Out of all my new friends I’d made since moving into Side by Side, Jeff topped the list. Jeff Harford was more than just friends with me, he was the man of my dreams. Jeff was the man I had met and secretly fallen in love with, when I moved into Side By Side Assisted Living from the nursing home my parents dumped me in right before my 24th birthday.
My parents basically did a dump and run, telling me I needed rehab and that I would go to the nursing home for a few weeks or months to get stronger before going home from the hospital I’d been trapped in for three months due to complications of my Small Fiber Autonomic Polyneuropathy. I agreed to go to Hillcrest Commons Nursing Home, and then a few weeks into my stay at the nursing home we had a family meeting where they dropped the bombshell on me that they were going to refuse to take me home unless I made a miraculous recovery from my life-threatening, life-limiting, degenerative chronic illness that I was already going into the later stages of. I almost had a nervous breakdown when this was sprung on me and actually did end up having the provider in charge of my care in the nursing home ship me out to the ER for a psych crisis evaluation when I couldn’t stop crying hysterically for hours, but this provider almost killed me in her attempts to heal me and sent me out with no oxygen, tube feeding, or IV fluids, and I ended up tanking my vitals while I was at the ER and they focused more on stabilizing me medically then treating any psych issues.
I was left feeling completely deserted, I didn’t even have any friends left from my old life that I could call on, to help bail me out of this situation. My only contact with the outside world was my family.
Eventually, I resigned myself to the fact that my parents weren’t perfect and they were just having a hard time coping with the fact that their daughter was critically ill, had a limited lifespan, and was in severe physical and psychological pain. After an emotional appointment with my neurologist where he brought up the option of comfort care, my mom seemed to understand more about my condition but my dad continued to insist I wasn’t really physically sick.
Once I left the nursing home and moved into Side By Side things began looking up for me, for one thing, I made a bunch of new friends, including my new best friend, Jeff Harford. The more I got to know him, the more I liked him, but on a conscious level it never even occurred to me that we could ever be more than just friends, on a subconscious level I was desperately in love with him and my body physically ached for him. He was forty years old. I was twenty-five. How could we ever be a couple? In my mind that was unheard of. Besides, who would ever want to date me? I was in a wheelchair, I had a tube in my stomach that drained bile out 24/7, I couldn’t eat anything by mouth, I couldn’t even dress myself, bathe myself, or give myself my own medications. How could someone ever want to date me?
I just figured that I would make a lot of good close friends, but be single for the rest of my life and I tried really hard to convince myself that I was okay with that for the longest time.
I met some more of my new friends one day while I was sitting at “my spot,” the chairs in front of the fireplace with the fake flame that actually emanated real heat) in the dining room working on school or a writing project, I can’t remember which. A young man walked by me with a black top hat, a silk black cape with red lining, and a black and white magic wand, and a deck of cards. He caught me staring at him. I quickly looked away, but he had noticed me and smiled a big, but gentle smile with perfect teeth that must have cost his parents quite the fortune in braces and twice a year cleanings and fluoride treatments.
“Hi I’m Mark,” He introduced himself. “Would you like to see some magic tricks?” He asked me.
“Sure,” I told him.
Mark proceeded to show me a series of magic tricks where he made my card rip in half and then reappear whole, made my card go into the middle of the deck and then somehow rise to the top, and then made the whole deck of cards all turn into jacks. I was quite impressed.
“We’re missionaries,” he explained to me. “We’re Catholic and we all live together in Lee for a year working on the farm and going to various nursing homes, assisted livings, and homeless shelters to interact with people and become friends with them. We don’t try to convert people, we simply show them how we live in God’s way and if they want more information on what it means to be Catholic or have questions about God or prayer, we provide it. Otherwise, we just become friends.”
“Well I’m Jewish,” I explained hesitantly, not sure how he would take this information.
“That’s so cool,” he said. “So you follow the Old Testament?”
“Yeah,” I answered.
“So can you like read it in the original Hebrew?” he asked, his bushy orange eyebrows raised excitedly.
“Actually, I can,” I told him smiling. In the private Jewish Day school that I had gone to until middle school, and the private Jewish Day School that I went to for the majority of sixth grade (until school just got to be too much for me with all the bullying from Michelle and the rest of the class except for Miriam), half the day was taught in English, and half of the day was taught in Hebrew. At the synagogue where I went every Saturday with Laura, and the synagogue I had went to every week with my family when I had lived at home, we prayed and read from the Torah (the five books of Moses) in Hebrew.
“That is too awesome.” Mark looked so excited.
“Hey Eric,” Mark called out. A very tall, very tan, broad-shouldered man with huge feet in sandals that looked like they came from a biblical period, and shoulder-length brown hair came over to us.
“This girl is Jewish and she can read Hebrew,” Mark told this man who looked like he should be named Moses or Jesus or something but was apparently named Eric.
