Mona wrote a novel in 2018
A novel about girl in her 20’s living with MS.
Vigorous, independent, stubborn and sometimes difficult to get along with, 28-year-old Rozalind has Multiple Sclerosis.
Through endless appointments, she desperately searches for a cure while trying to make sense of her new condition.
Out of options, she moves home. As Roz becomes more despondent and isolated, her faithful dog, Deputy, is her main companion.
After her mother is unexpectedly faced with a serious illness of her own, Roz builds an inner life with her own growing awareness of God, and her world begins to change.
She moves from a cynical, fault-finding victim to a calm, secure, empowered woman of age.
This fictionalized memoir is an engaging story of courage and hope.
A novel about girl in her 20’s living with MS.
Vigorous, independent, stubborn and sometimes difficult to get along with, 28-year-old Rozalind has Multiple Sclerosis.
Through endless appointments, she desperately searches for a cure while trying to make sense of her new condition.
Out of options, she moves home. As Roz becomes more despondent and isolated, her faithful dog, Deputy, is her main companion.
After her mother is unexpectedly faced with a serious illness of her own, Roz builds an inner life with her own growing awareness of God, and her world begins to change.
She moves from a cynical, fault-finding victim to a calm, secure, empowered woman of age.
This fictionalized memoir is an engaging story of courage and hope.
Short Stories
The background is, I started writing or refining
short stories for make-work projects
for something positive to do
in the early days of MS
And I used them for larger body of works.
However here are some new stories
that never made it into any larger writings
that I still am still lifted up by.
Enjoy a glimpse into my past.
Short Story Audio CD's
I tried my hand
at recording a few
of my old stories. They brought back fond memories.
Heres one now.
Gates
read by Alisa Perry
Kevin 1305 words 2015
Kevin 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. Kevin uses a power wheelchair outside, and a manual one in his home. Which is a nice wheelchair-friendly townhouse. Kevin 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.
Kevin 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 that winter I realized he was literally house bound 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 pencil crayons for pegs. Plus we were from the same era so counted our hands the same. They were enjoyable evenings.
Kevin’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, Kevin 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.
Kevin 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. Kevin 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 Kevin 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 (Kevin 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, Kevin played such an important role in shaping my MS life today. So, wherever you are Kevin, thanks. Thanks for memories.
You can still make me laugh.
•••
High Tea with a Bandito 1053 words 1995
Grandma arrived in Halifax by boat in 1904 at age four from the Ukraine. She married at age 13, settling into a prairie homesteading life with my late grandfather. They raised a whopping 13 children, and in turn, being a good Ukrainian family, all married and raised families of their own to a high count at the last reunion. So there was certainly no shortage of visitors to Grandma when she landed in extended care.
In her high 80’s, Grandma had fallen down that wicked flight of stairs in the back of her house and broke her hip. That ambulance ride to the hospital turned out to be a one-way fare. She would not see her home again and live out the remaining seven years of her life in a wheelchair in extended care. Although the recreation programming did their best, they couldn’t provide all the necessary stimulus required for a well-balanced life.
​Especially to their main demographic of frail, often forgotten, elderly men and women were who had no other source of activity. Thank goodness for outsiders who included these forgotten fragile individuals in their regular visits, being family or not. And our family was one, since there were plenty of us. Myself, a grand daughter in my early 30’s, had gone a little sideways so visiting Grandma was something consistent and constructive I could do for us both. Having grown up less than a mile from her house, I knew her better than my other cousins, and knew the worth of a good perogy or holopchi. So it was easy to carry on the familiar relationship even though she was gradually slipping away.
One year in late August, Recreation asked me if Grandma would like to join them on their field trip to the Pacific National Exhibition. Wow! Really? This bunch? I had never considered something as high energy as that because, quite frankly, I thought it was beyond them plus I had no way of getting a wheelchair there. No problem, they could do that. So yes, I’d love to meet Grandma there and push her around. We talked details and I got the drop off and pick up info. We had the whole day Gram!
It was a glorious sunny day. The care aids made sure she had a hat and lots of sun block. We wheeled by all the pop-up games and their surrounded stuffies of all sizes. The sights, sounds, and smells of a fair in full swing were stimulation overload so we veered over to watch the gentler kiddie rides, and listen to some of the street entertainment. We caught the outdoor Super Dog Show while munching on mini donuts. She comprehended some of the tricks and even recalled their farm dog’s name ‘Rover’.
