yes, we would like a room please. For one evening, with a big king-sized bed, if you have.”

Walk-ins were not unusual at the small hotel, but waddle-ins were. I adopted a professional response. “For yourself and the ummmm….?” I had noticed the hippo grazing away on the complimentary fruit bowl and was momentarily taken aback. But only temporarily, for if I am anything, I am indeed a professional.

“Yes, for two of us,” said the Big Red Bear. I thought at first he was winking at me, but then on further observation I noted that he only had one, white, shoe-button eye. There were also little pops along his seams where bits of yellow stuffing showed through. Clearly, this was a much-hugged and much-loved bear.

“Certainly,” I said. “Would that be smoking or non-smoking?”

“Oh, non-smoking. We’re flammable,” the Bear added helpfully. The hippo spoke up, after swallowing down the last golden apple in one sizable gulp. “Do you have anything with warm swampy water? I like warm swampy water.”

“Er, I’m sorry. We don’t have any hot tub suites.”

“Oh,” said the hippo. “That’s unfortunate,” said the Big Red Bear. Little frowns appeared on their brows.

“But!” I rushed to say, “Our bathtubs are large and deep and there is lots of hot water!”

“Oh!,” said the hippo. “That’s fortunate!,” said the Big Red Bear. Little smiles appeared on their faces.

“And!” I said, sensing I was winning the day, “I can give you extra foamy bath suds and a very nice shampoo too!”

The hippo toddled over to the Big Red Bear, the former’s little grey ears fluttering in delight. One ear looked slightly chewed, as though a long-ago puppy had once had a longing for stuffed hippo. The Big Red Bear spoke to his companion. “What do you think, Hippie?” (I surmised that must be the hippo’s name and I started to fill in the registration form: LAST NAME: Hippo FIRST NAME: Hippie. MIDDLE INITIAL: A seemed appropriate)

“Well Red,” said Hippie, eyeing the poinsettias hungrily before remembering that although they are pretty flowers they are equally poisonous. “It has been a long time since we were bathed and shampooed. What’s it been? Ten Christmases or twenty for you?”

“Oooo, all of that,” said Big Red Bear. “I haven’t been bathed in many years. Not since Princess Kimberly was a very little girl and she used to sneak me into the tub. I didn’t much like being hung up by my paws on the laundry line to dry out afterwards. But I’m sure her Mum meant well.”

“Of course of course,” agreed Hippie. “Mums always mean well. It’s why they’re Mums, after all.”

“That my friend is a very sage observation,” said Big Red Bear with an approving nod.

“It should be,” said Hippie. “I like sage very much. Especially in puddings.” He continued, “My young master used to send me for boat rides in cardboard boxes out in the big lake in the summertime…did you know that cardboard makes for a terrible boat?”

“No I didn’t.” “Oh yes, quite terrible. Falls apart and then you sink.”

I interrupted. “I beg your pardon, Mister Bear –“

“Do call me Big Red, or Red for short.”

“All right. My name is Max, by the way.”

“Pleased to meet you Mac Bytheway,” said the Bear with both a nod and a bow at his black-belted waist.

“No, umm - I mean - the pleasure is all mine - I think. Did I hear you refer to a Princess? If there’s royalty expected, well, we don’t have any formal suites, but there are some nice adjoining rooms that we could open up…yes?” (I admit to a certain degree of flustering. Well wouldn’t you be?)

The Bear and the Hippo looked at each other and laughed and laughed, hugging each other until they fell to the floor with a tumble. Soggy happy tears of joy rolled down their fluffy faces and as strange as it sounds I was sure that I could smell the sweet mixed smells of baby powder, porridge with maple sugar and lupin petals, all jumbled together. I found myself remembering spring mornings in the garden of our backyard back when I was a boy. I started thinking about the sun on my head, the breeze on my face and the tin footrest on the candy-striped stroller that my mother used to take me for walks to look at the flowers. I couldn’t begin to tell you how long it had been since I had remembered such things, assuming I’d ever remembered them at all in all the days since. But it was a very nice memory that the laughing tears’ perfume had brought on …

“Er-ERRR!,” said Hippie the Hippo, clearing his throat rhetorically. He’d managed to clamber up onto the registration desk and was looking at me with dancing, shiny glass eyes. “That was a most marvelous laugh you gave us. This is clearly a fine hotel –“

“A FINE hotel,” agreed Big Red Bear emphatically. Hippie continued, “Quite. But we do owe you an explanation. We don’t mean that Princess Kimberly is a Princess in the sense of royal responsibilities, ribbon cuttings, ship christenings and photo features in Hello! Magazine. Rather, every little girl is a Princess at least or at best to those of us who love them.”

“Oh very good, Hippie,” said Big Red Bear, applauding with a thwump thwump thwump of mitteny red paws. “You certainly are speaking well of yourself tonight.”

“Thank you Red,” said Hippie modestly. “I felt compelled to respond with a rhetorical flourish. You don’t think my prose was too purple do you?” Big Red Bear looked carefully at his friend through his one good eye and then shook his head slowly from side to side. “Nooo, you can’t possible be purple. You’re grey all over from what I can see.” “Very good,” said the Hippo with a wide, satisfied grin, before frowning, “It’s all made me rather hungry though.”

“I’ll re-fill the fruit bowl in a second,” I said, “But if all little girls are Princesses, then what are little boys? Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails?,” I suggested. They both looked at me as though I had gone mad. Under the circumstances, that may not have been an irrational conclusion. Big Red Bear asked, “Max, why would you say anything as strange as that?”

“But that’s the old phrase: ‘Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails, that’s what little boys are made of.’” The Hippo and the Bear looked at me without the slightest hint of recognition. I carried on. “And little girls are made of -” What were little girls made of? I took my best guess. “Silver bells, cockle shells and cups of tea.” That was wrong, but it would have to do.

Hippie the Hippo shrugged in disinterested agreement, before dipping his entire face into the bowl of complimentary mints. Between crunches of mint, he informed me that, “Little boys CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP are each and every one CHOMP SWALLOW CHOMP a duke in disguise. Aaaahhh, those were fine candies.”

My curiousity was peaked. “Why a duke? Why not a king or a knight?” Hippie was still savouring the minty freshness in his mouth, so Big Red Bear completed the explanation. “Kings have miserable lives, Max. Read your fairy tales. Kings are always having some evil elf or another turn their children into toadstools or foot stools, their kingdoms are fraught with famine and they rarely live happily ever after. Knights are all well and good…provided you like slaughtering dragons, which I do not recommend. A duke is a much wiser thing to be.” Well that answered that I guess.

It was at that point that the hotel front door opened and in walked a very busy looking man and an equally busy looking woman, each carrying a dark suitcase and a dark expression. “You have a reservation,” the man barked. “Kincaid.”

I responded politely. “If you don’t mind waiting a few minutes, I’m just checking in these …” Big Red Bear and Hippie the Hippo were now sat just as still as still could be, with neither a breath nor a blink showing from either of them. Could things get any stranger? I rather hoped not.

“Checking in who?”, the man barked again. “We’re the Kincaids,” growled the woman, unnecessarily.

As I have said, I am a professional and I know how to think fast. “I’m just checking in these databases for the finest room we have for you, Mister and Mrs. Kincaid.” They made me much more nervous than had the talking Bear and Hippo. “I certainly hope so,” said Mrs. Kincaid. She looked with a sniffy expression at the Bear and the Hippo and said, “Your Christmas decorations are old and ragged.” I was tempted to put the Kincaids in the room next to the laundry in the hopes of the dryers running constantly from 5AMonwards, but I thought better of it. Instead I just said, “They belong to a little girl who’s coming to pick them up.”

“They should be kept out of guests’ sight!” said Mrs. Kincaid. I like most people, but the Kincaids were proving the use of the word ‘most’ as opposed to ‘all.’

It did not take long to check in the Kincaids (thank heavens) and they left, rolling their dark suitcases with them through the lobby and down the hall. I heard the clunk and slam of their room door and hoped that I wouldn’t be seeing any more of them that night.

“They don’t seem to be filled with the Christmas spirit,” said Big Red Bear dryly. He and Hippie had come back to life and they stretched their little arms and legs as though waking up from a nap.

“You’ve got that right, Big Red Bear,” I said. “Now tell me, if I check you in here, how are you two going to pay for the room?”

“Pay?” said Hippie.

“Pay?” said Big Red Bear.

“I thought you said you’d thought of everything Red,” said Hippie with quite a hard stare.

“I guess I hadn’t,” admitted Big Red Bear.

“Well now what are we going to do!?” said the little Hippo. His hard stare looked as if it was going to turn to tears. I had to do something. Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you do something if you were me?

“I think I might be able to do something for you,” I said. “I’d have to charge you for a room if the room itself was available for sale. But I do have a room that’s temporarily out of order, so I suppose I can just let you stay there for free.”

“That’s very kind of you Max,” said Big Red Bear. “If you don’t mind my asking, just what exactly is out of order about the room?” I looked in the maintenance book. “The only problem I see is that the radio isn’t working. Will that be okay for you?”

“The bath works fine?” asked Hippie. “Yes, the bath works fine” I answered. “Then we’ll take it!” they said together. They each tapped a paw on an ink pad and signed the registration card with their imprint. “You’re in room 244,” I said. “I don’t suppose you’ll be needing a luggage cart,” I asked as I looked around for any bags or toy boxes behind them.

“Oh no, we travel very lightly,” replied Big Red Bear. “I used to carry a lunch box,” added Hippie, “But snacks never lasted very long in it, so I don’t bother any more. Do you think we could bother you to show us where the room is? We’re not very tall and the room numbers are probably well above our heads.” How could I refuse such a polite request? It was very nearlymidnight and it wasn’t very likely that there would be any more walk-ins. Even if there were, they could wait for a couple of minutes in our lobby’s cozy chairs. So I popped the sign on the desk that said:

I AM CURRENTLY ASSISTING ANOTHER GUEST.
I WILL BE BACK IN A FEW MOMENTS.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE.

And with that we set off for the elevator. I could hear their little legs padding along behind me and I realized that what was a very short distance for me was quite a hike for them. I asked, “Would you like to be carried?”

“Ooo yes please,” smiled Hippie. “Being carried is just like hugs and cuddles. We love hugs and cuddles.”

Big Red Bear seemed sad. “It’s been a long time between hugs and cuddles,” he explained. I picked them up – the little Hippo in my left arm and the Bear in my right and up the elevator we went. They snuggled in tightly and I felt a happy glow inside. It occurred to me that it had been a long time between hugs and cuddles for me too.

I opened the door to the room, flipped on the lights with my elbow, then laid the two friends down on the fluffy comforter covering the king-sized bed. They looked like they were floating on a big pale blue cloud. “This is a very comfy bed Max,” said Big Red Bear. Added Hippie, with great and growing enthusiasm, “Comfy and … and … and … bouncy!!!” With that he started to spring and sproing about on the bed, turning elegant little front and back flips – THWOMP! “Wheeee!” THWOMP! “Wheee!” THWOMP! “Wheee!” His joyful gymnastics were such that they bounced Big Red Bear right off the bed, and he fell with a soft plunk onto the floor next to the end table. He dragged himself up, brushed off his red fur with his paws then asked quietly yet sternly, “Hippie? Is this what I’m to expect all night?”

Hippie stopped his bouncing and wandered over to the edge of the bed where he could look his friend eye to eye. “I’m sorry Red. I got caught up in the fun. It shan’t happen again.” And with that he gave Big Red Bear a big slurpy kiss lick. Now dripping wet, Big Red Bear sighed and said, “All right, you’re forgiven. Now then we should … Hippie, what are you up to?”

The little hippo had stuck his head so far under the pillows that only his round grey bum was showing out. It must have been a successful mission, as his small grey tail started to shimmy and shake side to side and up and down. His head then re-emerged with a smile. “I found the Sweet Dream chocolates!” Big Red Bear sighed again and hit himself in the forehead with one exasperated paw. He said to Max, “He’s my best friend, but all he thinks of is food.”

“And baths!,” said Hippie.

“All right, and occasionally baths,” Big Red Bear agreed.

“Don’t forget cuddles!,” added Hippie.

“And…cuddles … too,” said Big Red Bear.

“And your beautiful princess and my master the duke. Oh dear.” All Hippie’s happiness seemed to drain out of him just then and he sat very still with his head hung low. He even dropped the Sweet Dream chocolates.

Big Red Bear crawled up onto the rumpled bed and gave his friend a hug. “I know,” he said simply. “I think of them too. All the time”

It was none of my business and I should have got back down to my front desk. What if the Kincaids had been calling down, asking to have their pillows fluffed? Now I like to think of myself as a dutiful worker – as I said, I am a professional. But although there were hard times in this Christmas of 2008 and good jobs were hard to find and equally hard to keep, I felt so badly for these two odd guests that I simply had to help them any way I could. I sat down next to them on the bed and as I did I felt the chocolate bar in my pants pocket. Taking it out, I divided it into three parts, offering a piece each to the Bear and the Hippo. “Care for a Christmas treat?”, I asked. They took the pieces of chocolate, but even Hippie the Hippo just munched on it very slowly.