“That’s awesome,” Eric said. “My name is Eric by the way, I’m the leader of these guys, there’s a whole bunch of us! We stop by here every Tuesday and hang out and love to make new friends with the residents. Have you met Janie yet?” he asked me.
I shook my head no.
“Well, we have Janie here today, and Walter, Doug, Jimmy, and Anna as well. They are all amazing people, and sometime you’ll have to meet my wife Christy as well. She’s a hospice nurse but right now she’s on maternity leave and is due any day now.”
“I’d love to meet her sometime,” I told him.
“We will make that happen,” he told me. “I know you guys would hit it off and become really close friends.”
“Well it’s really nice to meet all of you guys,” I said feeling a little overwhelmed by the presence of all these kind, caring people who wanted to be friends with me.
But as time went on and Jeff and I hung out with them every Tuesday we became even more than just close friends. A lot of times they would take us out for coffee or to the library or to their farm that they lived on in Lee. One of the missionaries, Doug, was a young man with bipolar who had joined the missionaries to see if it would help him cope with his inner monsters. He also loved to write but had never been able to go to college because of his mental illness. He was in and out of psychiatric hospitals most of his late high school years and was on a lot of heavy-duty medication.
“The medicine makes my head feel all fuzzy,” he explained to me. “I sit down and look at a page and think of all of my feelings, but then they all get jumbled and I don’t know what to write., but I used to write really good poetry and stories and I want to be able to do that again.” he told me when I explained to him that I was in school for writing and had published a novel and some personal essays, short stories and poetry.
Doug was a shorter man with a big Santa Claus belly and worn-out shirts that were too small and ended up being belly shirts,
“I love the way you write,” he told me. “You make me feel like I’m right there in the story with you, can you help me write like that?” he asked.
“Definitely, I would love to help you,” I told him.
I go all out for my friends and have a fun time doing it.
So one Tuesday when they came by I asked Jeff if we could use his kitchen since I knew it would be a quiet place. Jeff’s kitchen was on the first floor of his house and no one else was living in that apartment at the moment. Jeff said he would make sure no one would bother us for a couple of hours if we used his kitchen and so when Doug came by Jeff wheeled me down there.
“I’ve been so excited about this,” Doug smiled at me with wide open, and big and happy blue eyes that had a tint of green in them.
“We’re going to have a good time,” I agreed feeling my heart fill with warmth and joy that I was able to make this man, who had opened his heart to become friends with me even though he had so little going for himself, so happy.
Once, Jeff, had me settled in at the table in his kitchen I pulled out my laptop from my backpack and pulled out the empty notebook that I had Jackie (one of my caregivers) buy for me with my SSI check money for Doug to use to write in, I had also bought him sharpie ballpoint pens which were my favorite kind of pens.
“I got you a freewriting notebook,” I told him. “The most important tool to brainstorming and coming up with writing material is freewriting. If you can free-write every day for ten minutes you will probably come up with more writing ideas than you will know what to do with.”
“What’s freewriting?” Doug asked me.
“Freewriting is when you set a timer for ten minutes and then pick up your pen and just write whatever pops into your head without stopping to think about it. You never put the pen down. If you get stumped and don’t know what to write about then you just write, “I don’t know what to write about,” over and over. The important thing is to just keep writing. It’s kind of like free association in therapy.” I explained.
“Oh I can do that,” Doug said.
“Wanna try?” I asked.
“Sure,” Doug said.
After freewriting I had him practice writing dialogue and then I had him describe the room in the five senses and then I had him pick a topic that came up the most in his freewriting and told him to, over the next week work on writing a piece about “loving God for giving him mental illness because it’s helped him see the world through a different lens than everyone else even while being depressed,” because that was the topic that came up the most in his freewriting.
“Use concrete examples and descriptions,” I told him. Use the five senses to back up your concrete examples. How does it feel physically in your body? Is it soft? Is it hard? Is it sharp? Is it smooth? What does it taste like? What does it smell like? What colors does it look like? What shapes is it? What patterns does it have? Is it bright or dark? What does it sound like? Is it really loud or really quiet? Does it sound more like a whine or a song or a low pitch or a howl or a hum? Think about all of these descriptors and then think about how you think about it and write your thoughts on it as well. Try not to repeat yourself and try to use different lengths of sentences. Think about the audience your writing is for, think about the type of voice you want to use for that audience. If you’re writing for a bunch of kids you don’t want to use a lot of big words and you want to use simple sentences and easy explanations. If your writing for fellow Catholics you want to put a lot of emphasis on religion and use a lot of the religious terms and customs. If you’re writing for the general population you want to kind use a balanced approach in terms of wording, and sentence structure and if you bring up your religion you may need to explain certain things about it.” I explained to Doug.
Doug listened intently and took notes in messy childlike writing, pausing every once in a while to push his black circular, Harry Potter-style frame glasses back up his nose.
“Thank you so much,” he told me at the end of our little writing session. “This was so awesome. I already like some of the writing I came up with, and I’ll email you when I finish the big project that we’re working on together. Can you email me some more of your writing too?”
