Author: Christopher K Wallace

To read The Gift of Ishag Ahmed (Part one) click here

  

“Can I tell you something?” he asked her. “Of course,” she says.

“When I dream, I dream all kinds of things in full colour. It’s very real to me and I like it. It’s just that when I wake up, the dream ends and there are no more colours. When I open my eyes, everything is black. It kind of scares me.”

Michelle’s cool reserve crumples. She’s been the problem-solving nurturer thus far but this has left her speechless. “Oh, Ishaq,” she says, remaining stoic for his sake. But perhaps she thinks: dammit, he’s going to wake up every day comfortable if I can help it.

 

It is late 2015. I’ve kept in touch with Ishaq through the odd phone call and Facebook (where for a while his handle was Dark Kingdom. What a card).

Mel and I had a Christmas party to attend in Toronto one night recently and we would be staying over at her sister’s place near the airport, since it would have been too far from our place in Cobourg to drive home. With our kids in tow, and before driving back, we went to visit Ishaq on a Sunday afternoon.

 

When we first got to his apartment, there was a pair of Jehovah’s Witness visiting. I teased them about getting extra points for converting a Muslim. I knew Ishaq wasn’t particularly devout. They took my ribbing good-naturedly; indeed, decent guys with seemingly the best of intentions.

They soon excused themselves so we could visit.

It turns out in the intervening years Ishaq had lived in Vancouver for a year while studying as an audio engineer. He continued his interest in percussion and had become good at making his own music electronically.

Then, there was three-month trip to Africa to meet the rest of his family.  His mother and father were long divorced, not on good terms. All by himself, he traveled there and back. After some initial reluctance, his maternal grandmother intervened for her grandson to arrange a visit with his father. He showed up one day at her place in Khartoum with several of Ishaq’s half-siblings. They all knew about their blind brother in Canada; he knew nothing of them.

You can imagine living a life of darkness, knowing these visitors are actual blood relatives would be comforting. They represent a connection between the fading memories of his former life and his present existence. His father and siblings are a kind of mental salve for the yearning to recapture stray hints of his sighted life, glimpses he carries with him every day, precariously fading with time.

It’s just that losing his sight at nine years old means that he has scant few years of sight upon which to base mental reconstructions. If our first recall appears at age three or four, he had five or so years to frame everything that followed. His is a life permanently seen through the eyes of a child.

He remembers his father fondly. Once, dad brought his young son a bike that was much too big for him to ride. It was placed in the back shed behind the house until such time as he might grow big enough. He never did get to do that. Mom sold it after the breakup. The thought, the very impossible possibility of riding that bike someday remains with him still.

He misses his father. Though he loves his mother, he yearns for the company and approval of the man who is half his ancestral link. Together, we blamed his father for his absence; and then, for the memory of how he brought him that bike.

We held him responsible for the kindness and love Ishaq felt during some of his fondest years. Smiling, we put the onus squarely on his father for some of Ishaq’s physical characteristics: his long slender fingers and large hands that are seemingly made for drums and keyboard. We chuckled as we faulted him for the long spindly legs that are a constant reminder to his mother that he is his father’s son. Especially, we blamed his father and the serendipitous universe that gave Ishaq life.

 

Since November, Ishaq is holed up in a little one bedroom at Jane and Sheppard, in a tidy but older building where he lives in the basement. It’s not an ideal place, and it’s not the greatest part of town. When he got here, he moved in temporarily with friends, enrolling in school, taking out loans to attend another radio course at Ryerson College. Eventually, couch surfing wouldn’t do.

 

He had found living at his mother’s in Calgary constricting. To her, he’d always be her tiny boy, helpless and confined. He needed to stand on his own, as a man, independent and willing to take risks. He decided on the challenge pursuing an education in another city might bring. He had put it all on the line moving here.

Though, at times, I’m sure he’s felt as if he may have bitten off more than he can chew in the pursuit of his freedom. He’s not the kind to dwell on his plight anyway.  My friend Ishaq is no victim.

Besides Witness Victor’s gifted table and four folding chairs, Ishaq’s apartment was devoid of furniture. My kids ran around the empty rooms. It was perfect for them– nothing to break.

A former neighbour had foisted an old TV on him as he was moving out, too lazy to dispose of it himself.  It sat decrepit, covered with decades of filth and useless in the living room. Ishaq thought visitors might watch it when he good naturedly accepted his neighbour’s benevolence. It wouldn’t even turn on.

There were no curtains on the windows and Ishaq expressed concern that people could see in at night when he was alone. I resisted mentioning that no one would be able to see in if the lights weren’t on. The timing wasn’t right; it was his security he was worried about.

He has a tiny kitchen, which I thought was perfect for him, but not much food. You could tell he wasn’t eating much of anything. He could reach from the sink to the fridge and stove and each of his five cupboards, all at arm’s length away. He lacked the variety of the kinds of easily prepared foodstuffs he needed to eat consistently and stay healthy. I tossed a head of rotting romaine lettuce into the garbage.

He couldn’t be more than 120 pounds (later I found out he was 109). Though taller than he was when he first worked for me, he was essentially the same Ishaq, but a cooler kid now. No. A young man, and with an extra sophistication that warmed me. It’s always nice to see how one of my charges has grown many years later.