“Tell me what’s the matter,” I asked. “Why are you two so sad? And at Christmas time too.”

“Hippie?” asked Big Red Bear, “Do you want to tell it?”

“No Red, I’m all out of eloquence. You tell Max the story.” Big Red Bear nodded his head then sat back against two pillows laid against the headboard. He then started to tell his story, his one good eye staring up through the ceiling at a place and time far away.

“Hippie and I have been friends for over three years now,” he began. “I had been with my princess ever since she was a baby. Her grandmother gave me to her and we stayed together through thick and through thin … there was a lot of thin … not so much thick. When she was happy she would toss me up in the air so I felt I was flying and although she couldn’t hear me, I would laugh right along with her. And when she was sad, I would snuggle in close while she was asleep and I would whisper the magical words that all well-loved toys know, so that she would be able to at least have beautiful sweet dreams, even more beautiful and even sweeter than the Sweet Dreams chocolates under these pillows.

“Eventually,” he continued, “my princess had a princess of her very own and then a young duke too. I loved them too, of course, but always and forever princess Kimberly was my very best friend. Then there was a very very very bad time and my princess felt lonely and scared. I did my best, but there were some hard years Max. Hard years indeed.

“One day an Irishman appeared on the scene whose name was Royston, or Roy for short. Things got much happier then, as the princess and her new duke fell in love. It turned out, as of course it would, that the Irish duke had many things in common with my princess, not least of which (most importantly in our opinion) being that he too still loved the stuffed friends from when he was a boy.”

“This is where I come in,” commented Hippie.

“Yes, this was when I met Hippie. He told me about traveling with duke Royston to university and to great cities where they had lived and about how he had always hoped that his master would meet a perfect princess who would love them both. Well he did and she did and Hippie and I took up residence on top of the dresser in their bedroom, where we could watch over them at night. If we were needed, we could always jump down, or ‘fall down’ if you know what I mean Max, and whisper the magical words to give them sweet dreams.”

“It all sounds so perfect,” I said. “A real happily ever after story.”

Big Red Bear and Hippie the Hippo looked at each other and once again their heads came together in a sad union.

“So we thought,” said Big Red Bear. “So we thought too. But then came some bad times. There were job changes and job losses and duke Royston didn’t want to admit to princess Kimberly how bad things were which upset princess Kimberly –“

“I don’t think we need to tell all the details, Red,” Hippie interrupted. “No offence to you Max, but it’s very hard hearing the story again.”

“Oh, I understand,” I said. “There were troubles. That’s all I need to know.”

“Thank you Max,” said Big Red Bear gently, “You’re a kind man.” That was good. I liked being called kind. I asked, “So what brought you to come here?”

“Our hope,” said Big Red Bear, “was that they would notice us missing. And if they noticed us missing, we want them to miss us. We want them to miss what they’re missing and go find it, in the course of finding us. Does that make any sense to you?” And it did. But I still had another question.

“But…how ever are they going to find you? There must be a hundred hotels or more in this city and how would they know to look in a hotel in the first place? I know that I wouldn’t know where to start.”

Hippie walked slowly across the bed and put his head on my lap, looking up at me with big, wet eyes. He whispered in a low, slow voice, “We might need a bit of help. From you Max.” From me?

“From me?”

“Yes Max,” said Hippie. “We spotted that you have the right qualities as soon as we saw you through the glass lobby doors. We have ways of spotting the right sort of person you know.”

“That’s why we spoke to you,” piped in Big Red Bear. “Believe you me it’s a rare thing for we stuffed sorts to start talking to you people sorts. Quite the privilege Max, quite the privilege.” No doubt about it, I had been honoured.

“Look,” I said, “I need to get back down to my front desk, but don’t you two worry about a thing. I’ll figure this all out for you, I promise. You just relax and have a Merry Christmas.” Before I left, I asked them Kimberly and Royston’s last names, which they told me, and their home address, which they didn’t know. That figured. It was not as though they would have received a lot of mail or taken taxi cabs over the years. I turned the television on to Babes in Toyland, which seemed the correct thing to watch on all kinds of levels.

Now was the hard part. How on Earth was I going to locate these two people with just names and no address to go by? Looking in the telephone book, I noticed that there were dozens of people – forty-three to be precise - with Kimberly’s last name, but only three with Royston’s name. Unfortunately, none of the ones with Royston’s name had an initial ‘R’, so that cast doubt on all of them.

What to do? I couldn’t phone forty-three people at random in the hopes that one of them was the sought-for princess Kimberly. What with call display, there would be forty-two rather angry complaints to the hotel manager the next day wondering why a desk clerk was calling them at 11:43PM on Christmas Eve. I stared at the long list of names. There were five with a ‘K’ before their name, so that helped narrow things down. But which one…?

There was one clue in the story that Big Red Bear had told me. He’d mentioned that Kimberly had two children: a boy and a girl. I didn’t know their ages and I rather doubted that Red or Hippie would dare to answer the phone if I called up to their room. I looked again at the telephone book and there it was.

The listing had Kimberly’s last name followed by the word ‘Family’ and the street address corresponded to one of the other ‘K’ names. There was a chance that might be the right number.

There was a good chance that might be the right number.

I took a chance that might be the right number.

I dialed and as a man’s voice answered with a slightly puzzled “Hello?” I suddenly realized that I didn’t have a clue what to say. It was at that moment that I became a deeply committed believer in divine inspiration. It was, after all, Christmas. What better time could there be for divine inspiration?

Divine inspiration, even at its best, can take a while to work so I was still a bit shaken when the man’s voice again said “Hello?” The tone was still puzzled, but now with an edge of annoyance. It was now or never. I decided I would be both friendly and efficient.

“Yes, I’d like to speak to … let me see what the name is … ah yes, is there a Royston there?”

“I’m Royston, or Roy. Who’s this?”

“Ah, very good. Roy, my name is Max and I’m calling from the McGregor Inn on the Park.”

“Ye-ess?,” said Roy doubtfully.

“Well Roy, I’ve got a bit of a situation here that I was hoping you could help me out with.”

“Is this about Amanda? Is she in some kind of trouble?”

“Your step-daughter?”

“Yes. Um, how did you know that?” Yikes! How did I know that?

“Well sir, when men express worry about … about … girl’s names, that’s almost always about their daughters and … oh yes … as you and Kimberly don’t have the same last name I assumed … I surmised! … that Amanda was – I mean is – your, er, step-daughter. Yes.” I was aware of a certain sweaty moistness growing in the folds of my shirt. “But she’s in no kind of trouble. Not that I know of. No.”

“That’s good to hear. She was staying at her boyfriend’s tonight and – say, what’s this all about anyway?” It was time for a deep breath.

“You see, there’s been an unusual sort of a, well, a package of sorts delivered to us and the instructions are quite specific that you and your wife come down here to claim it. Together,” I added with a prim insistence.

“Together?”, he asked.

“Yes sir,” I replied.

“Me and my wife?”, he asked.

“Yes sir,” I replied.

“Kimberly?”

“Oh yes, sir. How else would I know her name sir?”

“You don’t mean now surely? Not on Christmas Eve?”

“I know it’s putting you out sir and I do so apologize, but you must see it from the hotel’s position. We really can’t store these – this! – package. Not when we’re short-staffed for the holidays.” I wondered if visions of armed security guards mournfully checking their watches were floating throughRoy’s head. I thought of one other possible complication. “Are you worried about leaving the children alone sir? I mean, if you have more of them…”

“Oh no. No that would be okay. Bradley’s with his Dad tonight and … can you wait a moment?”

“Of course I can sir.” I heard a hand being put over a phone receiver and a muffled calling out. It must have been an animated conversation as every now and then the hand loosened and a few words would sneak through: “Yes tonight”, “I don’t know”, “Your crazy friend Geoff”, “Nawww”, “Let me see.”

A woman’s voice took over from Roy’s. “Hello? You need us to claim this package tonight?”

“Yes I do and …” Here’s the greatest example of the divine inspiration I spoke of. “…we’d be pleased to offer you a free night’s stay if you can make it here in the next half hour. We’ll even include a complimentary breakfast.” I started smiling as I imagined Hippie chomping down English muffins.

“Well…” she said. “That’s very nice. You’re sure this isn’t a practical joke?”

“Oh no ma’am. The McGregor Inn on the Park never jokes.” And then to finalize the deal, I said, “Although I’m not at liberty to discuss the contents of the package, I assure you that this does not seem to be anything unpleasant.”

Thank heavens they agreed to come down to the hotel. I didn’t bother with the elevator, it was too slow. I ran up a flight of stairs and down the hall then let myself into Room 244. Hippie and Big Red Bear looked up from the bed, startled. “They’re coming!,” I said. “Any minute now!” Big Red Bear smiled and said, “Thank you Max, we knew we could count on you.” Hippie added, “Merry Christmas Max!” I wished them both a Merry Christmas, and then ran back downstairs to the desk.

I was just in time to catch my breath and to see the headlights of a car pull in the lot in front of the hotel. Roy and Kimberly – for it was them – were both quite tall. He was tall and grey, she was tall and blonde and did look every inch both of them like a princess and her duke.

In answer to the questions they asked I told them that their package – or packages rather – were in Room 244 and I gave them a key. No, I wasn’t sure who had dropped them off. No, there wasn’t a note attached. No, I didn’t see who had dropped them off. They’d arrived on the previous shift. Could I escort them to the room? (I had to see their reaction.)

Up the elevator we went and I opened the door when we got to the room. The lights were on and there on the bed were the bear and the hippo. Big Red Bear had one paw raised in a Hi! gesture. Roy and Kimberly stood there staring at their childhood friends.

“What are they doing here?”, asked Roy.

“Did Amanda do this?”, asked Kimberly.

“She must have,” replied Roy.

“That’s so sweet, to arrange a room for the night for us.”

I slipped out the door behind them and made my way back to the front desk. It was now after midnight, officially Christmas Day. My shift had ended before they checked out in the morning so I can’t really say how everything went.

But.

Around two in the morning, I had a call from the Kincaids complaining about some kind of party going on above them. They said they heard a lot of laughing and what sounded like a lot of dancing feet. I said, “Maybe its Santa Claus and the reindeer delivering a gift.” They hung up, with a harrumph. I hung up, with a smile. Outside, snowflakes fluttered down and in the streetlights they looked like hundreds of bright, shiny eyes …

THE END

Homeward Bound

2010-08-16T20:39:00.000-04:00

What Stella really really wants for Christmas

Homeward Bound

The song for this chapter is obvious, so let’s play it. Simon and Garfunkel. Homeward Bound.

Kimberly came home today for her first visit. I had dearly, dearly wanted to put it off until tomorrow. But, I got up at 5AM, made a start on the house, made it to the hospital in time for Kimberly’s breakfast and to drop off the paper to my Mom, then back to the house to get it cleaned to - well - let us say acceptable standards. I’m willing to go with that as a description. And I made sandwiches. That counts for something.

She was expected at 2PM, so John and Marie (Kimberly’s parents for new readers) arrived around 1:30. I put on coffee and we promptly had a blackout. A power line had blown out down the back lane. To be frank, it was a sunny and lovely afternoon so that didn’t inhibit anything.

There was also the Stella factor to consider. The little border collie hadn’t seen the person she’d spent much more time with than me since Kimberly was collapsed on the kitchen floor. And in Kimberly’s weakened condition, a too enthusiastic greeting leap would be a disaster. So I made sure Stella was well-played out in the backyard - she catches toy footballs like a young Lynn Swann - and had food and water.

As it worked out, I had just come in from the backyard when the two therapists and Kimberly drove up. So she had just walked in the dining room when I saw her. She was wearing my grey and white Ocean Pacific sweater. One subtle change is that she now feels chilly quite often - even on a day like today, which was breezy but still had to have been 25 above. (Of course, only a Canadian feels the need to point out 25 above on an August day.) The sweater and a long pair of baggy blue jean shorts and the slip-on tan shoes I had bought at Honest Ed’s in Toronto way back in February. I wouldn’t compare how beautiful she looked with her tousled hair and a huge half-cocked smile to ... for once metaphors need not apply.

We got to sit while Kimberly ate one and a half sandwiches. I’d made flakes of turkey with a good dollop of real mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, a little pickle relish and a dusting of salt and pepper. I was so happy that she liked the sandwiches. You know how it is with a sandwich - tuna, salmon, any of your can of protein mixed with stuff - there is one way you like it and no other way will do.

Before Kimberly walked through the house, it was time to re-introduce Stella. We’d done a trick before where her leash is roped around my waist. That way she can only go where and as far as I want her to.

Stella was pretty much like ... heh heh: This.

Kimberly seemed a bit nervous of her at first, but only a little. She thought Stella was much, much smaller. Now granted the dog has grown a bit, but the cute/funny part was that Kimberly shaped the air demonstrating a size about that of a 16 inch softball - roughly Stella’s size the day we got her.