Then we came across one of those gimmick vendors who take pictures with different backdrops. The kind with face holes cut out that s you just stand behind. I giggled at the thought of Gram and I hamming it up. At first Grandma didn’t want to but the lady vendor was wonderful and softly encouraged her by describing some of the scenes. The penny dropped when she heard the word bandito. Uncle Alex, her son, traveled to Mexico every winter so she recognized the word. I think she knew somehow it was connected to Uncle Al, so she was game. The vendor and I were delighted. We wheeled into position and said ‘cheese.’
The afternoon rolled by seamlessly. Staying in the slow lane, we strolled and sat, munched and lunched, watched and observed. It was a marvelous outing. I bought a heart shaped crystal to hang in my window. We picked up flyers, and papers, samples and programs. I bought a batch of PNE Prize Home lottery tickets and filled out Grandma’s name on every one of them, smiling at my mind’s eye of her in the massive home theatre watching Pig n’ Whistle or Lawrence Welk.
By 3 o’clock we were done. Bags jammed, spirits weary, we returned to our meeting post tired but happy. Like clockwork, the care aides were there to greet us and loaded up the bus. I sent the bandito back with a giant loot bag of goodies including the gimmick photo we had taken. The nurses were kind and posted it on the corkboard in an otherwise static existence.
At first it brought cheerful conversation, but as her days turned into withdrawn months, it became a glimpse into her beautiful soul we knew was still there.
Dolls 2014 747 words.
Sumitra was my first sponsored World Vision child. When I quit smoking, I decided to sponsor a child with the money that otherwise would have gone up in smoke. Literally. Sumitra was the first of five children over the next 18 years.I received a tiny school photo of her, a dark skinned African girl six years old. The organizers recommended small gifts only, tokens really, if you were going to send a gift at all. I pondered what I could send when the idea of a doll popped in my mind. I loved playing with dolls as a girl and could play with them for hours. I set off on a whim to see what was out there. Nothing glitzy or ‘North American’ I mused. And be darned if I didn’t find a perfect dark skinned life sized baby with moveable limbs and glass eyes that opened and closed at the first Thrift Store. She had real eyelashes. I rushed to the check out excited and anxious to get home.
With my imagination swirling on how to dress and package her, I stepped on it.
​
A sturdy tomato box with snug fitting top doubled as a crib fitting the doll to a tee. A piece of thick foam cut to measure made a perfect mattress and a flannel pillowcase made an excellent sheet. Next, she needed some nice bright clothing. Canadian clothes were too heavy and dark. I scrounged around in the linen closet and found an old bright table cloth. I designed and cut out a pair of shorts, pants and a skirt. I didn’t have a sewing machine, but my girlfriend Lana did even though she wasn’t one to loan things out. But surprise surprise she could drop it off on her way to yoga. What color of thread did I need? The sewing kit Aunt Stella gave me had everything I needed -- elastic for the waists, seam binding for nice hems, and small snaps.
Sticking my tongue out and titling my head as I sewed around curves I came up with some elaborate accessories. Laying everything out I admired my work, the cardboard crib complete with hospital corners, the doll itself, the little wardrobe, with matching hair band. My surrogate child was going to thrilled I smiled to myself. The top went on followed by miles of boxing tape.
“Land or air?” the lady at the post office asked as I just squeaked in just before closing.
“Land please.” I said. “There’s no rush.”
Driving home, I wondered if it would make it around the world. But smiled again thinking even if it didn’t I still liked playing with dolls.
•••
Months turned into sixteen, and I never heard anything. In the meantime I had made a series of bad decisions leaving my lovely little apartment on the beach. One summer evening I took a bus to the old place longing to retract some of my choices. I went by the house lamenting the days of lovely sunsets and absently flipped open the lid of my old mailbox, like you do in the coin return of a pay phone. And behold! There was a letter addressed to me from Africa.
I went across the street to the bench to open it. It was a annual school progress report, a pamphlet full of checked tick boxes. Then a 4x6 photo of Sumitra holding the tomato box with her baby doll came fluttering out. I welled up with tears.
Not only did that little doll and repurposed tablecloth travel half way around the world to lift a little girl, but it came back around to raise my own flagging spirits.
Now if that wasn’t God’s grace at its best, I don’t know what is. A clear illustration that the love you send out truly does return ten-fold.