Eventually, we got him to show us his bedroom. “I was so glad to finally get this mattress, oh boy,” he said. You could tell he had slept on the floor at first. Even blind, the relief on his face was easy to see as he mentioned his bed. It was an air mattress, fully inflated, hard, as they get when fully filled. It was Victor who had brought it recently. However, it had no bedding, blankets, or pillows. Again, the window had no curtains, though there was a curtain rod on the sill awaiting installation.

 

In the corner was a set of drums. These were a far cry from the bongo drums I promised to buy him back in the door to door days. He had to write 30 orders in a week to earn them at the time. The last day he was on track and started to fool around, finishing with just 29. I struggled whether to make an exception and get them for him anyway. In the end, I knew that wasn’t the right thing to do. No drums for you little buddy. Here he was now, with real drums. A man’s drums.

He’d graduated to full-fledged stand up congas, the kind you see professional musicians play all over Latin America and beyond. I asked him to demonstrate what he’d learned. Still standing wobbly on the air mattress, and not even in front of the unit, he immediately launched into a solo session that had both my kids dancing and wiggling their butts.

Rhythm hasn’t left him a bit. Only, he’s much better. It almost seems to be as if his fingers have gotten longer, the digits like little hammers on bass drum sticks attached to his hands. He can tap out with one hand what I can’t even manage with two, never mind the speed or timing of his beat. He said he hasn’t practiced much lately, with a resigned sound to his words that I noted.

 

I remember he used to be able to read the Braille writing on our Canadian paper money. I motioned to the missus, the keeper of the purse, to hand me some. Mel hands me a ten. I ask for more. She gives me a twenty. Again, I motion to her. Out comes a hundred. This is uncharacteristic for my gal Mel, though I wasn’t surprised knowing how she felt about Ishaq.

Could he read the Braille on the bill? He’s reluctant so I throw in incentive, so he’ll feel he’s earned it. I tell Ishaq to read that one and I’ll let him keep it. He says it’s a ten. Uh-oh. So I showed him the difference. I pointed out with the benefit of eyesight guiding my expertise, on the hundred the space between the sets of six dots is a couple of inches, on the ten, maybe half an inch.

I stuff it in his pocket anyway, thereby relieving myself of years of guilt over his bongo bonus. I looked at Mel: she didn’t flinch.

 

To change the subject, I announce that we’re going out to eat. I have forty Big Mac coupons and there’s a restaurant down the street. I get them as part of buying gift cards for my newspaper customers to use as inducements. Off we go to McDonalds to feed our friend. I was thinking if he could get to McDonalds, I could leave him the free coupons and at least he wouldn’t starve for a month or so.

Before we go out, I show him how to turn down the heat on his radiator in the living room by closing the valve: must have been a hundred in there. I take his hand and run it along the rad to the tap handle down by the floor on the left so he’ll know where to find it later. The place had been recently painted and the lingering smell was suffocating in the heat. He kept the windows open, shutting them only when going out for security.  He needs an ozone machine in there to kill the overpowering smell molecules, I think.

At McDonalds, they accepted my coupons but told us they’d only do it this one time. Apparently, I had to use them at a specific location or something. He’d be fed for the day at least. Truth is that the McDonalds is a couple of blocks away on the other side of the highway underpass and on the other side of busy Jane Street to boot. Traveling by cane there every day might have been asking too much.

 

Next stop: the grocery store. I decided to get him some essentials he can easily fix for himself. Mel and the kids wait in the car while Ishaq and I hunt for stuff in the store. All the sight gag lines return. “You check your side of the aisle for mayonnaise and I’ll check mine,” he says.  At the till, I get the cashier to break Ishaq’s hundred dollar bill into twenties, just in case.

Here’s a kid who doesn’t know anyone in Toronto, all alone and blind in Canada’s largest metropolis. He can’t just walk anywhere; he has to first spend time memorizing any route. Even so, he takes the bus and trains to school every day. There, he’s an exemplary student and passes everything.

The cataract that was just beginning to appear in his left eye back when he first worked for me has expanded to several. I once asked him about wearing sunglasses, Stevie Wonder style, and he refused. I notice that he wears them now, if only so he doesn’t freak people out. He’ll lose that left eye at some point. He talked about putting in a half glass eye as if we were discussing buying a watch.

 

He needs people. He needs to connect with those in the community who can lend a hand to this proud young man. They say a community is only as good as it takes care of its vulnerable. He’s a sweet and tender soul with the heart of a lion. It was hard to leave him. I could tell he was lonely. I think to myself: no one has Jehovah’s Witnesses into their apartment that easily.

On that Sunday afternoon, I was desperately trying to think of how I could plug him into others, though I live 150 kilometers away. He likely wouldn’t go through all the song and dance of filling out forms, determining eligibility and being put on a waiting list, all to satisfy some helping bureaucracy he’s never relied on before. No. Ishaq would suffer on, rather than go through all that.

Unless he could somehow be discovered by good people who wouldn’t mind visiting, I thought to myself. He needs eyes, the eyes of friendship. Only by creating some kind of network of support would he stand a chance of being able to chase his dreams of living a great adventure in Canada’s largest city.

I wondered if I could find one person to get the ball rolling. I needed someone fast and capable, someone I could trust completely to do right by my friend. I needed someone with empathy, with a heart as big as his. I needed a wonderful giver who has a talent for problem solving.