We let the therapists walk alone with Kimberly. As much as I wanted to walk with her, I knew that my instincts would be to ‘help’; whereas the purpose of the exercise was to see how much help she needed. And there is some work to be done: an alarm for the front door and latched for front and back. Yes, there is fear of wandering.

Fear. I don’t write much about fear because I have none. It would make for a better narrative if I did - I’ll grant the screenwriters my permission to put it in when the movie version comes out if Sandra Bullock plays Kimberly. We had discussed this many times before the aneurysm and Kimberly’s only choice to play her would be Sandra Bullock. It’s ironic that the actress won her Oscar while Kimberly was in Toronto Western. She would have been delighted.

I keep hearing fear around me. Not crazy fear, well-founded fears, fears by therapists that perhaps Kimberly doesn’t progress much beyond where she is now. I haven’t put a percentage number to that because there are too many dimensions to consider: physical, memory, relationships of space and time etc. - but if I had to put a number on it, I’d say 65%. Now, you lose a third of who you are or - better - how you live, that’s a whole lot of you missing.

More fear. I knew John and Marie had been thinking this: they wouldn’t be human if they didn’t; but it finally came up that they worried how, even if I could work out of the house, how could I take care of Kimberly? how would I have time to work?

I correct myself - now I felt fear. There had always been this strange ripple of a thought in my head that what if her parents wanted to take Kimberly back to Atikokan? What then? And what if I couldn’t manage to work at home? Am I as good as I think I am at the things I think I am good at? What happens then? What if there aren’t sufficient support services to enable me to work out of the home? What then?

All I could say was, ‘You know that any decision I make will be based on whatever is best for Kimberly.’ Which is true. Which is true.

I guess we’ll know when she does come home finally. I will have between six and eight weeks of compassionate leave plus whatever vacation time is left after the Winnipeg eye operation. (‘So how’d you spend your vacation? ‘Eh, I visit hospitals.’) We’ll know then.

The fear is gone. Having done what we’ve done so far ... hey, I’ll strangle bears if that’s what it takes ... and in doing so I’d make Stephen Colbert very, very happy.

But I was also given a little sign to help stuff fear back in the Drawer of Useless Things where it belongs. And may the God of Dogs be thanked for his blessing.

Stella went on perfect behaviour. Sat. Was calm. Let Kimberly play with her ears. Hell,she won’t let me play with her ears! So Stella brings Kimberly one of her little stuffed teddies. she wants it thrown but she likes to play tug of war first.

Kimberly - the brain-injured person who all the fearful people see as a turnip ready for trucking (not really, butI liked the phrase so much I had to use it) - figures out teh perefct strategy. In a significantly louder and more assured voice she said ‘No no! I don’t want it! Take it away!’ in her fake-serious funny voice. So the dog drops the bear. Which Kimberly picks up and tosses to the dog with one of her triumphant ‘Heh heh hehs.’

And the significant thing is, Kimberly did that three more times, the exact same way and looking at us for our appreciation of her cleverness.

Yeah, we’re going to get along just fine.

She was only at the house for an hour and I held her and kissed her goodbye. And tomorrow morning is another breakfast and another day. Somehow I think that hour will last much longer than an hour.
Thanks for reading. Please share and, uh, if you happened to click on an ad I wouldn’t be offended or anything.

Cheers.

What is a Soul?

2010-08-15T03:41:00.000-04:00

No, not THAT kind of soul...

These chapters in this on-going book/blog manuscript generally start with a major event in Kimberly’s life, or an observation I want to share. Then I start to write and let the process take me (and you) wherever it leads.

Not this one.

In some ways, I’m not even sure if this chapter even belongs here in this book. This is not part of Kimberly’s recovery, although it is prompted by it. I am going to tell you a story that even some of my closest friends have never heard. This is a story about, well, dying.

I am one of those people you hear about who have had what is called a ‘near-death’ experience. ‘Near-death’ makes it sound like a scary (but ultimately safe) amusement park ride. Wheeeee! We’ll whoop and swoop and sail upside down but we’ll end up back at the start minus just a bit of breath and the pocket change that rattled onto the ground.

Well no. No, it’s not quite like that. It was June 28, 1989. I’d been hospitalized for five days with severe abdominal pain. Tests had not uncovered the reason, but my white cell count was soaring and something had to be done. That something was exploratory surgery. I was rolled in to the operating room about 1PM. My last words as the anesthetic took hold were to the nurse looking down at me behind her robin’s egg blue surgical mask. “You have lovely eyes.” I thought if I was going to check out, I might as well go out in style. I’ve equally been known to whistle in the dark.

The surgeon opened up my abdomen and ...

“Holy s**t,” he said. (I don’t want spam blockers slamming walls up all over this blog.)

I had, more or less, exploded. Blood, lots of blood, a geyser of blood. It turned out I had diverticulitis and one of the diverticuli had burst. My blood pressure dropped like a crashing stock market, my heart announced it was quitting and I was quite dead for about 90 seconds. Stepped out of life for a breath of fresh air. Most refreshing.

I won’t bother with aching descriptions of how it feels to wake up with the sense of a grenade having gone off in your guts, for the significance of the story is in that 90 seconds and how that minute and a half has affected me to this day.

I have been told that it was the morphine. I have been told that this is not unusual. I have been told that it was an instinctive or natural reaction to the high stress of near-death. If you choose to believe any of that, go right ahead. I know what I saw. Onwards.

I remembered it all and was prompted to by a vision of Mary, in a guise of Our Lady of Hope. A very nice Protestant Minister who I confided in told me that Catholics tend to see Mary and Protestants see Martin Luther. I know what I saw. She took me back through the memory of those 90 seconds, as I traveled through a long and frescoed hallway, too long and too quickly to actually see the paintings on the wall, although on instinct I believed that they were scenes from my life this far.

Then at the end of the hallway I exited into ... space ... time ... everywhere and nowhere ... neither here nor there but rather here and there. And I knew that this was one passage into post-mortal life. One could, if one wished be one with the universe. This was the first point of puzzlement for me. Bear it in the back of your mind as we continue.

Next, I was shown a more traditional Heaven. There were my grandparents, long gone but now young and in love and heading off for a picnic. Later, I told my mother and my aunt some things I had heard them say and the living confirmed those phrases as typical of what their parents would say.

Finally, I was told or shown (again, both and either) that one could become whatever one wanted: be reincarnated as a person again, an animal, a rock.

There was more, much more. For the first few years afterwards I had frequent premonitions of events great (war in the former Yugoslavia, the tragedies of the Catholic Church, the end of the Berlin wall) and trivial (for some unbeknownst reason I knew one year exactly how the University of Tennessee Volunteers football team would do). I always knew however that I would not be able to profit from these premonitions.

This sort of thing does concentrate the mind. As you might have guessed. It definitely changed me. As you might have guessed. I no longer had the slightest fear of death - why should I? Death seemed like a beautiful, amazing journey. And I do believe I became a much nicer persona as a result, or at least i tried to be so. Your opinion may vary.

But the business about ‘choices’ still bothered me. How? When? To whom? Or, to Whom? How does God enter into all this and what was God anyway?

I truly started to concentrate on this after Kimberly’s aneurysm. Not because I was fearing what would happen if she died. I still say with beatific certitude that she is going to survive and recover more or less completely from this ordeal. Changed, obviously (who wouldn’t?) but recovered. Now I’m willing to tell you that certitude is based on a premonition. I know how they feel when they come, and this feeling is that of the premonitions past. I’m not delusional. I worked in politics for a time. Believe me, that shakes all smiley-faced delusions out of your system.

But, I was afraid of what would happen if I died. I have absolutely no interest in an Eternity that does not involve being with Kimberly. My Hell is every moment away from her. And I am not exaggerating for empathetic “awwwww” reactions. So what does happen in that moment when the body finally and forever announces Tools Down for the last time?

My inability to work this out had, I again admit, reduced my faith in God and the whole religious universe. Despite everything I had been through and had been shown, there was still this Vulcan voice within me that said, ‘Not logical, Captain.’

And I had grown to abhor churches and shall we say established religious faiths. They are abhorrent and corrupt organizations that at best tolerate violence, racism and abuse within their ranks. They are feudal in their ability to either ignore or shape laws to their convenience; and have a preening and smug self-confidence in their pronouncements befitting that of a heel wrestler.

You knew wrestling would enter back into the picture.

I ask you, would you not say that this man would have made a fine televangelist?

I loved the message of religion, I just didn’t like how the word LOVE on the great Scrabble Board had its tiles removed and was relaced by WAR. And I had studied Comparative Theology at Queen’s University - that and Linguistics should be required courses, by the way. Learn how people think and communicate: that helps in life.

And then, in the absolute reverse of the usual confrontational worlds of Science and Religion, I started to find the answers. Principally, what got me thinking along what I believe is a correct path was a book called You are Here. Essentially, a pocket history of the scientific theories of everything as small as sub-atomic particles through to everything as great as the expanse of the universe, it got me noticing parallels existing like Russian nesting dolls.

Pretty much every bright Grade Six science student has noticed how the basic model of an atom looks an awful lot like the solar system. But then beyond that, the galaxy rotates around a centre as do galaxies rotate around a centre; and those centres in turn rotate. Gyroscopes inside of gyroscopes inside of gyroscopes. There too, galaxies collide as sub-atomic particles or atoms collide. That which is small telescopes into that which is large.

Which is, pardon the phrase, logical. Assuming the correctness of the Big Bang Theory, at the end of the first unit of time after time itself began to exist, the exploding particles began organizing themselves into quanta and those happily capturing and circling atoms. Why would this pattern not continue as the size grew greater?

So, if everything that exists is or was contained in this smaller than any definition of small pre-Big Bang ... thing, could there be formed something we would term a Soul? Particles made water, air, rocks, light, gravity and the cute little cat in the windowsill next door. Could they make a Soul?

It has been argued in a slightly bizarre experiment that the Soul actually has mass. I don’t quite buy that, as were a Soul to exist it would have to be as practically pure thought, composed of something we have not seen. Like forms of quanta which can appear and disappear and re-appear in two places at one. Hmmm?

That could explain the ‘one with the universe’ possibility of a hereafter. Everything in the universe was at one point as one with everything else in the universe, therefore the particles which form our ‘selves’ would return to this endless state.

And what of God? I suspect that the old phrase ‘God made man in His image’ bore a lot of truth to it. For if God is the logic (that word again) and thought that ordered all those particles, the just as the particles expanded from the Big Bang composing atoms, planets and stars, therefore would it not make sense that the God-Soul would in turn expand, separate and organize into separate Soul units? Us. In other words. The combination of all the Souls in the universe = one God. God actually is within us. Hell of a responsibility. (Every now and then I have to take a ‘silly break’ from seriousness. Sorry.)

And then I considered metaphysical events - ghosts, apparitions, dogs barking when their masters die many miles away. Something clearly escaped the body and sometimes it stuck around. When this is a book, I’ll include many, many examples. For now, I’m sure you can think of several yourself.

Therefore, at the moment of expiration I truly believe that the Soul, quite conscience of itself, chooses its path. It can enter into another, perhaps for re-birth eventually (“He reminds me so much of my Dad. too bad he died without seeing him.”) or perhaps as that “voice” one hears when facing a tough decision or an important moment. Or perhaps one might choose to stay in a place or combine with a thing and be its soul for as long as it survives.

What would I do? I would choose to be as one with Kimberly so one day our Souls now twinned might fly away together.

Is this the truth of it all? I don’t know, but it is a theory that gives me comfort. And right now, that helps.

Thanks for reading. if you think this will help anyone else, please share.

Be seeing you.

Hart, Hope and Soul

2010-08-14T03:45:00.000-04:00

The new medical team send its greetings...

It’s been one of those weeks. Before I go too far and panic anyone who reads this live, there haven’t been and new complications or downturns. All is well in all the important ways - just newly complicated in all the others.

Which calls for a song that will be made explanatory: Creed by Way of Bret Hart.

So, bearing in mind that we have a Videoconference scheduled for August 19th with the wonderful doctors at Toronto Western Hospital who saved Kimberly’s life in the first place - the Videoconference that hopefully will allay my fear verging on premonition that we’re going to be autumning in Toronto - other plans are in place and fresh doubts are being seeded.

The eyesight issue is scheduled to be settled. We go to Winnipeg for an eye exam on August 31st with the surgery scheduled for September 1st. Well this is good. I could still see the surgery being postponed or moved pending the results of the 19th, but there would definitely be positive outcomes for Kimberly if she was back to being full-sighted. Her right eye vision is still but a slivered crescent across the bottom horizon. There is the possibility of retinal detachment, but the slithery - yes slithery - very short examinations performed here in Thunder Bay did not reveal any. Why slithery? Any doctor who consistently books 2 PM appointments and still has a waiting room full at 5PM obviously shows a certain lack of empathy for his patients. At some point, you have to wonder if OHIP (the Ontario Health Insurance Plan) has any kind of caps on appointments per day or per hour.

