This is a picture of Darrell, a very handsome Anishinabe and Potawatomi first nations man who suffered a terrible accident 19 years ago. Darrell’s hair is a stunning blue-black in the sunlight, his hair is coarse. I like touching it because it is so different than my ultra fine wispy hair that is full of static charge in the winter. Here he is in Marshall’s Bar and Grill in Espanola, Ontario, Canada (where I’ve been known to sing Karaoke, but that’s another story for another time).
Darrell was in a coma a good 6 weeks after his accident and endured a long road of recovery…and you can’t see it here, but he walks with the help of a walker. He has a tracheotomy scar, but told me I have no idea how many scars he has from that accident.
At times, his detached matter-of-factness about his condition was very sad to me, particularly the part where he talks about how people steer clear of him because he talks in a halting manner, and has difficulty walking on his own. He was surprised but pleased that I understand him and said it’s mostly his sisters that understand his speech; so I took that as a high compliment. At times he swallows down the wrong pipe and coughs.
I was very impressed by his ‘can do’ attitude; his wonderful sense of humor; his breadth of knowledge on a wide variety of subjects and his positive attitude in general. It’s a miracle that he is doing as well as he is. He has sleep apnea, and told me that sometimes in the daytime ‘his get up and go got up and went.’ He takes frequent naps.
My mom has sleep apnea, she has a mask to wear at night – he does, too, but he doesn’t bother with it. I heard him snoring and I don’t think he is getting much REM sleep which is why he has to sleep during the day. Even with the mask at night, my mom still has to take something to keep her up and going during the day, so before I left, I mentioned that to him. He says he doesn’t remember any dreams; which is a telltale sign of not getting REM sleep; but if you go without REM sleep long enough, you will start hallucinating during the daytime.
I also noticed at times he will close one eye when he is looking at something; he said that there are times when he sees double, and that’s a trick he uses to bring things back into focus.
The last three days I was there, I stopped at Tim Horton’s and picked him up a breakfast combo (breakfast sandwich with hash browns) with some coffee, which he likes double double.
He has a wonderful sense of humor and strikes me as a brilliant man with so much potential; he noticed that one of my lens caps was missing, asked me about the different lenses I use on my camera; we got into a conversation about the populations of Detroit versus Chicago, and many other things. I picked up a Toronto Star newspaper for him, which he was glad to have to catch up on things.
Time has moved forward and he accepts his condition, although at times he is frustrated by it. But he doesn’t let it slow him down….he gets all over the place, and goes off the Indian Reserve on all kinds of adventures. I met him on one such adventure at Marshall’s Bar and Grill; and he happened to be staying at the Marshall’ motel, same as me.
This time around we got a hold of some wild rabbit…my friend Nick started it off in the slow cooker with a bit of mushroom soup, water and an onion and I finished it off, adding some carrots, potatoes and celery and cooking it until it literally fell off the bone. It was delicious…and despite the scarey talk about wild rabbit carrying some disease…(rabbit fever) I feel fine. It was definitely wild because it was dark meat versus the farm-grown rabbit meat which is white.
When Darrell says native words, they are like music to me.
Darrell needs and craves human interaction and the plain touch of human beings, but he modestly doesn’t want to be a burden on his family. People should make sure to speak to him when they see him, and instead of avoid him, they should be shaking his hand, giving him a hug, and encouraging him to move forward. I believe in touching and hugging people; children die in orphanages simply because they are not held enough; feeling as though people care can make the climb seem not so steep…and that goes for people who are not physically challenged, too.