I called Mel’s sister Michelle on the way home, crossing my fingers.

 

She lives near the airport and is ten minutes away from Ishaq’s if there’s no traffic. Michelle is the gal I keep advertising on my Facebook wall to eligible bachelors, drawing the ire of feminists in the process. I do it to signal how much she’s appreciated, and she gets a real chuckle out of it.  She can cook a meal just as well as she can swing a hammer. Without hesitation, Michelle agreed to visit Ishaq.

I sent her pictures of his empty place. She arrived the next day much to my relief. She brought friends. Michelle is like that, a natural networker. She can nurture people like they were her own. My kids love her. We all love Michelle.

He now has a big comfy chair with attached ottoman, suitable for taking naps, thanks to Michelle and her co-worker. It was the first soft thing he’d sat on in months. She brought him bedding–he’d been sleeping under his amassed clothing.  They’ve become good friends. He confides to her his challenges. She listens and helps.

She suggested brown as a colour for drapes. He told her he’s trying to remember what brown looks like again. She’s taken him to Value Village to get new used clothes. He’s got a coffee maker now. Michelle loves to shop, especially for a deal. They’re perfectly matched. She visits often, texts even more. He’s her little brother now, and under her protection.

 

Michelle took Ishaq to Dundas Square for New Year’s Eve music and celebrations. Instead of her hanging on to the arm of a date, Ishaq held her elbow as she guided him through the crowds. They watched and listened to fireworks explode between the twin buildings of our city hall. They took pictures, and selfies.

At the subway returning home, security held everyone back and ensured they embarked first. The white cane has power.

Michelle has introduced her new friend to others. They’re curious about this blind kid with the great attitude. One evening she and a friend sat in Ishaq’s apartment talking together into the night. They kept the lights off, immersing themselves in his experience.

This same person mentioned his visit to his friends, one of whom suddenly mentioned he had some “extra money,” insisting it go to Ishaq. That paid off Ishaq’s credit card.

Dumbfounded, Ishaq is a bit embarrassed when Michelle’s friends pick him up. He does his best to flirt with the store staff and make everyone laugh. As he accepts his conditions, being relaxed about being blind, those around him accept their own limitations, not as limitations, but as qualities worth sharing. By simply being Ishaq, he teaches self-acceptance.

I remember hearing Candy Palmater on CBC radio one evening. Candy is a famous Canadian Mi’kMaq native and comedian. She was talking about her nervousness at doing stand-up in front of her peers at the Assembly of First Nations. She told of how native elders had told her that if something is your gift, it’s what you owe.

Not yours to exploit, but what you owe. To me, this meant that our lives exist for others even more than they do for ourselves, and that we are obligated to bring our strengths and talents to our community. Call it a pact with the universe.

Though he may feel a bit awkward about how others are so curious about his blindness, something he’s made normal after more than a decade and a half, he’s there to share his life. For absent this purpose is aimlessness, confusion, existential uncertainty and intolerable loneliness.

Every time someone meets this self-effacing blind man, they are struck by his courage and perseverance. He serves as inspiration. Of course, I don’t tell him that quite in those words. Instead, I suggest he’s performing a public service by being an ambassador for the blind.

He admits it feels good to be useful. Instead of being cooped up in his tiny apartment, he’s sharing, and allowing others to share with him. This opens the door to more sharing.  In my heart I hope he’s ricocheting through an ever expanding network of people in one of the greatest cities on earth. Toronto the good, it’s sometimes called.

Ishaq’s special talent is that he gives permission to those who encounter him to share their gifts. You are compelled to feel an overwhelming gratitude once the magnitude of his challenges is understood. He reminds us of how much we need each other, and how easy it can be to give a helping hand to another.

One single person can make all the difference. One act of kindness by someone like Michelle can reveal a whole new world to a blind kid living alone on the edge of Toronto’s ghetto. Like a web of goodness, that influence has spread beyond and continues to expand, tying its members together in mutual empowerment.

Most of all, Ishaq’s hopefulness has given way to possibility. Without hope, life stops in place. Without hope the idea of confidence becomes an insurmountable obstacle to living a life of possibility. Thoughts remain thoughts, never approaching execution. Hope is contagious. That’s the gift of Ishaq Ahmed.

“Perfumes are my thing,” he says. “I can take a smell and make dreams with it.”

Forever hopeful.

 

 

 

© C K Wallace 2016

@ckwallace.com

 

 

 

 

 

If you work with people, especially those striving to become something better, whether purposefully or by default, you can’t help but witness some of the magic of what it is to be human. I’ve been lucky this way. I’m one of the “by default” types, committed to growth for self-preservation reasons, and having come from such faulted beginnings that I marvel at myself and my fellow travelers. I’ve also been around long enough to know that there are some things for which words alone won’t do justice. There are miracles, and there miraculous people.

From 2004 to 2009, I ran a door-to-door sales crew in Calgary Alberta. I’d hire and train an almost continuous number of young reps, usually teens and young adults. Over the years, I went through hundreds of people, never knowing who would work out and who wouldn’t, but willing to give anyone a shot at better than average money, and in some cases, exceptional money.