But - we shall assume that Winnipeg has competent professionals and it was a welcome relief to the wallet when St. Joseph’s Hospital told us that we would be able to travel by air ambulance. That saves several months of waiting for Travel Grant reimbursement. (For American and international readers - hello from Canada by the way - because Thunder Bay is a community of 113,000 and 8 hours drive time away from any other large centre, the Government of Ontario pays a travel grant for medically necessary travel. There would be less of a need for this if the hospital in Thunder Bay had been built larger instead of prettier, and had been properly equipped.) And I do work for a hotel chain so I can stay in any major city at a very good rate.

Then came today’s bombshell. I received a text message from Kimberly’s father, John. Here, read it for yourself. Mandy is the Hospital Social worker:

Met with Mandy today about Kim's room after Winnipeg. No guarantee that she will have the same room or that she would have a room right away. If not, she would have to stay in Winnipeg until one is available. This is the worst case scenario. Apparently this hospital policy. You prob. Should shift you day off on the 30th. To the end. I expressed my extreme dissatisfaction with this.

And believe you me, you can imagine just the kind of extreme dissatisfaction a retired police chief of seventeen years’ standing can express. Regardless ... well, regardless. It’s the same operating theory as why you have to bring a note to school when you’re off sick. If the child is home because he is sick, the school gets paid for his sea by the provincial government. If the child is truant - no money. Why do you think so many kids get away with obviously faked notes.

It is of course the height of insanity and a rabbit punch given that we were told of this after the fact. I do think that the booking of the eye surgery is necessary, and hey, clearly we have developed an ability to roll with the punches. There is a good chance I’ll be seeing a fair bit of my old friend and fellow blogger George Lister, the one person I know in Winnipeg. We’ll keep you posted.

So why a Bret Hart video, you ask? I’ve been reading an interesting book this week, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges. I’ll be reviewing it soon, but for now I’ll tell you that Hedges’ point is that the West is positively drowning in the cult of celebrity, desperately craving nothing more out of life than to be a celebrity. I understand the feeling. Sometimes I wonder if this very book/blog project is just a type-written reality show exploiting a traumatic event. And then I look back at the comments I’ve received and I realize that this actually is being helpful to others in some way, and so I carry on. Concentrate on the good.

And there is good in celebrity too. I mostly agree with Hedges. Anyone reading my newspaper columns over the years will know what a sickness I find morbid fascination with celebrity can become. But and but; as I’ve said elsewhere, everything we ingest has both good and bad effects and that includes ideas.

Celebrity can help in times of stress and strife. Because we know a celebrity’s so well, and assuming truthfulness in reporting, we can draw hope. Hope is perhaps the most under-analyzed of all the great passionate emotions. Entire continents of trees have been felled to print books about love, hate, greed and faith. But Hope doesn’t shout; it whispers words of encouragement like the soft opening verse of the Beatles’ Let it Be. We live hope, we nourish on hope, we breathe deeply of hope. Hope is the only thing that gets us out of bed in the morning (or evening in my case). Today will be a good day - I hope.

And Bret Hart to me represents hope. Coming back from a stroke - unable to talk or walk - and coming back so far as to put away his and return to the WWE after a long and bitter parting of the ways - there is hope. The future can be brighter than the past.

And brighter than the therapists’ latest verdict. At the team meeting on Thursday, we were told that Kimberly can only be released into an environment where she has 24 hour supervision. In other words, if we want to stay in our home, I better become a pretty damn well-paid writer pretty damn fast. So Constant Reader, if you need something written or edited ... How you doin’?

But what I do know is that the Kimberly I spoke to on the phone when she was at her parents’ cabin and the Kimberly I saw when she returned was sharper, clearer and even had a stringer voice. I sincerely believe that she will recover quicker at home. If it is familiarity and routine that she needs to re-discover, where better than in a place associated with love and happiness? A place for the soul to settle.

The soul ... remind me to tell you my theory of the soul and the choices it has at the moment of death ... next time ...

Be seeing you.

How Sweet the Second Blossom

2010-08-07T03:33:00.000-04:00

Kimberly officiating a very homemade, but real Wiccan wedding, June 2008

How Sweet the Second Blossom

Darn that June Bjorn anyway. Here I was debating whether to write a very serious review of a very serious (and quite excellent) new book about The Balfour Declaration for By the Book Reviews; or two write a silly piece about the relationship between Tiger Woods and the former Hull City Tigers manager Phil Brown. I think comparative pictures of their Sexx Beards covers that topic nicely.

But June - who is a dear friend and the Executive Director of the late and much-missed Regional Arts Council - commented on the most recent chapter of this on-going saga and she got me to thinking. Thinking makes me write. Hopefully it makes you read.

It was late last fall June and Kimberly and I, along with a dozen or so other good and supportive people were at a send-off party for our friend and admired figure Dave Shannon. If you use the link you’ll read much more, but Dave was about to become the first quadriplegic to venture to the North Pole. He also deep sea dives, set an altitude record for sky jumping and is noodling with the idea of going to the South Pole. He is proof that it is possible to be both the antithesis in wanderlust yet philosophically the heir to Henry David Thoreau. If the Liberal Party of Canada would stop trying to be cool, hip and relevant and tried actually being cool, hip and relevant it would find Dave a rotten borough (his home riding of Thunder Bay-Superior North would qualify), nominate him, elect him and put him in Cabinet. He is someone who can say more than Yes We Can. He can honestly say Yes I Have.

It was a lovely evening. We arrived and dined at a long table with Dave at its head and we jockeyed words and wine-painted observations until deep into the evening. And I think back ...

Kimberly really is a vision-altering figure when she walks into a room. It’s not just the tall, the blonde, the beauty that make people look up. It’s that smile and the energy it gives off. Rather, that they give off. I’m sitting here trying to count them all. There’s the huge sunny smile; the mock sunny smile; the soft grin; the Irish evil grin; the slightly pursed ‘I’ll tell you what’s really going on here’ part-smile part-grin. You would look at her to see what her face was going to tell you next...

So there I was all at reverie in the not so distant past when I started to think about the very recent past. It occurred to me that the beautiful wonder in watching someone recover so achingly slowly from this kind of brain trauma is like -

- we have all seen those films of flowers blossoming where ultra-high speed film is used and you see the petals stretch out like hundreds of pink infants’ arms, wanting to tickle the sun and splash in the rain. And surely the first time you saw that you were literally moved by it. You leaned into the screen or maybe gave a little jump in the chair - likely a Grade One or Two student desk. You didn’t realize because you’d never thought about it really, how that bouquet on the dining room table actually emerged from anywhere because none of it seemed to happen in front of you. Rather l just the opposite had been laid out before you. It actually is all happening around you, behind you, down the street and up on the hill.

There are times in life when metaphors strike with the perfect chime of a choir of glass bells. This was one of them. Kimberly is slowly, oh so slowly, blossoming back into a personality. The emotional perimeter has been there from very early - I’ve told you about the sense of humour, now even enhanced with ironic urbanity mixed with occasional Goon Show absurdity - no I can’t possibly imagine where she’s getting that from. She watches golf and soccer on the TV now too. We shall lead a perfect life.

So humour’s been there, and of course sadness, grumpiness, pain and fear. Interestingly, I have not seen anger. Pissed off, absolutely. But no anger.

Now it is the same yet the reverse of that fast-blossoming flower. The edges of Kimberly came out first, now the centres - the way you are when you aren’t really anything at all; your resting state of mind - that is starting to emerge.

It is the same yet the second blossoming seems even sweeter than the first. It is truly as though the horrible things that have happened to her - the divorces, the court struggles - have been mostly erased. Imagine if you or I could throw a bucket of water on the chalk drawings of say he three worst things that happened in our lives, leaving just a barely discernible yet not terribly interesting muddled image. How might our own dispositions become, well, sunnier. Brooding would be a thing of the past.

But where would the world be without the Blues?

Thanks for listening. If you enjoy, please share. Be seeing you.

Love of My Life/Joy of My Heart

2010-08-05T03:25:00.000-04:00

The question is not where to begin - it is where to end. And what is the end? It is like awaiting the arrival of an unseen ghost. How do you know where it is?

In her lucid moments, when Kimberly is fully aware that she is a patient in a rehab hospital, Kimberly asks when she can come home. Try and answer that question honestly. ‘I don’t know’ does not seem right when all you want to do is supply comfort and hope, knowing full well that within minutes she will have forgotten the question, the answer and anything other than what has immediately happened in the nearness of space and time.

A song. (right click to open a new tab and listen in the background): I chose this version so I could imagine her voice. It seems oddly appropriate under the circumstances even though Gordon Lightfoot’s subject matter was quite, quite differewnt.

Everyone who has ever been where I am and everyone who will ever be where I am will think the same thought - I wish I could read her mind. What is it like to walk in your hospital room as you have waled into that same hospital room many times a day for nearly five months and have it be strange and familiar, familiar and strange all at once. It is familiar in that you know it, recognize it, but in the same moment some alternate level of groggy consciousness is whispering frantically that it can’t be familiar, it must be strange because the familiar place where you live and sleep is not this place. This is not a place where you stay; this is a place you visit and leave on your way back to the real, the true familiar.

Which is exactly right. The rehabilitation hospital, St. Joseph’s is a place whose function is to be caring and welcoming yet make you want to leave. Perhaps I chose the wrong song. Perhaps in Kimberly’s mind she is trapped in the recently renovated and renamed Hospice neé Hotel California. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Or perhaps it’s more like the Brandenburg Gate.

I hadn’t thought of this story for many years until just the other day when it came up in conversation with an amiable and intelligent complete stranger in the hotel lobby. (Not the Hotel California - the one where I work which lacks the warm smell of colitas rising up through the air.)

We got to talking about the Brandenburg Gate that used to separate West and East Berlin during the years of the Berlin Wall. Our descendants truly will shake their heads at that and wonder what in hell was going on in the latter part of the 20th century. A huge and ugly concrete wall with graffiti on the ‘good’ side and armed guard towers on the ‘bad’ side ripping like a fresh and boiling scar across one of the most beautiful cities in the world. I was there. In 1971 when I was 13.

One afternoon was spent in the East. Trust me, you wouldn’t want to linger. A quarter-century after Hitler’s death, there were still burned out buildings in the East, Bertolt Brecht’s theatre looked like an abandoned beer warehouse and nobody walked on the street. Nobody. I never had that feeling again until years later lived across the river from Detroit and witnessed the same vanished pedestrians.

The scary part of it was that at the Customs Office by the gate you had to surrender your passport. It didn’t take much more than a single viewing of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold to raise more paranoia in the soul in that moment than found in an entire Costa-Gavras/Bernardo Bertolucci Film Festival.

So perhaps what goes on in her mind is sometimes that: I am in a way station between a place I know and want to be in and another place whose grey walls are painted in fear.

Then again, something just occurred to me when I stepped outside for a cigarette. That is an increasingly familiar scenario by the way. Perhaps not to the level of a Martin Amis character. Amis, who I completely admire and bow to as a writer, has people lighting up every third page. It’s a wonder the novels don’t catch on fire. But yes I’m smoking and the damned things have to have some medicinal purpose - everything we ingest does both bad and good - and I say that for stress relief, this is the time. And it avoids the whole alcohol question. For that I allow myself to relax about every two weeks and at that only in the most trusted of company. But I digress.

(And a black hooker right out of Scorcese’s Mean Streets just marched across the lobby with a sheepish looking and sheep white boy trotting behind as she asked, ‘So where’s the ATM?’ I kid you not. Interesting life that I lead ... )

Maybe all this talk of fear, paranoia and Dr. Kafka will see you now ...

(Back comes the hooker and the sheep. He leads the way. I assume they found the ATM in the gas station across the street. I’m not making any of this up.)

... maybe that is just me projecting my own ragged as a Civil War flag psyche onto Kimberly. For outside of occasional outbursts of confusion or depression, she actually seems quite happy. hence the picture accompanying this chapter. And her wit if anything was grown even sharper. the other day she was musing about human evolution and commented that vaginas should have come with teeth to keep men in line. (You have to admit, it would work. And be very, very effective.)

And there are some things she is learning and remembering. I had taken to saying to her since the aneurysm, ‘Love of my life. Joy of my heart.’ Well, the other day I had to leave and kissed her and started to say, ‘Love of my life -’

And Kimberly finished with, ‘Joy of my heart.’ As she has done every day since. And those two lines will be inscribed on our wedding rings.

But she will leave St. Joe’s and will leave this weekend. Her first two nights away from the hospital will be spent with her parents, John and Marie, Bradley, Amanda and Logan and Deanna’s family at the cabin on Factor Lake. And it destroys me that I can’t be there.

But.

There are bills to be paid, or at least paid enough to keep things going until the wretched Canadian bureaucracy finally starts Kimberly’s disability pension. And there are overtime hours to be had.

And I will write more. and more. and more.

For when she does leave that hospital for the last time I don’t want to waste one more minute anywhere but with her. I pray the reader both loves someone as much as that for its beauty; and never loves someone as much as that for its pain.

One last song for you ... Click below

Coincidentally, Johnny Cash and I were both born on February 26 ... yes in different years!

