I last saw Brandi when she was swimming with me in the VRRI pool. It was over the noon hour, January sixth, twenty eleven. She made the appointment for the swim at our last session just before Christmas twenty ten. Brandi was the Recreation Therapist assigned to me by the CAR program. I still remember…

I looked up into chocolate eyes. Like mine. But much darker. A face soft, smooth, rounded. Shortish hair curled in disarray. She spoke. “Hi. Are you Lyle?” “Yes.” She said, “My name is Monick. I am assigned as your Occupational Therapist. Do you know what Occupational Therapy entails?” “No.” “The official party line is that…

I pulled my Oldsmobile into the small dirt parking lot. I would come here often when I wanted to feel lighter, happier. The parking lot was reached by a very potholed dirt road running off of fourteenth street in Calgary’s northwest. The parking lot overlooked the district of Huntington Hills where I had lived aeons…

Here is what I wrote in my diary July 20, 2010. I have been in severe pain every day since i came back from the mountains 3 weeks ago. Basically the pain starts at 2 or 3 in the morning and goes for 12 to 14 hours. I’m not sure how long I can sit…

I was wandering around the Calgary Zoo. I hoped that the visit would cheer me. I started my zoo day, as I usually did, with a visit to the tigers. They weren’t out today. So I wandered down to see the elephants1. I got lucky. Their keepers were putting the elephants through their paces. Kamala…