With every prospect, I went through my usual pitch: the job was getting new subscribers for the Calgary Herald; we pick you up at home and drop you off; it pays decent commission every Saturday and we train you to do door to door on a team of like-minded reps. “You can do that right?” “Yes,” this particular prospect replied compliantly.

So I made arrangements to pick him up, taking his name and address, discussing our shift expectations, dress code, preparation, etc. At the very end, just as we were about to hang up, he says there is “just one thing.”

“I’m blind,” he mentions.

“You’re blind?”

“Yeah. I’m blind.”

“So how do you think you can go door to door in neighbourhoods you’re not familiar with and write orders?”

“I can do it,” he says. “It’s no problem.”

“What? Do you have a cane?” I ask.

“Yup, I’m really good with it. I need a job and I can do this.”

Boom. So… how do I say no to that?  He fits the criteria for my typical rep in every way: lot’s of free time, no extra-curricular activities that will interfere with the job, mom’s OK with him working. Kid needed money: he lived in one of the few low-rent buildings around–subsidized housing they call it–and right along my route.

In fact, I’d hired a young gal out of that same building a year or two before. I ended up giving her a place to stay when her mother couldn’t pay her hydro bill and she complained about having to come home to a pitch-dark apartment every night. Later, I trained her as my office manager, a job she did really well for a number of years.  I couldn’t help thinking: at least with this kid darkness wouldn’t matter. And you can’t put the want in someone’s belly. If it’s there, go with it.

I also realized on the spot that what he wants to hear is that he’s accepted. It’s a bluff, I tell myself:  likely some way for him to gain leverage with his mother. He’ll probably never show up. Or if he does, it’s going to be a novelty effort at best.

After all, I once had a deaf girl work for us. She didn’t work out because her lip reading sucked. She kept thinking others were saying stuff about her and ended up getting physical with other reps. Big girl from the Forest Lawn area, tough as nails.

But a blind kid? How’s he going to smack anyone? The cane maybe?

Anyway, it’s my inclination to call bullshit as I see it. So I act as if it’s no big deal. “I could care less if you’re blind, deaf and dumb as dumb,” I tell him, “as long as you can walk, talk and carry a binder, you’re hired.”  Now I’m curious; I want him to come in.

Next day, we’re outside his building waiting. It takes fifteen minutes for him to get downstairs.  It’s a bit of an ordeal. I’ll get better at it, he says. There are some challenges, namely, he’s got to learn the pitch.  It’s ten-fifteen lines by memory. We rehearse like heck in the van, and finally decide to just get him to invite the customers to read his pitch off his binder.

One of our best ambassadors for the job took him out first night. After a year or two working with me, Matt House doesn’t see difficulty, just solutions. Ishaq couldn’t have had a better guy to show him around. Matt nicknames him Ishdog.

He’s got the pitch printed out in Braille on the second day and he’s memorizing it all the way out to work. I send him out with our best female trainer, Melisa Davey, who trains him and watches a customer fall in love with this blind kid and sign up. He gets her approval. We knew he’d be fine working with someone but how about by himself?

Now it’s time to go out on his own so I explain what his block looks like. I find him one with a sidewalk that has cement walkways that bisect the lawns going up to each house’s entrance. I describe it for him, like a coach giving out a new pattern to his players on the field.

Off he goes, no questions, tapping his cane along the sidewalk and then the lawn and back again. When he double taps cement he knows it’s a walkway. He veers right and taps up the walkway, once on the cement, once on the lawn, moving quickly, doggedly, like any impatient teenager. When he gets to the stairs, he slows, feeling with his cane, and then steps up without hesitation. On the stoop, he moves forward using the cane to sweep the porch widely and find the door. Feeling the doorway, he looks, but with long slender fingers, searching the frame on each side for a doorbell.

I’m parked up the street, watching in amazement at his progress. I want to go door to door myself and say, “Did you see that? There’s a blind kid working your block! Pay attention!”  But, instead, I sit there watching in disbelief.

He went through ten or fifteen houses and suddenly stopped. Turning away from the houses, this time he approached the street and waited there, motionless, his head cocked a bit. Wondering what’s up, I pull up along side him.

He says,”Do you think I don’t know you’re there watching me? I heard you stop and shut off your engine. I know you’re there. It’s making me nervous. I’m not a little kid, and I’ve been blind for a while. I don’t need you to baby me.”

What the…? “Oh really? Ok bud. You’re on your own. Have a customer call me if you need me for anything.” I drove away, with nothing but admiration for his guts.

And that was it. Little guy, just fourteen-fifteen at the time, skinny as a rake, not even a hundred pounds, went about his business learning the new job in a way that was really not much different from any other kid. It took time before he got better; he made the same mistakes as anyone else. He never became my best seller, but he competed against himself everyday.

He also had a sense of humour. When you got in the van, he’d tell you how good you looked. He’d remark on the scenery, picking up the tiniest clue from the conversations around him and joining in by making something up. There were no off-limit jokes, and he answered each new rep’s questions about his blindness matter-of-factly and without self-pity. It was just his life.

With all the good-natured ball busting that goes on in a close-quartered sales team, Ishaq held his own. If he got too mouthy, I’d threaten to put him on blocks with construction sites on them. Those big mounds of excavated dirt were really confusing to tap with a cane. Another time, when he wanted a new cane, he stuck his out as I pulled up to get him on the last drop. The next day, we picked him up from the CNIB (Canadian National Institute for the Blind) building near his home. He had a brand new model. He gave me the old one, and still bugs me about running over a blind man’s cane.