Half a Year and We Enter the Mirror

2010-07-20T03:44:00.000-04:00

Day 162.5 - Half a Year and We Enter the Mirror

I hadn’t realized it until I started writing this that it had been exactly one half a non-leap year since February 7th. Half a year or about one percent of Kimberly’s and my individual lives. In a way she is lucky not knowing that. Having only the slightest sense of time, as she still does, unsure of whether it is night or day, month or season ... well, it does eliminate impatience.

Although curiously, she is always in a rush. We have to pack the bags and put things in the car. Where have I left something that she saw me bring in? We have to pack it! This last one is rather difficult when the object in question is either something completely imaginary or she can’t quite remember the name of it. But I should know what it is! Because I brought it in! For a time, I just kind of took my lumps and claimed to be an idiot. (Had years of practice at it. It’s virtually Method Acting by now.)

But! - I have developed a strategy. ‘Not to worry dear, I put it in the car while you were in the bathroom.’ Either that, or if in this dreamscape trip we’re going to be picking up Amanda and Bradley I say that we’ll get the “fringed thing with the screw cap” - actual example - at Amanda’s.

She has stopped thinking that Amanda is still a child. I suspect that is because she has seen quite a lot of our daughter. When Kimberly sees Amanda’s son Logan, who turns three in September, her instant reaction is that he is Bradley. For those who don’t know him, Bradley is now 14 and well on his way to cracking six feet in lanky height.

Funny thing about that is Bradley in stature is looking more like his Mom as he grows. At just a wee bit more than Kimberly’s 5’9” height, he has the same broad swimmer’s shoulders and her long arms and legs. Mind you, I’m not sure how flattered any young man would be if told that as it matures his body resembles his mother’s. But i think we all know what I meant.

Which reminds me of the flamingo story, and my apologies if I’ve already told it elsewhere in this blog. As I’ve said before, I just want to put everything down and sort it into a book later. So the flamingo story first, and then more serious matters. Enter laughing.

It would have been about four and a half years ago. There had been a house fire and Kimberly was living in the quite nice basement apartment in the home of her friend Donna Nagy’s parents. We weren’t living together then. It was great for one person ... by the end there were four in the place and amazingly it didn’t descend into knife fights.

But those months after the house fire and before my heart operation were some of our happiest times. (As I sit here laughing ... looking at the bookend events, the bit in the middle would rank favourably in comparison, now wouldn’t it?) We always said that because we met later in life (38 for Kimberly, 47 for me) it was as though life was accelerated for us. By the time we were back in the tall, skinny re-built house and Logan had come along, it felt as though we had lived in three years what most people did in three decades. We caught up in other words.

This we agreed made the time in the basement our honeymoon and ‘childless years.’ Amanda was at school in Atikokan for the Outers program and Kimberly only had Bradley on alternate weekends and a week at Christmas. So we were alone a lot.

To this day, and yes even now, we still play those kinda silly little description games that people in love play with one another. Things like: “I love you more than 5,000 lollipop loving children would love 5,000 giant lollipops.” “Only 5,000 lollipops? Well ...” So I was lying in the bedroom while Kimberly was in the kitchen area pouring a glass of wine. We’d been playing, “you’re more beautiful/handsome than...” and yes we are a completely nauseating couple.

So Kimberly walks in, and as she was framed in the doorway I said, “You’re like a beautiful pink flamingo.” Whereupon down went the wine and she said, “Oh great. Big stupid bird with scrawny legs and a fat pink body. Cawww! Cawww!,” whilst flapping her arms and standing on one leg. To this day any time I feel down I think back on that moment and laugh until tears roll down my cheeks.

It’s important to have moments like that in your life whose recall is guaranteed to make you happy. They’re like the bandages in a First-Aid kit.

The overdue MRI that both myself and Kimberly’s parents had been pushing for was finally performed under the supervision of a local neurosurgeon, Dr. McCluskey. We are being referred back to Toronto Western Hospital - possibly in person, possibly by teleconference - because there is a slight question about the third, small aneurysm.

You see, at the time of the surgeries, the imaging had shown three aneurysms: the one that had burst, one that was ready to go, and a third, small one that was not an immediate risk. After an attempt at ‘traditional’ brain surgery (if such a concept exists) with skull opening, the second aneurysm was clipped off, but the burst one could not be reached at all safely. Therefore, a second procedure was done to pack the burst area with coils - effectively putting a cork in it. The third small aneurysm would have to be clipped or stented at a later date for reasons of positioning, fluid build-up and the massive risk of stroke given Kimberly’s condition.

Now it may be time to remove that third aneurysm. I suspect that is what I am about to learn. After a half a year, we enter the mirror. To do it all again both in hindsight yet moving into the future.

Onwards.

(Do feel free to share this with anyone you think might want to read about living through a medical calamity. The intent of this blog is to help. Cheers - H)

Underture # 7: Of Time and The River

2010-06-28T03:33:00.000-04:00

taken last week...
I owe the reader an apology. I’ve been a lousy correspondent lately, at least in terms of this blog/book draft in progress. There have been lots of emails in the past two weeks and there has been progress, which I’ll get into, but not the sort of large, dramatic moments that a narrative craves for each chapter. And, at some point over the next week I will dig back into the hard drive and put together the events of February 8-10, the days when even time held its breath.

That’s not too far-blown an exaggeration either. It is remarkable what crisis, or crises as it were do to one’s sense of space and time. Those days in Toronto, those first three days, I believe there was a total of twelve hours’ sleep, yet I do not remember feeling exhausted. Now, as in the month of June, I regularly fall asleep on the bus, yet haven’t yet missed a stop. I’m either incredibly lucky or I have some organic perceptual advice that knows where I am and has the ability to nudge me awake. Most likely the first, but I do kind of like the coolness factor of the second.

But in Toronto, I felt if not fresh exactly, at least vividly alert. Generally I think one can only hold that ultra-alert kind of attention for about two hours at a time - anyone who has ever sat through, or worse yet given, three hour lectures is bound to agree. Yet in crisis, I find that people warp time in the sense that they are able to stretch whatever their usual peak time is - say early afternoons - across days if need be.

When you crash, mind you, you crash hard and heavy as a safe dropped off an apartment building into a swimming pool, accidentally splash soaking three very pissed off cats. I had to come back to Thunder Bay for a week to attend to business at work, check on my Mom and apply for Kimberly’s EI extension. Which paperwork, oh by the way, the Government of Ontario lost, as has the Government of Canada regards the application for the Canada Pension Plan for the Permanently Disabled. My patriotism is less than bubbling over this coming Canada Day. But before doing all that, I slept for 16 hours and I think 20 of the first 24 hours back.

I gazed numbly at hockey games. I had gone years without watching an entire regular season NHL game, literally years. Suddenly, I was feeling expert on the value and talent of Alexei Ponikavorsky. Yes, for the bludgeoned mind that requires soothing numbness, a bit of a wakeful nap, the NHL fits the bill.

Oh, and walking back into the house and particularly the kitchen and even more particularly the bedroom ... to describe the feeling ... imagine if you’ve ever suffered a recurring nightmare and then you were able while wide awake to step into and live in its setting, precisely as it was in the nightmare. It has the creepiness of a good wax museum mixed with the intensity of gazing at a photo album or reading old letters after someone close has died. Or maybe you just had to be there, and if you were or if you are or if you ever are, write me and I’ll say a little prayer for you.

That too molds time like children’s Play-Doh. You get drawn back into the moment. To this day I look about for something and I come across the shopping list Kimberly had stuffed in her jacket before she left for shopping at noon on February 7th. I remember what we had planned to eat that night and what to make Bradley when he was over on Wednesday. In case he or anyone else wonders: tacos. We were going to have tacos. We’re damn well having tacos when Kimberly gets out of hospital and life gets normalized again.

Funny. I wanted to write ‘normal.’ I wrote ‘normalized’ instead. I don’t think we’ll know what normal is until it arrives.

Then too, Thomas Wolfe was absolutely correct in naming his novel (with the great editor Maxwell Perkins’ assistance) Of Time and the River. For like a river, time does indeed move forward towards its destiny lake, then sky then ocean where it can return and mingle with all its fellow waters. Yet on that journey, as I have implied, time and the river can double back, almost but not quite touching the place where it once was. It can slow to a peaceful pace that invites you to lay back and float, still, at calm with thoughts and a warming sun; yet equally it can race and carry a mile in a breath.

Because Kimberly’s progress is so incremental as to almost be like calling a steeplechase raced by caterpillars, that makes time leap forward. I was shocked to realize it had been twenty weeks, that we have been back in Thunder Bay for fourteen weeks. It’s like racing through the last third of a book in order to finally read the final chapter. But the reading has been good. Kimberly’s orientation of space and - oh yes - time is slowly, slowly returning. She understands her condition and the required therapy, as well as the temporary blindness in her left eye. These things still have to be explained daily, but the conversation is held until conclusion daily.

One lovely thing, because I want to leave you thinking of lovely things, there is a little pool in St. Joseph’s Hospital and I brought Kimberly two swimming suits today. The physiotherapist feels that her progress is sufficient that Kimberly can safely be allowed to swim. She’s going to love that.

I remember the first time we ever went away as a couple. There were some friends performing a dinner theatre production of Nunsense just across the border in Grand Portage, Minnesota. Grand Portage has a casino-hotel, a gas station and, er, that’s it. But it also has a nice-sized pool and sauna that for some reason are almost never used. Are slot machines really that interesting? And the odds are equal to the daily purchase of the most dubious and highly salted mining stocks sold on the Vancouver Exchange. Mind you, I’m not complaining. It leaves the pool free.

And specifically I remember how completely natural Kimberly was in water. It was like someone had performed an operation on a sea creature - I was resisting saying mermaid as a cliche, but that was my thought - and replaced gills with lungs. God love her as I love her, but Kimberly’s always felt a bit klutzy on land. It comes from growing quickly in high school. I remember the awkwardness in my own life well, but I think it’s much harder being the tallest girl, especially when you’re taller than all but the tallest boys.

But put her in water ... I’m not sure, but I think that may have been when I nicknamed her The Nature Girl.

Yes, swimming will make her happy. It will be a good week. Be seeing you.

(Please feel free to share this blog, and I'll like you a whole lot if you click on some of the unusual, yet intriguing products advertised on this page. Cheers! - H)

Underture # 6: 18 Weeks

2010-06-12T22:11:00.001-04:00

Kimberly asked me this morning, after I did what has become the standard daily recitation of the circumstances regarding her hospitalization - I very nearly wrote 'incarceration' - how long this had been going on. I replied, "Tomorrow will be 18 weeks." Which means that we are past 17 weeks which is a third of a year which means in turn that we are approaching half a year which if we were to stagger over the 50 year milestone tape 1% of the entire time we would know each otrher would be spent like ... this.

Not that 'this' isn't a better this than what it was a short time ago. I have admittedly been slower with the updates because the change in Kimberly's condition has been so incremental. Incidentally, the usual adverb for such a pace is 'glacial.' However, as I have been reading lately, the Earth's glaciers are figuratively hot-footing it back up the mountains from whence they emerged, so along with everything else it has done, global warming has ruined a perfectly fine modifier.

But a narrative demands peaks and valleys, highs and lows, teeters and totters in order to maintain reader interest. We haven't had a lot of those lately, hence a lack of drama to relate on these pages.

Still, as I said, we are making incremental progress.This will sound like nothing to you, but it is huge for us - she knows where the bathroom is now. Yes, it's six feet from the end of her bed, but no I don't have to stand there like one of those guys in orange suits on an airport runway waving the 727 into the hangar.

Apropos of nothing - I once came charging madly up to the gate at Toronto's Pearson Airport old Terminal Two, certain I was late for my flight. I wasn't, as the captain and flight crew walking up behind me proved. And I wasn't, as the gatekeeper verified by whispering to the flight captain that, "They can't find the plane sir. They've forgot where they parked it." Of course it was Air Canada.

So my poor darling Kimberly with her little grey cells furiously re-connecting is ahead of Canada's national airline. Possibly far ahead. A bathroom is smaller than a Boeing passenger jet. A hospital room is smaller than an airport. So finding your bathroom in ahospital is, I say to the jury, harder than finding an airplane on the tarmac. And so we measure progress by ludicrous standards.

And yet - progress is being made. It is till maddening that a proper follow-up appointment with an MRI has not happened, even though I was told at Toronto Western that Kimberly would be having an MRI every three months for the rest of her life. Well, three months is twelve weeks and here we are at week eighteen, so do the math.

Increasingly I see that the problem with health care in Ontario is that of manpower. We have the machines and the machines don't care if they run eight hours a day or twenty-four. The bottleneck is a combination of the people who operate the machines, save the images, interpret the images, send the images to Toronto, receive the images in Toronto and then re-interpret the images. Leaving that aside - no problem.

There will be more Chapter updates, to bring you up to speed to the point whre the Undertures begin. But they will be largely drawn from the email updates I sent out in which case they are largely copy and paste exercises with only marginal creative shaping. Less than exciting to write, in other words. But write it I will. I pledge to gove you two updates a week: one Underture (the now) and one Chapter (the then).