“Sure,” I told him feeling really touched that one of my friends enjoyed my help so much and wanted to read more of my writing too.
Even after Doug left to go back to Idaho at the end of his internship with the missionaries we stayed friends and stayed in contact. Every few weeks we would send writing back and forth. It felt really awesome to me to be able to watch his writing slowly improve the more we worked together.
The other missionaries were pretty awesome too. Janie loved taking me out for coffee. I could drink black coffee as long as there was no cream in it and I let it immediately drain back out into my G-tube drainage bag. Sometime, just the two of us would go to the library or the craft store too, where I would pick out yarn for crocheting or thread for cross-stitching. She told me stories about growing up on her farm in Texas and all the work she used to have to do, waking up at 5 AM to milk the cows. for example., I told her stories about my life growing up as a professional patient, bouncing from one hospital visit to the next, all the crazy close calls where I had almost lost my life. It was great to have friends that treated me like an equal and looked past all of my disabilities and illnesses.
A lot of times on Tuesdays all of us, including Jeff would pile into the van and drive down to the coffee shop called Dottie’s Coffee Lounge, where we would get coffee or fancy teas, and talk for hours.
They had a big blue van that we would ride around in, my brand new pink wheelchair fit in the back perfectly when there were only three or four passengers.
My brand new pink wheelchair arrived in February of 2016. It was low to the floor so my short little legs could reach the ground when they weren’t on the footrests, that way my feet could help me push myself in the chair on days that I had enough energy and my feet were less numb and tingly. The footrests were removable. It had a memory foam seat cushion that could go in and out. The armrests could come on and off, making it easier to lift me in and out of the wheelchair on days I was less mobile. The armrests had cushions on them for comfort. The back of the wheelchair had memory foam on it too. There was an IV pole sticking out of the top of the wheelchair but it was only sticking up by about 6 inches and could be adjusted with a screwdriver and some screws or pins. The wheels were really thin, lightweight, and could pop on and off easily making it more possible to get it in and out of a car or van.
My favorite part about it was that all of the parts of the chair, besides the squishy memory foam parts were hot sparkle pink.
“Do you like it?” asked Chris the wheelchair mechanic as he was putting all of the pieces of it together for me once he finished unpacking it from his car and wheeled it in toward me in the kitchen of Side by Side.
“Yes definitely!” I told him, as I lovingly dubbed it my pink Cadillac,
Just then Jeff wandered in from the smoking porch.
“Is that you Muscles Harford?” Chris asked squinting at him.
“Yeah man,” Jeff smiled,”
“Do you remember me?” Chris asked.
Jeff looked him up and down for a long moment.
“Did you go to Pittsfield High?” he asked him.
“Yeah,” Chris smiled.
“You used to date Annie and went to the Pittsfield High Prom with her!” Jeff said.
“Yup,” Chris nodded grinning.
“Those were the days,” Jeff said, he was smiling too. “I think I went with Candy.”
“Yeah, I think so,” agreed Chris.
I just smiled and shook my head. Jeff was friends with everyone. They all knew “Muscles Harford” from Jeff’s high school years. He had told me some crazy stories about his high school years, they were reall the highlight of his life. He had also told me all about his girlfriends in childhood. He had had started when he was ten with a friend named Ellen.
“Ellen and I used to sneak down to the basement where my dad has his keg and we would help ourselves to the beer until we were drunk when we were at my grandparent’s house on the lake, starting when we were only ten years old” Jeff had told me.
His next girlfriend was his neighbor Candy. Candy was his girlfriend on and off all through middle school and high school. She was the one he lost his virginity to at the age of 14, she was not a virgin at that time.
“Candy ended up marrying some really rich guy, and then the guy died and Candy inherited all of the money, but now she is just all messed up on drugs,” Jeff told me about his ex-girlfriend from childhood. Candy ended up passing away in late 2020.
Later in high school, while he was still on and off with Candy, Jeff began seeing a Middle-Eastern girl named Annie who went to Pittsfield High where he was doing his automotive internship. He got pretty serious with Annie but eventually, they ended up going their separate ways at the end of high school and Jeff went back with Candy until Barb came into the picture. Jeff got even more serious with Barb. He even helped her raise her kids, and stayed with her for 14 years before breaking up when he stopped drinking. She was also a heavy drinker and in order to get away from his old alcoholic lifestyle he had to make the painful choice to cut ties with her. They’re relationship had been the first one he’d had that wasn’t purely sexual. Barb and Jeff had been friends and confidants as well. He still spoke a lot about her, but always assured me that she was nowhere near as good a person as I was.
Jeff had now been single for over a year and a half. He’d been single ever since he had had that seizure at the party and then gone to the hospital and then the nursing home for rehab and then landed at Side By Side with me.
Everyone else could tell that he had a major crush on me and that we would make a perfect couple, but I was totally oblivious.