Darren Conners is the winner of ALS Ontario’s “Make It Write” Short Story Competition.  Thank you to everyone for your amazing stories!  Deciding the winner was a tough job!

Congratulations, Darren! You write beautifully and I’m humbled by your honesty and candor.  Thank you so much Darren and please remember God is only one prayer away. 

As a young child, Darren was full of happiness and joy.  He adored his mom and his dad was the kind of dad that every kid envied.  A close knit family, they did everything together.  Life was really good until a devastating illness came crashing in and a sudden tragic accident obliterated Darren’s world forever.

Count Your Blessings
By Darren Conners

Life was full of thrilling events as a kid growing up in Oshawa Ontario. We went everywhere as a family; you name it we did it.  My father was an outdoorsman and would always take my brother and I to his hunting camp to fish and ride the snowmobiles. My dad “Kim Conners” was a plumber and used his hands quite frequently until he developed Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS – Amotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), when I was 6 years old.  My brother and I did not really know what was happening to him. We thought that it would go away in a short time.

Not knowing the full extent of this horrible disease, we lived our daily lives as if it was normal. We saw him using the hallway walls to stabilize his walk, as he would shake in pain from all the cramps. His voice was fading and became so slurred it was hard to grasp the words. It was tough for us boys because we wanted to talk to our daddy. Within a month, he was using a walker and was hardly speaking at all.

Not knowing that this was a terminal disease we still lived our lives as if we were a normal family. I do not know why my mom never told us he was going to die; maybe she did not want to scare us. His disease started to permeate through his whole body. He was suffering a loss and deterioration of all his muscles. All he could do was cry there in agony, as his death seemed near.

I remember looking at his hands in fear because they crippled from all the muscle loss. He would signal me over to light one of his cigarettes because his hands were too weak to use the lighter. He looked so frail that if he were to drop to ground his bones would break. He needed help lifting his hands to the steering wheel of his truck and his three-wheel scooter as well as turning over the ignition. They soon took his license away.

I even took on the job of showering my father because my mom was not always there. This is when I started to believe that this was not a temporary illness, but a progressive disease. Watching this disease slowly destroy my dad began to affect me emotionally. No more harmony just sorrow.

I remember sitting on my dad’s lap driving his scooter to the century home video to rent family movies. These are fond memories. Subsequently, he was placed in an electric wheel chair where it was too difficult for me to drive so we had to get our movies another way. His disease grew progressively worse, and he moved into the hospital. This scared my brother and me. We would be crying to mommy asking her why daddy is not

home. When we visited him, he was just lying there in his bed watching TV in despair, but so happy to see his two boys. His disease ate 50 pounds of muscle by the time he entered the hospital.

On new years of 2001, my mother took my brother and I to her sisters for the Christmas holidays. We went to the Sydenham ski hills for a personal new years party because my aunt was good friends with the owner. The next mourning on New Year’s Day my mom woke me up and asked me if I wanted to go back with her to the ski hill.  I said, “No I am too tired mommy”.   She said “okay” and would be back in one hour.

It was not until about 9:00 o’clock at night when my grandparents walked through the door with my aunt and uncle, and without my mom. They brought us down stairs and told us your mother has died.  I can remember the screaming still to this day, my brother and I falling into our grandparent’s arms weeping inconsolably.  She died from a freak accident, while going down the ski hill on a tube; she hit a parked snowmobile at the bottom of the hill and died on impact.

I used to blame myself for her death telling myself that if I had just gotten up and went with her she might still be alive.  However, I still thank God for taking her without pain.  I wept for months; the re-occurring image of my mother in that coffin drove me out of my mind.  I can still remember kissing my mother on her cold lips as I said my goodbyes.

 My dad ended up moving out of the Hospital and back into our home. He hired three caregivers from the Philippines to work around the clock. We communicate with him by going through the alphabet as he raises his eyebrow to a certain letter. When I was sixteen years old, he was fully immobilized and placed on life support. He lost all the muscles in his jaw and had no way of eating, so now a feeding machine does the work, as he sits there in starvation looking at all the tasty food on the commercials.

He has more medication than anyone I have ever seen. His lungs will fill up with phlegm so bad that he can drown if it is not suctioned out in time. He needs a machine to go down into his lungs from his trachea to suction it out. Watching his eyes bulge red as it went down his throat made me quiver. I became very depressed from these calamities and withdrew into depression. He is on a breathing machine and who knows how much longer he may have left to live.  Every Christmas my brother and I ask ourselves will he get to see another. 

My dad is my hero because he has battled for survival 17 years to this day without cutting his plug or going insane mentally. I am now 22 years of age and my brother 20. My dad is 54, and is going on 18 years of triumph over this agonizing disease.

To learn more about how you can help families living with Lou Gehrig’s Disease visit ALS Ontario.

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