Be seeing you.

Chapter Nine: The Flight

2010-05-31T03:22:00.001-04:00

The scene at the hospital while waiting to leave Thunder Bay seems to move so slowly in memory. Because the air ambulance had to be diverted to Thunder Bay and there was a shift change at 7PM, it wasn't until after 9PM when the ambulance finally took Kimberly and me to the airport. The two hour drive from Atikokan had I think allowed a certain numbness to take over the family's initial shock. I shall never, ever forget our two nieces though. Kayla, the eldest and the prospective writer I admire, was the one person free enough to start crying. I promised her I would bring her Auntie Kim back safe and sound. (Thank God I was able to keep my word.) And Maija gave me a bracelet from her wrist. You know those rubber bracelets everyone wears? This was a black one with little white footprints on it - footprints in the sand. I never took it off until, sadly, some time after we came back to Thunder Bay it had to have broken and was lost. I wasn't able to keep my promise on that one. I'd said that I'd wear in until Auntie Kim was home - not just Thunder Bay - home. Maybe the bracelet will re-appear before then. I'll be sure and let you know.

There remains one curiousity. Some eight weeks after we were given a copy of the official medical report, which alludes to Kimberly suffering two seizures during the ambulance trip. It does not state whether that was ground or air transport, but except for the short time when we were separated for the ride from our house to the hospital, I was with her every step of the way and I saw no seizure.A minor point certainly, but still one of curiousity.

We boarded the ambulance to the airport early in the third quarter of the Super Bowl. The Saints, who looked rocky early, were starting to rise in confidence and looked a good bet to knock off the favoured Colts. Well, I'd just have to read the papers the next day.

That - by the way - was a minor blessing in winning the medical lottery and ending up in Toronto. Thank God for a city with four vibrant daily newspapers, as you can imagine how many hours were spent sitting and reading.

And as we boarded the spanking new Orange Air ambulance, I knew two things. One, this would be the most dangerous time of all. One hour and forty five minutes in the air, where, if anything went wrong the odds were deeply against us surviving. Paramedics are wonderful practitioners and all the telemetry was being sent directly to Toronto Western, but still ... if Kimberly had taken a stroke that likely would have been it. I would find out a few hours later that she was at an 80% risk of having a stroke for the first seventy-two hours after the aneurysm burst. Well, in all the good sports movies, the underdog wins anyway.

It was tense, no doubt of it. I believe my stress levels were emitting enough particle energy to power a small apartment building. But I couldn't help still feeling calm and confident. This was going to be an extraordinary time in our lives, but we were going to survive it. As I've said before - that's what a good writer would do, and God is an excellent plot writer.

I was also so damn glad and relieved we were going to Toronto. A) and of course because we were going to the best medical care in Canada; yet also B) I knew that I could survive in Toronto for an extended stay. There was my semi-sister Martha (Dad had complicated relationships with women.) and I knew that I could get a cheap hotel if need be. I was certainly at the right point in life in tgerms of working for a hotel chain and getting an employee discount.

I'd lived there. I'd loved living there. Toronto and I got along very well, like a couple of old friends who only see one another once every couple of years. I've never found it un-friendly or snooty. Dad did. Hated it for every one of the thirty years he lived there. I was of the opinion that if you have to live in an asylum, it might as well have cultural attractions and cheap restaurants. Toronto qualified.

And then we landed at the Toronto Island Airport and took the short ambulance ride up Bathurst to Toronto Western.

To be continued ...

Underture # 5: Yet Another Theory of Human Behaviour

2010-05-29T01:37:00.000-04:00

Understandably, my mind lately has been occupied with the subject of, well, minds.And I realized just the other day that I'd been making a gross misinterpretation of Kimberly's condition and what the goals are truly all about. It feels worthy of sharing and I sincerely hope that the time you spend reading it is time well-spent.

And as usual, for your background listening pleasure if you so choose, an appropriate song you can hear by right clicking here. Onwards.

Kimberly's condition continues to improve in tiny whispers of increments since the last time I wrote. Such small, such wafer thin moments that are like a thousand other such moments we must all live each day. When you are handed a banana, do you ever consider whether or not you would like to eat it with a fork? Exactly. So you look for those thin wafers when decisions that don't have to be made, aren't made. Information that has been retained is beginning to be accessed. Here's one such moment: the last two mornings Kimberly has known where the toilet paper is hung.

It may sound like nothing, but let's look at it slightly deeper. And I do apologize if the subject material is, er, unpleasant but there you have it. Let's say that the average person spends two minutes per day using toilet paper in its traditional function. Two minutes seems reasonable as an estimate. And no, I'm not going to start carrying a stopwatch to the bathroom to find out. The actual time spent is only slightly relevant to the achievement. If you don't have to think about where the toilet paper is for two minutes, you then get to spend that two minutes thinking about different things - such as precisely where you are and how you got there.

And it was this process that led me to the insight. I dread the thought that this will sound dreadfully old hand, but it's new to me. I've constantly thought about and attempted to assist in keeping Kimberly in the now - and in the here as well - rather than a drift into a dream village (as charming as it still sometimes is. I know I must correct her, and I do, but sometimes when Kimberly talks about the children as though they are still babies or toddlers I like to let her go on, just for a little while, because I get to experience how she was as a young mother. Just as you'd expect: loving, funny, and occasionally exasperated.). As in fact I just did with that bracketed digression.

But here's the thing: the now is only of importance in terms of how it affects the future. Everything we do is a plan for a future event which is a plan for a future event. It's as though we're carried away by time. Example? Example:

A man wakes up refreshed in the morning so that he can go to work so he can make money that will buy delicious food and drink which he will eat with his wife so that they will feel relaxed and happy so they might have great sex so that they can snuggle afterwards which allows them to have a great sleep so the next morning (rinse and repeat)

Show me the error of my logic. There is none. Error, I mean. Everything we do is about the next thing we're going to do. I started to notice this over the weeks in Toronto - I couldn't settle down. No wonder. Stress may be 'bad' energy, but dear Lord it is an energy. And it started to come together when I looked at the insane schedule I live: Work 11PM-7AM, catch the bus at exactly 7AM, arrive at the hospital about 7:40 in time to help Kimberly with her toileting, breakfasting and dressing. Then if we're lucky, we get 15 minutes together then it's off to Therapy for her, back to the bus and to bed for me. And then I make, dinner, nap, and it all starts over again. The weekend is exhausted recuperation. But as I've said: it's not forever and sometimes in life you have to suck it up.

Nonetheless, you do start feeling like a prisoner of time. Einstein's theory of time being a liquid, capable of turns, reverses and eddies is absolutely refuted. Time is a particle string that may be the only entity in the universe that travels absolutely straight. Oddly, reading for review a wonderful science book called You Are Here seemed to help. Looking at the entire physics and speculation of absolutely everything from particles so small they can't even be said to be small for they have no size, no dimension - all the way through the billions of years of history of the ever-expanding universe created an understanding of the linear relationship of events. Therefpre, it only makes sense that we spend our lives in eternal planning mode. We do this in order to enjoy that, because that is coming towards us and it's approaching fast.

In terms of Kimberly's condition, I'm working on making our conversations all about goals and consequence rather than strict memory games or casual conversation. Rather, 'If you finish that egg and one piece of toast, you can lie down for fifteen minutes.' And then, 'If you get up now, you won't be rushed when Jordan comes to take you to Physio.' For that, I believe, is how our brains are bred to program.

Be seeing you.

Chapter Eight: The Long, Long Night Begins

2010-05-24T03:20:00.000-04:00

Thunder Bay Regional - The Taj Mahospital

It would have been around 12:30PM when I arrived at the hospital. For those unfamiliar with Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre (what you or I would call a Hospital) , it is a work of art more than it is a work of efficiency. It sprawls like a pride of lions across a hilltop - not the most advantageous spot when the parking for Emergency lies at the bottom of a steep, 50 foot slope - just what you want when you might be pulling up with a wife in labour, a heart attack or a severed limb. Granted, one can always damn the signs and drive up to the Emergency Room door and work out the parking later, but we are Canadians and we obey the printed rules. But the examination rooms and patient rooms are as spacious as the hospital sets on The Young and the Restless. (Kimberly's favourite soap and I admit to a man-crush on Victor Newman. That is the way a man is meant to age.) A troop of boy scouts could easily bivouac by the bedside.

All this money spent on design - lots of curvy wooden things and happy forest creatures frolicking in patterns set in the floor tiles - meant that there would be shortages elsewhere. Forgive me for dripping melting sarcasm all over the page but I'm so pleased that cost cutting was only on unimportant things like the ability to perform a heart bypass or brain surgery. Much later, when we had returned to Thunder Bay, a Doctor at Thunder Bay Regional told me that they had the human resources, the doctors with the skills, to perform the surgery that eventually saved Kimberly's life. They just didn't have the money to purchase the additional equipment they would need. It's a pricing problem. This is why, although I am not a red flag waving socialist, the one industry I would support a government takeover of is the medical industry - pharmaceuticals and equipment manufacturers alike. I absolutely am skeptical of the Adam Smith or Milton Friedman argument that only a private company in a competitive market will press the research and innovation to stay ahead in the market. The competition in a government-run system would be in the form of the research grants doled out to successfully competing bidders. Furthermore, the actual manufacture of pills or machines would also be contracted out. the difference would be that the government, as principal buyer through the hospital system and subsidized drug plans , would also set the most advantageous price for itself while still achieving a result expectation of excellence.

That may have been quite a digression but it leads to a narrative point. Dr. Haq performed the initial examination and MRI and informed me that there were two and a half brain aneurysms spotted, one of which had burst. As a result, cranial fluid was spilling out into the narrow liquid shock absorption space between the brain and the skull, with the further risk that the 'escape valve' for the fluid might become plugged, meaning pressure would continue to build up with an extreme risk of seizure (stroke) or rampant death among the brain cells. As you might have guessed, surgery was recommended. Surgery that could not be done in Thunder Bay. An air ambulance was being diverted to Thunder Bay and now it was a time of waiting while Dr. Haq called around various hospitals to find out who had space for emergency brain surgery.

Haq: "I am going to see if they have space in Toronto. Otherwise, you might be going to Ottawa, London ... or maybe Winnipeg." He said 'Winnipeg' with the same mood and tone of a diner who has just tasted a badly made soup. I instantly despised Winnipeg, a city I'd previously liked. I secretly sent out a telepathic message to flocks of pigeons to feed heartily then congregate and defecate on the Golden Boy's head.

It would have been around 3:30 when the word came that it would be Toronto Western Hospital. I didn't know it then but I soon would that we had won the air ambulance lottery. Besides being acknowledged the finest neurological research hospital in Canada, one could make fair argument that it might even have that standing in all of North America. And yes, I have thought many, many times - what if it had been ... or maybe Winnipeg.

By now the family had begun to congregate, first in the large and comfortably padded Intensive Care waiting room. Later, we had enough room to go into Kimberly's ICU room - as I said, the place is nothing if not spacious. We were all there - John and Marie, Deanna, our nieces Kayla and Maija, and later Bradley, Amanda, and her new boyfriend Tyler. This by the way was the first time Kimberly and I had met Tyler. It certainly avoids any awkward pauses in the conversation.

Kimberly was of course sedated, but not too heavily for obvious reasons. One of the things I would marvel at was how precisely sedation could be measured. In Toronto, when they wanted to wake Kimberly up for testing, a mere twist of a dial and seconds later she would be awake. To tell an anecdote here that possibly should have been saved for later, when I had to return to Thunder Bay from Toronto for a week in order to (I thought at the time) arrange for Employment Insurance, talk to work about the situation and make sure Kim Hansen hadn't killed my Mom and our dog in the mean time), the last words a very friendly and completely informative nurse said to me before I headed out to the streetcar was, "Don't worry, she's just on a happy little cloud. She's on the same stuff Michael Jackson was on."

And of course that worked out so well the last time ...

And I believe in short chapters.

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Underture # 4 The First Hundred Days

2010-05-18T03:44:00.000-04:00

As we present for your listening pleasure while reading this, the greatest song written between 1960 and 2010 according to the New Musical Express: Wonderwall.

Thank you. I knew that I had to fit that in somewhere as it has always been 'our' song. I'm almost apologetic that it's not something more obscure - some 1927 Blues number that Robert Johnson played while wooing the Devil - that I guess would have more panache to it. Screw it. We embrace the joyful noises of the proletariat.

I also apologize for interrupting the flow (if there was one) to Chapter Seven, which as I look at it is one crazy chapter. Ah well. Sometimes we feel like a Vulcan, sometimes we feel a little Goofy, he says quoting a famous punchline to a dirty joke about Mickey Mouse.

Point is, today is Day 100, and thus deserves an Underture, plus there is so much going on right now that I don't want to wait two months to get to that, and then wait a further two months for what has happened in between. You the reader already know that Kimberly has survived her surgeries and has been left with no short term memory. I will go back over the events in Toronto - some suspenseful and some just ... atmospheric, bujt for now I want to bring you up to speed as to where we are today.