Or, I’d drop him at the top of a street and drive to the end of the block on the way to drop someone else. I might notice that there was a park on the last two lots, with an asphalt walkway veering off from the sidewalk into the playground. If I didn’t hustle back in time, I’d find Ishaq there in the middle of the park, head cocked, cane swinging to and fro trying to figure out where the darned houses went.

Another time, I circled his block over and over looking for him to no avail. Finally, I realized he might have tapped his way up the back lane where all the garages were. Sure enough, just as I pulled up to the lane to go look for him, out he comes from someone’s backyard from halfway down the block, tapping away furiously towards me to get back to the sidewalk and the other half of the block. Turns out, he tapped up the lane a little confused and heard voices. He ended up pitching a couple of men barbecuing in a backyard and wrote two orders

He had blind-sense too. Remnant cells in his eyes wired to a different, more primitive part of his brain that was left undamaged by his accident. It meant he could sense when there was something in his way. All the kids marveled at how he’d suddenly stop in front of a parked car, and tap around it. Reps who worked with him on occasion would test him, walking down the road or sidewalk beside him and purposefully not telling him of an obstacle approaching. Ishaq would stop and say, “there’s something there, isn’t there?” He became a bit of a legend; mysterious magus who could somehow see in another dimension, though his eyes could not.

We asked him about the stereotype of other senses becoming more enhanced. And they were. He sees with his hands, the subject of many flirtatious comments from the gals in the van. He was also a percussionist in his high school band. Boy, could he hit the drums. He’d tap out a rhythm on anything you put near him. Gifted and getting better, he was devoted to sound. He was also lucky that the digital age was upon us and could more easily pursue music as an important part of his life.

I remember picking up the last few reps on a darkened street corner one evening when suddenly a red mustang convertible swerved in front of my fifteen passenger van, cutting us off and preventing me from driving off. The odd time a rep crossed the line with a customer I’d have to intervene and smooth things over. I prepared for the worst as I got out to meet the person and deal with the situation.

Turns out the guy had been looking for us for 20 minutes. His upset wasn’t from anything we did, but something else entirely. Ishaq had been at his door that evening at a time in his life when the client was facing some big challenges, unsure if he could meet them.

Seeing this young blind kid pitch on a cool night, after dark, and go about gratefully doing his job with earnest enthusiasm, made him stop and think. He was overcome with how ridiculous his problems were when compared to not being able to see. The way Ishaq persevered without any hint of feeling sorry for himself inspired in this customer a deep sense of respect and gratitude. If a young blind kid could go sell newspaper trials door to door, he could do anything. The customers was teary-eyed as he recounted how affected he was, asking if there was something more he could do. “Can I give him money, or contribute to his education?”

One thing about Ishaq is that he’s not inclined to use his blindness to advantage; refusing pity like it’s bad karma. It’s just not in his nature and he won’t ask for help if it can at all be avoided. I finally had to agree to let the customer call the newspaper the next day and tell them how he felt about Ishaq. This kind of thing occurred often once Ishaq became more comfortable at doors, though I’d rarely make a big deal of it.  He was truly amazing (but don’t tell him I said that).

You’d think he’d sell more orders than anyone too, but the truth was many customers didn’t fully realize he was blind. His eyes were still pretty good looking back then–the cataracts were just starting–and he acted deceptively normal once trained. He’d rarely look you in the eye if that’s what you expected. If they spotted the white cane they might think they were being scammed, unless they took the time to talk with him. You know how people are. In a sense, he had to overcome that detriment to his sales.

However, it was the lessons he taught all of us that mattered most. His life was one big display of courage, of determination, of confronting fear, of telling himself he could do anything anyone else could do.  He just never said no to anything. He agreed to do his best and figured out how to make it work later. Also, if outsold by the blind man, you could expect to feel embarrassed on the ride home. It would be Ishaq who did the ribbing.

For a full season, from spring to late fall, until the cold and icy streets forced him indoors, we were inspired by this skinny kid with the big smile who laughed so easily.  He affected all those who came into contact with him, each feeling privileged to be around his indomitable spirit. He was a sweet guy, tender even, and he cared about the people around him. He sees the world through his heart, something more of us wish we could do better.

Born in Libya during the Gaddafi years, he was raised partly in Egypt and partly in Sudan. His father was an Egyptian farmer contracted to open up lands along the Nile River for agriculture near Dongola, Sudan. His family followed. Mom’s Sudanese.

At nine years old, Ishaq had fallen backwards off a simple plastic chair, the flimsy mass-produced kind you might find lying around your own backyard. Hitting the back of his head on a rock, he was hurt. Then, the whites of his eyes turned blood-red within a few days after the fall. Doctors told his mother that he had perhaps a two-week window to get the kind of medical attention he needed.

By the time his family could both afford it and manage the distance to care, it was too late. The swelling damaged his visual cortex. Over the course of the following year, his vision slowly shrank from the periphery in, until the tunnel through which he desperately tried to remember his life with sight, finally went completely dark.

