Lessons from the Denali Center

Today, Starbuck-A-Roo and I visited her Friends at the Denali Center. Among them is a Friend who was hit by a drunk driver and is now a quadriplegic. Among our Friends there, she is one of the few who are fully possessed of all of their marbles. She is constantly looking up the latest research and advances that might possibly fix her condition, and in parallel is gradually, slowly recovering what muscle usage she can. For example, now she can use a stylus rubber banded to her hand to surf the internet on a touch pad. Today, she fed Roo three pieces of beef jerky! She was so proud she called a health aide in to come look. Roo, for her part, was happy to assist in her physical therapy.

Then she mentioned that if she could ever live independently, she might move to Wyoming. I told her I had driven through Wyoming and thought it was beautiful. I was on my way to and from Colorado, and I liked Wyoming better than Colorado, which was too crowded for me. She said she *hated* Denver. I recalled the crowds and traffic and urban lifestyle, and told her I had hated it, too. To which she replied, "Everyone in Denver speaks Mexican."

Record scratch.

"You know how you and I are speaking American since we are in America? Well, in Denver, they speak Mexican! I don't like it! I was so angry I had to walk right out of the restaurant."

"Well," I replied. "I'm originally from California, which used to be part of Mexico. So... errr... I'm sort of used to people speaking Spanish... er... Mexican?"

"But it's wrong!" she was getting angry at this point. "It's America, and we should all speak American!"

I could see there was no point in arguing, so I changed the topic. Roo of course does not love her any less. I see now that one of the lessons of being a therapy dog handler is that people can hold views that are morally abhorrent and/or ignorant and you can still share the love of a good dog. A dog's love is not something one earns; it is a grace that sometimes we are just lucky enough to get.



Another of our Friends is in stroke recovery and is cognizant of her incognizance. She constantly fumbles words and forgets things, then says, "I'm sorry, honey. It's my stroke that makes me this way." Today, she informed us "Well, I died a month ago. I was dead for about an hour, but then I came back. While I was dead, I saw a few old friends from church. I mentioned them to [the hospital chaplain] afterwards, and he remembered them too!" We have another Friend that never says he "dreamed about" his mom and dog. He says, "My mom and Schatze came to see me last night". It does make me wonder.

A third friend we bumped into at the front desk. He was with his little girl, and with one of our resident Friends, who was in a wheelchair, and he was trying to figure out how to do the paperwork to get her out for the evening. "Are you a blood relative?" "Well no, not exactly, but she's my aunty, sort of." This seems to be a cultural difference that white Americans don't quite grasp. To any Asian, Hawaiian, or Alaskan Native, no child refers to other adults by their first names alone, nor by "Mr." or "Mrs.". "Aunty" or "Uncle" is a term of both respect and endearment. Anyway, while he showed ID and tried to prove that he indeed intended to bring the elder lady back within a few hours, the little girl got on the floor next to Roo and squoze her like a teddy bear. Cutest. Thing. Ever.

Anyway, he turned to me and asked how I was doing. I told him, "Okay, of course I'm concerned about... things... but pretty good, I guess."

"What things?

"You know... the state of the State? Dunleavy things?"

"Ohhh... when you said that state of the State, I was thinking about the even scarier stuff. The salmon dying. The water warming. I saw salmon dead that were so sick the eagles wouldn't even eat them. I'm more worried about that than about Dunleavy."

I had to admit, that was good perspective.


Roo had fun.