I keep hearing positive stories about local women in Thunder Bay who have survived brain aneurysms with only minimal after-effects. These reinforce my optimism, but it is a slow process I fear. That's one thought. The other is (forgive the italicized shouting): What in hell is wrong with the Thunder Bay environment that is leading to young women having brain aneurysms??? I want to see the numbers and if they're out-of-whack to the general Canadian population I damn well want to know why! Seriously, it's starting to feel like everyone I talk to knows someone - almost always a woman - who has had a brain aneurysm and survived. I'm not usually paranoid, but it's never too late to learn.

Anyway, the condition as we stand is of extremely slow, regally glacial in fact, progress. When I was working on my M. Ed. I studied psychometric testing, admittedly in educational fields far removed from this brain injury. Still, you learn a few things along the way that apply to multiple situations that life tends to throw at you. An done is that, the best tests are the simplest tests. There are various reasons, but essentially a simple test has less variables subject to interpretation by the metrician.

So, while we were in the bathroom the other morning - I've managed to get there by 7:45 Monday-Saturday to release Kimberly's waist restraint and get her to the bathroom in time. The nursing staff at St. Joseph's Hospital are all lovely people; there just aren't enough of them. I can't get all rah rah in support of the Canadian Health Care system when I live in a city of over one hundred thousand which doesn't have enough nurses and has over 30,000 residents who do not have a Family Doctor. I think I'll save my flag waving and patriotic pride for the hockey games or maple doughnuts at Tim Horton's.

But while in the bathroom, we were talking about the brain injury and I explained to Kimberly that I was going to give her a word to remember. i'd repeat it several times, then I would wait a little bit and ask her what the word was. I picked the word 'Orange.'

Thirty seconds later. "What word did I ask you to remember?"

"Wednesday."

"No, it was Orange."

"No, I'd never pick Orange."

"I picked it. it was Orange."

"You picked it?"

"Yes."

"Okay, so what was the word I asked you to remember?"

Pause. "I don't remember."

Every morning, often twice every morning, I help Kimberly to the bathroom. The bathroom is on her right, with the door open, the light on and the toilet visible, before the door to the hospital hallway. And every morning, often twice every morning, I gently stop Kimberly from going into the hallway and instead turn to her right into the bathroom. And every morning, often twice every morning she does not think that is the bathroom until I present a winning argument to the affirmative.

That I think gives you a sense of where things are just now. But we must retain optimism and patience. As Dr. McCoy said on Star Trek (see the famous scene by clicking here.) there are billions and billions of nerve endings and we're just going to have to let them find their way to each other. This makes brains much like fallin g in love. Billions and billion sof people in the world and somehow people who are meant to be, come to be.

Which naturally leads me to the wedding. It has haunted me from the beginning that here I was making life and death decisions on what surgical course to take and we weren't legally married. 'Just how far do the powers of common-law extend?,' I kept thinking. And then too, in proof that God at least attempts to cushion the blows with pillows when He rains heat into our lives, it really has felt like falling in love all over again. (Time for another song? Why not? Click here.) And somehow the wedding will seem like the big closing scene where the audience gets to leave the theatre knowing that there has been a happy ending here in Ever After Land. The match is over not when someone is pinned in the, but rather when the ring is pinned on a finger.

But then, I have to wait for that, even with the bridal party lined up and two-thirds of thye music chosen. Here Comes the Sun at the top, Wonderwall at the end and something else in the middle. I'll let you know when Something Else has a name. The again, audience surprise is always good. The obvious spanner in the works is that the bride should be, you know, aware of what's going on. Even leaving the clear ethical issues aside, it would be the height of cruelty to rob a bride of the memory of her own wedding. You may insert the punchline of your choice about husbands being the ones to forget anniversaries, har har.

So for now, we wait. Onwards...

Chapter Seven: A Great Day to be a Saint

2010-05-14T23:43:00.000-04:00

There was business to be attended to while I was being driven to the hospital. Thank God for that Vulcan state of mind. And by the way, I would have paid serious money to have heard the late Johnny Cash sing a mournful country song titled That Vulcan State of Mind. Not to go out on a limb or anything, but it appeared unlikely I'd be able to work that night. So I called the Comfort Inn on the cell phone and said that Kimberly had suffered an aneurysm or stroke and I wouldn't be in at eleven. My colleague Amanda Moore took care of everything from there and so began a time of tremendous support from everyone at the hotel and the entire Comfort Inn and Clarion chain. You need help to survive a crisis and as you'll keep seeing, my employers did it in spades.

So that was taken care of. There was still the matter of my Mom. Aileen O'Hearn is for all intents and purposes a shut-in. She was active and vigorous and healthy and had such an iron will that she would quite smoking for two years - cold turkey - then re-start 'because I was bored' for a few years then quit cold turkey again. Then she had a brain injury as the result of a virus and after that along with several broken bones and joints later she is as she is. On the night I moved her to our house I told her that she could only smoke outside and she sat out on the front lawn in a white plastic folding deck chair trying to decide if the sacrifice was worth it. She begrudgingly admitted that it was and she's been with us ever since. And will I have to put her in a home for the aged?

To move to the present, briefly, that is a worry. Will I possibly be able to handle two invalids at home while also working a midnight shift? I may be good, but am I that good? There's enough Ric Flair meets Pierre Trudeau swagger and arrogance in me to say, 'Oh hell yeah.' Actually, if you'll indulge me while I get something out of my system, after the jump I'm going to let off steam and write the wrestling promo of my life right now. It will be in bold italics, so feel free to skip forwards to the squad car following it.

To see another Ric Flair Tribute, click here

FLAIR: (enters ring in expensive suit and sunglasses while Thus Spake Zarathustra plays - removes sunglasses, places them in handkerchief pocket of suit jacket, stares down his large, masked opponent Aneurysm who responds by gesturing for as fight while looking quickly from side to side, checking for the nearest escape route. He then lifts the microphone and speaks.) Do you have any idea who's standing in front of you? WELL DO YOU? I want to hear you say MY NAME! Say it!

ANEURYSM: (mumbling) I'm not playing games here -

FLAIR: Say it!

ANEURYSM: What in hell do you want? Are you crazy or something?

FLAIR: Crazy? Crazy? CRAZY? You think I'm crazy? W000-oooo! You're damn right I'm crazy! And you want to know why I'm crazy? Because of - YOU! I have been living with you in my space, in my ring, in my house, in my family for TOO LONG! The first day was TOO LONG! One month was TOO LONG! Two months was TOO LONG! Now four months - TIME'S UP! But before I beat you to death right here, in this ring, tonight, I want to be sure you know the name behind the last face you're ever going to see. Now ... what's ... my ... name?

ANEURYSM: You're Ric Flair.

FLAIR: WHO?

ANEURYSM: You're Hubert O'Hearn.

FLAIR: WHO?

ANEURYSM: You know who you are!

FLAIR: You're damn right I know who I am! I am the one person, the one man, the only jet flying (waits for crowd pop) limousine riding stylinga nd profiling son of a gun! - who's not afraid of you. I'M NOT AFRAID OF YOU! Why should I be? WHY IN HELL SHOULD I BE? I've been beating punks like you for TWENTY YEARS! One of 'em ripped my bowels apart. I beat him! One of them tried to stop my heart! I beat him! I've taken on all your crew - Failure! Debt! Illness! Booze! - and everyone of 'em is lying in a big blue box in a back alley because I BEAT 'EM ALL!

ANEURYSM: I know you've got a great record Flair. Hey I respect you man -

FLAIR: BO YOU DON'T! You DON'T respect me! You FEAR ME! That's why you wouldn't go after me because you knew I'd beat you down. You attacked my wife instead ... you attacked the kindest person on Earth because you thought you could beat her. Well guess what ... you ain't going to beat her either. Because (slowly prods on finger into Aneurysm's chest) you didn't just attack Kimberly Mc Innis ... I got a surprise for you ... you attacked THE NATURE GIRL! And she's every bit as tough as The Nature Boy! (slaps Aneurysm across the face, Irish whip into the corner followed by hard chops to Aneurysm's chest, the brawl broken up by security guards, road agents, the N.W.O. and hey look, isn't that Dallas Page?)

Yes, well, when the emotions are bottled for too long, sometimes the cork opens with force. While in the squad car I talked more to Paul Ruebsam. Paul is a Personal Support Worker and one of my absolute dearest friends. He had been giving Mom her weekly showers for the past three years and I knew that he could explain to her what was going on. It also occurred to me that this was Super Bowl Sunday and I had invited him over to the house to watch it. There had been a simmering difference of opinions between Paul and Kim Hansen (who I had called to move into the house) for several months, so I guessed that they would either kill each other or figuratively kiss and make up. Thank God it was the latter. And thank God it was figurative.

I've always played silly little mind games with myself - if this happens (the bus arrives in the next minute, say) that will happen (a review will be accepted by a paper). They make time pass. The beloved New Orleans Saints, representing the hard-luck city of the century thus far were underdogs to the jet fuel offence of the Indianapolis Colts. I've always been an NFC guy anyway and although the Saints had beaten Brett Favre's Vikings two weeks earlier I wanted the Saints to win. So I played a silly mind game. If the Saints win the Super Bowl then Kimberly will come out of all this okay. If the Saints lost, I'd dismiss the result as unconnected to our crisis - illogical, captain. But if the Saints won, it would be a sign. 'Damn it Spock, it doesn't have to make sense! It's a song!' Or a sign.

Kim's fate was in the hand of the Saints

Kimberly's Dad called me as I was walking in to the hospital emergency room. I could hear her Mom crying in the background. They were on their way to Thunder Bay, as were Deanna with Kayla and Maija. As was Amanda. And Amanda had called Bradley's father to arrange for him to come as well.

Hell of a place for a Super Bowl party ...

[MORE TO COME]

Underture #3 We

2010-05-14T03:05:00.000-04:00

(I'm trying something different this update; an experiment, but also an apt one, as I hope you'll agree. Rather than the first personal singular, this Underture is being written in the third person collective - my homage to the great Don DeLillo. Whose books you can buy by clicking here. Onwards.)

We were stood outside in Sinatra's wee small hours of the morning watching as much as scenting the passing essence of a distant skunk carried past on the breeze of a soft spring rain. It had been ninety-six days now since it had all happened, or should we say started happening? We had just that day realized that indeed it had been more than a quarter of a year that they had been living through. That is one percent of twenty-five years. The time was starting to add up. And just now we further realized that we had been longer in Thunder Bay than in Toronto and Toronto had seemed a very long time spent. Toronto had been six weeks, less than one eighth of a year. Toronto had been nothing.

The breakthroughs come. They are as rare and as difficult to find as a sweet small truffle buried in a French bog, but equally they are treasures. Just this morning as we were leaving the bathroom, whose placement not five feet from the foot of the hospital bed still required directions for the walker absolutely every time. But leaving the bathroom, vocal chords were used, not just the whisper. Tabatha, the cheery therapist who assists Kimberly with the tasks of daily living - bathing and dressing mostly at this point - had entered the room and asked, "How are you today?" The reply, "We're doing great." The response to that, in a little rasping voice accompanied by a smile and a twinkling of her eyes was, "She asked you." The third person was inappropriate; as the little rasping voice marvelously continued, "I'm doing rotten." When it was pointed out and relished that there was a voice where they had been none, we beamed ... just beamed.

There had been another perfect moment - the sort that makes a man want to listen to Sinatra. We've always loved Night and Day by Cole Porter. Now that's how you write a song and that's how you sing a song. Notice how Sinatra's voice was so young and strong then, before an army of Jack Daniels in Marlboro tanks had rolled over his vocal chords. Still, as much as they changed they still remained beautiful and somehow became more perfect. It's a good thing perfection is rare. It makes a man appreciate it more.

As with this morning. During the quiet time after a breakfast well-eaten and before the arrival of the Acquired Brain Injury team of therapists and social workers, we were able to spend alone time together, talking about whatever we wanted and telling once more the story of February the Seventh and its on-going outcomes.

There have been two special moments since the transfer to St. Jospeh's Rehabilitation Hospital. One was when we and Amanda and Bradley were alone in the hospital room together and although there had been a change of set between scenes, we were finally together as a family for the first time in months. That's when we'll know we've won. When the cast comes together for the closing scene back where they started in Act One.

And then there was this morning. Breakfast was eaten by sitting on the side of the bed. Kimberly patted the bed next to her and said, still in the whisper voice, "Sit with me." We held each other, a tousled head happy to rest on a shoulder still wearing the hotel uniform. We held each other longer than we had held each other in ninety six days. When we first fell in love we used to marvel at how we would melt into each other, our skin feeling the same in texture and temperature. Sometimes it is a good thing to just melt.

That should be the end, but there were more good moments on this day, although none so wonderful as that. Mandy the Social Worker informed us that Amanda and Bradley would each qualify for about $200 per month as the children of a disabled person. Disabled Person. Hard to imagine that term applying, but then again it does not have to be imagined for that is exactly how it is. And now, with the Employment Insurance issue settled - papers had been lost, bureaucracy was both helpful yet incompetent all at once - bills could be paid and budgeting done. The house would have to be made safer than the crook of a mother lion's arm. There was much work to be done.