***

For the Gift of Ishaq Ahmed part two click here

to contact me so I can work with you click here

C K Wallace © 2016

@ckwallace.com

 

 

More than once over the years, I’ve read that about half of people are hard-wired to believe in a power greater than them. It’s less to do with ignorance or enlightenment; it’s just how some of us are made. Likely, another quarter in number believe out of cultural or familial loyalty. Most people believe in something, for even non-belief is a belief. 

Confronting lifespan is a task for humans. Facing our own end of life while still living is our existential dilemma. Having a faith brings comfort to people all around the world. Religion is another story. The two are often mixed up as one and the same. They’re not at all. The Bible is widely understood to be a metaphor. We like stories; it’s how we understand things.

I suppose I am what Huxley called an agnostic, preferring to leave things unknown absent knowing for sure. However, I occasionally attend services. I go because ritual is generally good for us. I also like the beautiful architecture of my Catholic church. The priest there, an Argentinian with a heavy accent, is funny as hell to listen to as he promulgates church doctrine to the faithful… and to others like me. Forgive the reference to hell. 

Contemplating the history of my clan and its long allegiance to Rome is something I do often while going through the ancient rites of mass. The people there are like any other, well-intentioned and faulted, and usually dressed decently on Sunday and behaving well. So I like the community. It’s a chance to meet folks I don’t know very well, or sometimes see a familiar face..

And it’s a good place to practice singing if you’re not a very good singer. You can just sort of blend in.

All of us can use some awe in our lives. A sense of wonder is known to alleviate stress and gives an appreciation for life in general. Think of the stars at night, great oceans, and mountains, or your local cathedral.

It’s easy to straddle the psychological divide between belief and non-belief if we let go of the need for a definitive answer. I’m fine with not knowing everything. I also reserve the right to begin believing if I feel up to it, and to discard that belief later if I find it burdensome. Isn’t it great to be out of the Middle Ages?

A good way to get past the God thing is to see the word as an acronym for Good Orderly Direction. It seems a fair compromise to me. It was something my father suggested when my son would not take the oath at cub scouts, on the grounds he was being unfairly indoctrinated at nine years old.  Try as we might to re-frame things for him, he wasn’t having it. He never attended again. I often replace the word God with the word Universe. Semantics. 

I remember asking my father long ago about his church attendance. He told me he simply couldn’t go, but that he thought the practice was good. He also allowed that he may have missed out on a beneficial part of his life by not being a member of a congregation.  Friendships. He saw the value in community, and perhaps longed for it.

My father is 86 years old now. Beyond my memories of singing Latin mass with him when I was very young, he was a non-practicing Catholic during my lifetime. I suspect he is fully a non-believer, but don’t have the heart to pry further. I was an altar boy as a child, christened and baptized like my siblings. On the other hand, my mother attended church faithfully her whole life until she died last year. 

As we kept vigil for her on her final days–her nine adult children and clan members gathered around the hospital bed that had been arranged in her living room–we sang hymns and read from a prayer book we found at the head of her bed in her room. The prayer book contained an entry called Christopher’s Prayer. Its personal suitability is uncanny. The prayer called Mary Stuart could have been written for ma. Coincidentally, her middle name is Mary.

We discovered in her prayer book a powerful St Francis Assisi piece that, when recited, brought solace to the members of my family. Its last few lines include the following:
Make me an instrument of your peace, Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is discord, union; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is sadness, joy. For your mercy and your truth’s sake, Divine Master, grant that I may not seek so much to be consoled, as to console; to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, in pardoning that we are pardoned, and in dying that we are born into eternal life 

The Saint Francis Assisi prayer perfectly summed up ma’s life as a person who daily exuded love and acceptance. It’s a pep-talk for good, for an unselfish approach to life and service. It was easy to receive as a final missive from our matriarch. Regardless of a person’s beliefs, replacing the words divine master with the word universe, or editing the text to taste, and it becomes a profound incantation for good. Whatever it takes. It’s the message that counts.

This 12th century prayer also contain more than hints at everlasting life. It’s a moral recipe that transcends time. By living a life of giving we live on in others, for some of us exists in others just as those we hold dear exist in us. Our presence here and now leaves its mark that continues on as an echo in time, reverberating endlessly down through the ages in the people around us, and through them, to those that follow. Is this what eternal life is? I leave ample room for mystery in my life, for the possible.

Our final hymn was Sweet Low, Sweet Chariot, ma’s favourite and coincidentally written by a Choctaw Freedman from the Oklahoma area, first name Wallis. With her husband of 62 years holding her hand, thanking his courageous wife for a lifetime of memories, she passed on a Friday afternoon. The family’s pet dog keened at the very moment of her change. 

Before we condemn those who believe, or faith in general, we might consider my mother. Perhaps emboldened by a lifetime of devotion to her church, it was plain to see that in her final hours she was not afraid.

 

© CKWallace, Nov, 2015 all rights reserved

P.S. need help understanding your beliefs? Contact me here.

Ma died last year. I stood vigil for our clan matriarch at her home, singing hymns alongside my eight brothers and sisters, with my father–her husband of sixty-two years–at her side whispering sweet reassurances to her as she left on a Friday afternoon.

 

When we’d visit my parent’s home three hours from here, four year old Charlotte knew since she could walk where ma kept the dried raisins in the kitchen. Grandma was someone she trusted and loved. 

When I returned home from the vigil, my little one was deeply affected upon hearing the news. She protested, earnestly crying out, “Oh no, but I won’t see her again.”

