Eoin

Eoin stroked at age 30. And he’s been in a wheelchair ever since. He was 53 at the time I met him. The sandy haired fellow has some movement in one leg and the opposite hand. He speaks but his speech is slurred. The listener has to be on his toes. Eoin uses a power wheelchair outside, and a manual one in his home. Which is a nice wheelchair-friendly townhouse. Eoin was my age (early-fifties) when we met him at the care facility I worked at. I had been diagnosed with MS at that point but was still working where he would come to visit Linda, one of the residents every week. I liked his gumption. The facility was at the top of a three-kilometer long hill, Tank Hill. One day he made an offhand comment that shocked me. He hadn’t been out of town in 18 years. My jaw dropped. “Well at least I can get you out of town for a car trip. That is if you can transfer yourself.” Which he could. And that was the beginning of our friendship.

We took the occasional trip to the next town but I really didn’t have too much to time because I was still working. Once I got to know him, I found out he had a ski incident in Banff. He didn’t feel well but continued skiing. As he felt worse he made it down to the medical clinic and was sitting on the table when he passed out. He was in a coma for three months after having a stroke. Upon awakening he was paralyzed leaving him enough use in his right hand to operate a power chair and left leg to propel a manual one. His marriage and young family fell apart. The life he knew dissolved in an instant he doesn’t even remember. But he made the most of it. He moved one province over to a small town where his mother lived in. He bought himself a lovely townhouse and had it renovated. He carved out a life for himself, away from an institution.

Eoin has a good brain and a good sense of humor. Not to mention his great attitude. He must get depressed but I never saw it. Not long after I couldn’t drive a standard anymore and had to trade in my SUV for a small compact automatic which ended our road trips. But the connection was made. Eventually I would have to give up work all together and devoted more time to getting him on a proper holiday. I was still bothered by that fact and tried hard to get him a regular kind of vacation. I checked out flying options but he said no because power chairs get too bashed up in the luggage and it’s just not worth it. His manual wheelchair alone cost $10,000, I can’t imagine what a power one cost. So then I looked into a Greyhound bus trip to Vancouver and a road trip to Whistler. I figured I could get someone to drive him and there’d be wheelchair friendly hotels since the Paralympics had just been there. I read about disabled house-swapping options. But it always turned out to be much more complex and involved than meets the eye so nothing ever materialized.

He lived only a few blocks away and one winter I realized he was literally housebound for months because of slush and snow. I took the initiative to go visit every Friday night. I’d bring some sort of simple dinner and we ended the evening with a coffee and Scrabble to stop our brains from going to mush. Or crib. Someone specially made him a giant crib board with chopped up golf tees for pegs. Plus we were from the same era so counted our hands the same. They were enjoyable evenings.

Eoin’s speech was somewhat garbled but with careful listening, you certainly could understand him. And if you could get past that, you got to his comical wit. Which I was fortunate to have experienced. We were having tea and cookies one day and this came out of the blue.

“You know what’s funny?”

“No what?”

“I’ve never had a headache since I stroked.” Pause.

“That’s 23 years,” he said. Another Pause.

“Did you used to?”

“Well, I always carried Tums in my pocket. Had indigestion all the time. That’s gone too. Funny about that kind of life. Now there’s no stress.”

After a full minute of silence, I burst out laughing. I found it hilarious he had a major stroke that affected every inch of his life for the next 60 years and his great insight is he doesn’t get headaches or indigestion anymore.

With me and MS and him a stroke survivor, we still physically didn’t make a whole and had some pretty good laughs over it too. I remember once dropping a scrabble tile and we both leaned over and looked straight down at it. It was a looooong way down there. Then we looked at one another with an amusing smile as to who was going to get it. We saw the humor in our collective limited function. Or another time with the face cloth. Because of paralysis in his face, Eoin drooled a fair amount. One evening in the midst of a scrabble play he needed a cloth quickly. I got up and limped over to the washroom and grabbed one from the large stack of white face cloths. After wiping his face clean, he said in his garbed voice.“By the way, just so you know for next time.” He dabbed himself dry again. “The white ones are bum cloths.” We roared.

Eoin shared things about his life, pre-stroke. He told me about going to Selkirk College in Castlegar to attend a Forestry program. “My Paul Bunyan days,” he called them. You had to listen carefully to catch everything he said because sometimes he slid the odd remark to make you laugh – like to see if you’re listening. I was. He conjured up a good visual of Paul Bunyan. I always associated bunions with feet. I forgot about Paul. Anyhow turns out his lumberjack phase was short-lived but funny. Which I can’t remember the details other than falling off my chair laughing.

My Beagle loved going over there. The snacks on the floor in the kitchen were most generous and she didn’t have to work hard for them. Eoin couldn’t reach down to the floor so when he fumbled something often it stayed there until the housekeeper came. Or Brinkley. Whichever came first. Brinkley once found a whole Kaiser bun right there under the open counter and couldn’t believe her luck. I hung out with Eoin for a couple of years. I was new to the whole disability world and he taught me a great deal. We did many things. Went to the next town for car outings; had our winter dinners, or bumped into each other at our support groups in the church. One summer day we met in the park for scrabble. Him on his chair, me on my scooter, and Brinkley relaxed in the soft green grass watching the world go by. We found a picnic table handy to the can (Eoin knew where every wheelchair assessable washroom in town was) and I prearranged a Tim’s delivery. The cerealean blue sky and watching the ocassional Osprey head to his nest. Life doesn’t get much better.

I moved away and lost touch with him a few years back. We spoke ocassionally but even that dwindled. Looking back on it, Eoin played such an important role in shaping my MS life today. So, wherever you are Eoin, thanks. Thanks for memories.

You can still make me laugh.