But there was hope.

So let there be song and dancing waters.

Chapter Six: How are Skis and Philosophy Related?

2010-05-10T02:43:00.000-04:00

Answer: Both benefit from regular waxing. In the next chapter we'll resume the medical narrative, but the thunderbolts of emotion and reflection had begun as soon as I got off the phone with Amanda -

"You need to know this. Mom's collapsed in the kitchen, but the ambulance is here and we're on our way to the hospital."

"What do you mean, 'collapsed'?"

"That has not yet been determined. It appears that she has suffered either an aneurysm or a stroke."

That has not yet been determined? Who talks like that? Why am I talking like that? I started wondering about this while I was grabbing Kimberly's prescriptions out of the cupboard above the stove (Yeah, lousy place, but remember there's a two year old grandson and a six month old border collie sniffing around.); and racing up and down the stairs twice to tell my 84 year old Mom what was going on and phoning my friends Kim Hansen and Paul Ruebsam to please come over to the house to keep an eye on her; and getting together all the Health Cards, Social Insurance Cards, Credit Cards and every other darn thing that could be stuffed in a pocket because I was already thinking this might mean hopping an air ambulance and there wasn't going to be time to pack.

But who talks like that? Then I remembered. That's who I am, that's what I do. There have been five or six moments of Maximum Stress Overdrive in my life - why is there not a band named Maximum Stress Overdrive? - not the least of which being open heart surgery - and my emotional reaction to all of them has been to Go Vulcan. That isn't just some cheesy Star Trek metaphor designed to give this story Geek Appeal. I literally start channeling Spock, stand with my hands clasped behind my back and say things like, 'That has not yet been determined.'

True Story: When I woke up in the Intensive Care Unit at the Hamilton Hospital after my quadruple bypass and Kimberly was allowed in to see me, she asked me how I was. I replied, "It was fun." So sometimes you need a little Captain Kirk mixed in with the Spock. And yes, Kimberly hates when I tell that story. I had never thought of it before now, but I guess it could be somewhat demeaning to the emotional trauma she must have been going through when I grin a little William Shatner grin and say, "It was fun." I'm sorry dear. I look forward to your reading this. I get it now.

I get it now. Yes, that is the thing, the nut inside the shell split from a long fall from a high branch on a tall tree. I always liked and quoted Samuel Johnson's line about an impending hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully. Compared to literally not knowing second by second if a vasal spasm or a seizure was going to snap away the life of the woman I adored more than anything, snap it away like a broken fishing line, gone into cold depths of water and mystery...compared to that, I'll go with the hanging.

This time, this completely focused reality, it is so hard to describe but it has to be described. You hear the cliches about time moving fast or time moving slow, but neither of those are right, not in our case. Time moved very smoothly - activity, then wait - activity, then wait - activity, then wait - but what was different about the time and how it blended with the atmosphere, the bundling grey clouds of fate kneading themselves in the imaginary air was how both sight and insight sharpened their image. It was as though everything for weeks was being filmed by Gregg Toland in his Citizen Kane pomp. Things that on an ordinary day might not even be noticed but now they were in vivid detail because you never know ... I never knew what might be importanta nd what might prove to have meaning during this time of madness that required absolute calm in response. Otherwise it all might have been an emotional shipwreck and the last thing Kimberly needed was for me to be in Helpless Castaway mindset.

And I just had this eerie sense that I've mentioned several times already that Kimberly was not going to die. I don't know why, but I was relaxed about it as soon as the ambulance arrived. 'Relaxed' may be too strong a word. I'm man enough to admit to a good possibility of having gone into shock. But - shock or no, the confidence was still there. Maybe it was faith, maybe it was that I'd lived through two 'deaths' already - on the operating table for bowel surgery, and the quadruple bypass. I was very glad for the knowledge of that bypass, by the way, as we'll get to when we arrive at Toronto Western Hospital and the surgical options were presented tgo me.

So all that, and there is never any one reason for anyone's thoughts or actions. Humans tend to be complex crystals. Yet, there was a significant part of me - the writer and reviewer part of me - that just felt that in terms of narrative there was no way Kimberly's life was going to play out this way. Two divorces, two kids, on-going custody and support battles, house fires, a man in her life (me) who emotionally went off the rails when his financial practice collapsed, house fires, Amanda leaving the house, and we were just getting past all that. There was light at the end of the tunnel. I had beaten my demons ... if I am going to honestly write this book I have to write this book honestly ... I was clearly an alcoholic for a year and a half. I'd totally quit drinking - cold turkey - four months before all this happened. Thank God. I was finally back on my game. I needed to be, to put it mildly.

But Kimberly's life was not meant to end here. I like to think that God has a pretty good sense of story - He's quite good at character development - and I didn't buy that this would be the last chapter. We have medical knowledge. People survive strokes. People survive aneurysms. So long as a breath can be drawn, there is hope.

I thought of two sports figures during those minutes after I had called Amanda and before the stretcher was placed in the ambulance. I've mentioned Bret 'The Hitman' Hart. He'd survived a massive stroke and was healthy physically and mentally. And then there was the late basketball coach of the North Carolina State Wolfpack, Jim Valvano. Jimmy V. Valvano had died of cancer at a young age, but before he did, he gave one of the great triumphant speeches of courage ever made. You can watch it by clicking here. Don't give up. Don't ever give up.

It is indeed the one great virtue that grows as a result of being a sports fan. You see so many examples of courage, of trust, of faith and of seemingly impossible things that become possible. You never give up.

But now I had been told that there was no room for me in the ambulance and I had to start considering bus routes or could we afford a cab? Things were at an interesting point financially, as I'll get to explaining shortly. But the police officer who had initiated CPR on Kimberly offered to give me a lift. I went to get in the back of his cruiser, but he said, "Uh, I'd rather you didn't sit back there sir. It's not exactly hygienic." Ah yes. It was a Sunday morning after a Saturday night. Good times. This was just the right point to inject some levity and the right point to end this chapter.

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Love to you all .

- H

Chapter Five: The Medical Chapter

2010-05-05T03:00:00.000-04:00

I long ago lost track of the number of university courses I took. What with three degrees and seven Masters level classes, the number must be close to forty. The best one was a third year course in Linguistics, offered by the English Department at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. It was offered by the English Department because, well, somebody had to do the paperwork. It could just as easily been housed in Psychology, Biology, Sociology or even Philosophy. Opposable thumbs may be all well and good (not that they've ever been of much service to me at either home repair or typing) but what truly separates us from the animals is our facility to generate an infinite number of different sentences, i.e. thoughts. Well, and finding violence entertaining makes us humans pretty unique too.

But language is the whole game. The good Professor, Richard Wilson by name although we nicknamed him Mr. Shiny Forehead dispensed more pure wisdom over the course of a year's lectures than any other Herr Doktor Professeur's that I ever attended. Here are two thoughts he shared:

1) I've quoted this one a lot, and I have heard it quoted back to me, but Wilson was the first one I've heard use it. There are four fields or sectors of human knowledge. There are the Things We Know That We Know (your phone number, your birthday); there are Things We Know We Don't Know (the atomic number of palladium, the combination to your gym locker); Things We Didn't Know That We Know (are you an expert on elephants? No. But you know a hell ofa lot about elephants if you think hard about it.). Finally, there are the Things We Don't Know That We Don't Know. The latter comprises most of what passes for modern political discourse. We will argue until we're either blue in the face or broken in the nose about subjects that we have only minimal knowledge of. Next.

2) Wilson said on another occasion, "Anyone who tells you that we understand how the brain works is lying. We only know one ten thousandth of what the brain is." Granted, some time has passed since I attended that lecture, but even if we accept the conventional scale that human knowledge doubles every ten years, that means we're up to one two thousand five hundredth of what the brain does and how it does it. How can, famously, a railway spike be driven through a man's brain only to have him not lose a beat or even consciousness, whereas as you shall read a doctor operating with micro instruments had to close up Kimberly's akull becaus he feared the slightest slip would either kill or permanently incapacitate her. Quite the organ, to say the least. And among the organs in our body we probably say or at least think the least about the brain. It doesn't get one percent of the headlines that the genitals grab. It's a nice paradox actually: the part of our body that thinks doesn't think much of itself.

So that is what this chapter is about - what exactly was happening in Kimberly's brain while she was being rushed by ambulance, breathing but unconscious, to the emergency room at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre, aka the Taj Mahospital. More on hospitals later in this book. This is the medical chapter. And this seems to be the right place to put it. You've now met Kimberly, gotten to know her a bit and by now you know me about as well as you know your own brother. Possibly better. At least I write to you about what I'm doing. But if you're going to appreciate what was going on and apply it to emergencies that may (will) come up in your life, you're going to have to appreciate the risks and consequences of what we went through.

Therefore, although I was completely consulted every step of the way and I will recount those consultations, I'm going to distill much of what I learned into the following section. This won't be narrative, in other words. And I apologize if it gets a bit dry.

This picture should help (thanks to wikipedia, a fine science source):

In the most technical sense, and quoting from the medical briefing given to us on April 27th, Kimberly had a large subarachnoid hemorrhage, as well as an aneurysm at the tip of the basilar artery as well as a small anterior communicating artery aneurysm. The meaning of hemorrhage is burst aneurysm. That presumably was Kimberly's point of collapse on to our kitchen floor. Her brain was virtually a NASCAR racecar just blown a gasket heading into the turn at Darlington. Fluid comes pouring out, control is lost. Crash.

The fluid is the scariest part. Your brain in a sense always stays in infancy. Just as we happily float about in amniotic fluid before rudely being expelled from the womb into what passes for the world these days, the brain floats instead your skull in fluid. Whee! It gets to go swimming every day!

Beyond any fun factor, the fluid exists as a big shock absorber for the brain. Get punched in the head, the fluid cushions the blow. It's like a permanently deployed air bag. But air bags can kill you too. If the pressure from a blow, resulting in a concussion, or a build-up of fluid resulting from the blown gasket or aneurysm, becomes too great, the arteries depicted above can spasm and.or go into arrest. Hence a stroke. Or, the pressure can literally kill chunks of the brain itself.

The great Canadian wrestler Bret Hart had to retire in 2000 because of a kick to the head by Bill Goldberg. The resulting conscussion led to a dead area in Hart's brain the size of a quarter. It almost undoubtedly led to his stroke two years later. Oddly, simultaneous with the events you are reading about, Hart made a return to wrestling, albeit in a limited role. He became an inspirational figure for me, seeing him walk normally, talk normally and seeming fit and healthy.

So there was the immediate risk. Even if the aneurysm could be clipped off, the fluid would still remain and the traumatized brain could go into seizure any time. For the first week after February 7th, Kimberly stood a 40% chance of having a stroke. Know what 40% is? No Canadian political party nor any political party in the UK currently polls as high as 40%. yet one of them will form a government. If it's something positive, a 40% chance is a great chance. This was not something positive.

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Love to you all from Kimberly and me,

- H

Underture # 2 May 4, 2010

2010-05-04T02:47:00.000-04:00

Underture # 2

Two years? What do you mean, "Some patients are with us for two years."? What?

So nobody's saying that it will be two years. This was at the meeting last week with all the therapists and the supervising physician, Dr. Hargadon. If I had to guess and over/under number I'd take August 7th. It would fit the narrative, coming six months to the day after the aneurysm burst, and if there's one thing I've learned through all this it is that the ironic rules by which nature manufactures our personal stories are everywhere if you know to look for them. Little chance events are not little chance events - they are the proddings of those long bamboo sticks elderly English gentlemen use to steer their model sailing ships. God is a retired Cavalry Major. But I digress.

It is still remarkable being with Kimberly. This morning she had a few moments, a minute or two, of completely lucidity. She was ignoring her breakfast and asking in an urgent whisper where the loaf of bread was. Rather than playing along, I said, "There is no loaf of bread there."

"Yes there is!"

"No. there's not. You're imagining it. You sometimes see things that are not there. It's a result of the brain aneurysm."

And with that she was living in the now - more than I had seen her in over twelve weeks. "I had a brain aneurysm?" Yes. And I told her the story that i told all of you in Chapter Four. Right up and to that point. And after that, I said, "Now, it's very likely that you will forget everything that I have just told you. That too is a result of the aneurysm. Your brain is figuring out how to remember again. and it will. You have come a thousand miles since four or five weeks ago. But I'll keep telling you the story. But for now, that you are here is truly, truly a miracle. and I love you." And Kimberly looked quite seriously at me through all of that, with her serious expression - the left fist held up against the left cheek while her index finger extends across the top lip so all you see are luminescent and fixed deep brown eyes, staring and assessing all at once.

And then ... the elderly lady in the next bed moved her tray back. It wasn't much of a distraction. Dear God I don't blame the poor woman. But it was enough. We were off on picnics held in hotel lobbied and I asked Kimberly if she remembered what I had told her about the aneurysm.

No.

I looked for the movie cameras, but there were none there.

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- H