 

In late winter, the first time back to my father’s home she asked where her grandmother was as she entered the living room. The living room was where ma would sit with dad all those years. Charlotte asked for her grandmother only once, as if calling a bluff, her blue eyes locking on mine as she waited for an answer. It was as if she was seeking proof that grandma was no longer with us, in her way holding out hope while testing the permanence of this idea called death. 

 

 

Since then, we’ve had occasion to find the odd dead bird on our property. It’s across the street from one of the great lakes, Lake Ontario, along a migratory flyway. I buried the first one we found this spring in our garden while Charlotte watched. Wounded, she complained, “I’m never going to see it again, daddy.” 

Once the earth was patted down over the avian grave, I asked her, “Do you remember what it looked like?” She said, “Yes, it had black and yellow feathers and it was small.” I told her that the bird was inside her now, in her memory, and that it would always be there. That once something dies it still stays with us, because we remember it. The more we love something, the more it stays with us.

And that she will always be inside me and I will always be inside her, in our hearts, because we love each other. We live a little bit inside each other, I told her. Just like grandma is inside her too, with her always and with me always. The most important thing is that all of us will be together forever, no matter what.

She seemed reassured.

Though, later she complained to her mother that daddy had put grandma and a bird inside of her body and she wasn’t very happy about it.

P.S. need help with saying goodbye to a loved one? Contact me here.

 

Honoured guests, members of the charity, ladies and gentleman: My name is Christopher Wallace and I speak on behalf of my gal Melissa and our two children, Charlotte and Howard. It’s a privilege to be here this evening in front of you.

I want to begin by saying what an adventure life is. One minute we are sailing along, wind at our back, and in another moment, a storm rises, testing our limits. Although, I’d helped many others during my lifetime; until the Jennifer Ashleigh folks helped my family, I’d never given it much thought.

But I’ve been around long enough to realize that you just never know what kind of impact you might have on others. It could be a grand gesture or a small act of generosity, or just a heartfelt conversation, any of these can serve as nourishment for someone’s soul in a time of need.

These factors had a big impact on the way I now see the world.

Just after I turned fifty, my missus started to think about us having kids. So I did what any reasonable guy in love would do: I got her a dog. Looking at her reaction at the time, I felt I needed to add that if she did well with the dog, we’d have a child together.

Soon the dog could roll over. Then you could pretend to shoot it and it would play dead. It fetched a toy for me the first time I threw one across the room. In the coolest way, I was being set up. And I loved it.

My father once told me that babies are like little miracles—they’re small so don’t take up much room; somehow, we always find a way to accommodate them into our lives. Mel and I had our first child, Charlotte, and she was as robust as baby’s come. Though we hadn’t planned on having another, when Charlotte was two, along came her little brother.

Mom and dad had five sons and four daughters–plenty of little miracles. However, no grandchildren were named after dad, an honour that then fell to me. (He was a drinker in his early years, so it may just be it took that long for one of his kids to forgive him enough to provide him with a namesake.)

After my dad, our new our baby was called Howard Thomas William Wallace. His second name came from my first Canadian ancestor, Thomas Wallace, who came over to fight for the British Crown in the War of 1812 and later settled in a little place called Oshawa Village.

Baby Howie was born in September of 2013. He was in difficulty from the start, our joy turning to grave concern when he was whisked away from us moments after birth. He had but one kidney, his lungs compressed completely as he fought to suck in air, and his heartbeat was erratic. He couldn’t feed well on his own. What normally would be a few days to make sure mother and child were ready to go home, turned into an indefinite stay. No one prepares for this.

At the time, I worked on commission selling newspaper trials. Although I had accounts all over Canada, income was shrinking fast as readers migrated online. The creative destruction in the print sector caused by the Internet hit hardest just as Howie was born. Immediate family needs meant I couldn’t look for other work.

Mel stayed at the hospital or at Ronald McDonald House, pumping breast milk every three hours around the clock for months. During the week, I’d take my two year old home to Cobourg and give her all my attention during the day, often taking her out on the sales crew in the evenings when I couldn’t find a sitter. Then we’d join Mel on Saturday evening or Sunday at the hospital. Melissa stayed at Howie’s side most hours of the day, lest she miss an opportunity to feed her boy and hold him near. Her only respite was Sunday when I was there, with her breastmilk in hand.

A month after his birth, we were still there. Howie’s trachea was too narrow to breathe or feed so surgery was done to widen his throat.

On occasion, Howie’s heart would go off and a code blue would sound. Mel would be pinned up against the wall of his room as up to twenty-five specialist would address the emergency. Life often hung in the balance as his heart went over 300 beats per minute for over an hour or much more.

On top of the rest of his issues, he was a hard poke—his circulatory system too underdeveloped to get an intravenous line into him to facilitate emergency meds. More than once, Mel watched horrified as they took a common household drill to her screaming baby’s legs to try and put a line into the marrow of his bones—a tactic later abandoned when it was found that the medications took too long to reach the heart that way. The kid was like a pin cushion. Mel was traumatized.

But he had nephrologists, urologists, geneticists, cardiologists, ophthalmologists and occupational therapists because of his feeding tube; plus physiotherapists, ear nose and throat, child development, plenty of nurses and a pediatrician. We were very grateful.

Into months two and three, we soldiered on, our energies taxed but spirits strong, all of our time devoted to assisting in the care of our baby. Our life was on hold and my finances suffered. I had more expenses but couldn’t devote the time I needed to ensure I had a business, especially in the critical fall period where I build my teams to get through winter.

Adding to that list of specialists, were social workers. Two stopped by to see the missus one day, offering to help carefully qualify our situation. It was they who applied to you on our behalf.

It was to be a lean Christmas for us, our priorities elsewhere. But one day in December a substantial cheque came in the mail from your fine charity. It wasn’t going to solve all of our problems, but boy did it help.

And it came at just the right emotional moment. We were trying to get Howie home for Christmas–but it never happened. When he did come home in the New Year, we had to return him a few days later by emergency ambulance. It wouldn’t be the last of our visits.

In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, Mel and Howie spent nine days at Sick Kids, but he’s been stable since. He doesn’t seem to be cognitively impaired and he’s tearing around our house like a normal boy.  In fact, Mother Nature has given him a sunny disposition, perhaps in compensation. It took until that first Christmas for Howie to smile, and he hasn’t stopped since. Of course, Mel is his greatest champion. It’s true what they say: there is no love like a Mother’s love.

But your gift of kindness also made me rethink my life. It’s why I’m here. The fact that perfect strangers reached out to people like us in our time of need with tangible support caught me unawares. The more I looked at it, the more I was influenced.

I’d been trained in the behavioural sciences and worked in the addictions and counselling field for a time back in the 1980’s, but drifted back into sales for the money. Now, with a new family to support and the second half of my life to consider, it came to me that I was not living my highest purpose. That despite looking like a guy who was defying the odds and living fully, my life lacked meaning.

I needed to figure out how to live in a way that serves other people. I still do newspapers, though I’m not sure for how much longer. Since that fall and your gift, I’ve been transitioning to a new role, one that answers in me a truer calling.

How we lose ourselves in service of the greater good is one of the best expressions of human spirit. People say we all have a story to tell, one that is unique and compelling. I recently wrote a book that solves the riddle of substance use. Often, I spend a couple of hours with someone and later find that they moderate or stop completely soon after.

It could be, as philosopher Douglas Hofstadter says, that we are all strange loops, reverberating endlessly back toward each other through time. The creative ways we find to celebrate what it is to be human is our connection to life. We live on in each other, in the legacy of spirit that we leave behind, and in the ways that we touch others emotionally while here.

So I want to thank you not just for the generosity you showed my family. I also want to thank you for something else: for showing me the way. For letting me know that the reward is all in the giving. All the rest is in the hands of the universe.

True and Free.

Bless all of you.

Is there shame in guilty pleasure?

What a great gift to human kind chocolate is. It’s not heroin, it’s not cocaine, it’s not rock climbing without a rope or driving recklessly at 150 miles per hour. It’s not facing the barrel of a gun.

No. Chocolate is the perfect refuge from the prison we erect around ourselves, trying to live up the expectations we believe others have for us. What a burden that is: Living life as if someone in your environment might hold a key to your worth as a human being.

Our self-concept comes from how we see  ourselves contrasted against how we believe others see us. Mother Nature made us this way to drive us together, to make us beholden to each other, so that survival is assured. At its roots then, she imbued us with a great “need to belong.” And it is this need that is both the very joy of life…but also the bane of our existence.

Let me ask you this: How would you know sweet victory if you did not also taste bitter defeat? It’s only by experiencing one that the other can be appreciated.

All of our expectations for ourselves and for others are rooted in an internal projection. That projection is founded in constructs that we have built since the time of our birth as we assigned meaning to our world through our experiences. These constructs have both biological and environmental beginnings. We inherit some of our traits, others we create from living. Combined, they become memories that form beliefs.

Some of them can be upgraded. We may think deeply and find a root memory at the crux of a belief. Other times we may stumble upon one because life demands we find another way forward. We can often find the “silver lining” in a memory, to enable a new and improved belief to form. In this way, we can be less tyrannized by our past.

But, in the end, if we just remember that all of our expectations are driven by projections that are internal, we may find that we can no longer be so quick to blame ourselves or others. We just accept as it is, working to adjust our beliefs as the situations arises.

Once this core concept is integrated more fully, chocolate becomes a perfect vehicle for change. At first we may reach for chocolate to escape our limitations, seeking a tiny bit of bliss in the maelstrom of our internal dialogue. But just as the sweet taste is revealed for its fat and bitter constituents as it slowly melts on your tongue, you may find the self-talk imprisoning you is also dismantled.

Perhaps not today, or even tomorrow, but soon…maybe the next time you think of a piece of chocolate you will know the thoughts that sustain your discomfort are laid bare, exposed for the simple ingredients they are: Memories, beliefs, constructs and projections that you believe threaten your need to belong.

And just as the chocolate disintegrates in your mouth, becoming not chocolate anymore but rather just sugar, fats, and bitter cocoa, so too will the parts of your projection disappear.

That’s when you will realize chocolate is just chocolate–its victory an illusion. And just as it requires others to put it together to make it what it is, so does your discomfort and self-doubt.

You may find neither holds any real power over you. Pass that dark piece, I just did a workout.

©2015 CKWallace, Author, Drinkers’ Riddle