Category : Books-Fiction

Sub Category : Drama

Before I start this chapter I wanted to say that entering teenage years with a brain injury and having just lost my father was really tough, confusing and frustrating. I had my mother and she did an awesome job at raising me even though it was tough for her at times. She taught me some valuable lessons in life. But I'll get back to that later. 

We had the funeral for my father, in which was hard. First the visitation days then the actual funeral where we had to later say our final goodbyes before burying him in the cemetary. The cemetary was in Oakville Ontario.  It is a Ukrainian cemetary. After all that, things were different. I still went to school until the end of the school year but then my friend that was my friend for a bit over a year told me that he and his family are going to be moving soon. I think he said Nova Scotia or P.E.I or somewhere because his dad got a job there. A month or two later, he was gone. He didn't even say good bye. Maybe they had to leave right away and didn't have time or may be it was too hard for him to say good bye, I don't know. I found out because I went to his house and they weren't there anymore. September 1990, I attended another school called St. Judes which was and still is in Kitchener/Waterloo. It was a private school, so I had to wear a uniform. As well a small white bus would pick me up at the John Galt Center mall. That's what it was called back then. So, I had to take a city bus to the mall to catch the school bus. My brother showed me how to take the bus and then I would take it by myself. Every morning, I would wake up really early in the morning, walk to my grandparents house a few blocks away, have breakfast there and then leave at a certain time to catch the bus.  It was a nice school. I was in a classroom with the bus driver being the teacher. We had a class trip one weekend to the states and it was over night. We stayed at our teachers cottage. It was fun. Even though, the school was good, it was a bit difficult for me at times. What I mean is, on the bus to school and back, some of the kids on the bus would tease me. I didn't know how to react, so I would get angry and yell at them. After I would get angry and yell, they would laugh at me. There were some people who were nice to me though. I would at times say that I'm sick or I would miss the school bus on purpose and stay at my grandparents house for the day. My grandmother would make me borsh, which is a Ukrainian soup. The kind that she made me was not the red one with beats but the green looking one with lettice, potatoes and tiny bits of onions. In early 1991, I started going to a grief group because it could help me deal with the passing of my father. It helped. We would talk about who we grieve for and such. I remember one time, after the grief group, I was standing outside waiting for my mother to pick me up and I thought of some words for a song. Hello, hello, good bye, good bye, I will try not to cry. So, I wrote it down when I got home and it became a song. I sang it at my grief group. My voice wasn't as good back then as it is now. I sing 3 songs on YouTube now that I wrote, but I'll tell more of that later.  Anyways, that's when I wanted to start singing. I would write songs in a book that I would think of and sing them. In the summer of that year, after school was out, my mother took my brother and I to Florida. My sister didn't want to go. She stayed at home. She was old enough to stay home. In Florida, we went to Disney world, Universal studios, Mgm. I remember one time at Universal studios, there was a King Kong ride.  My mother and my brother wanted to go on. I was too scared to go on for some reason. I went on the next year though. Anyways, I waited for them in a certain spot while they went on it. It was a long line, so I waited a long time for them. I thought maybe I missed them, so I decided to go and walk around. I saw a Nickelodeon studios, where kids my age and younger lined up. So, I thought I would check it out. When I got inside the building, they had a game called Simon says. So, I joined in. I don't remember what the winner would get, but I was out after a bit. After the Nickelodeon studios, I decided to go and look for my mother and brother. I saw one lady at a big food court there and I said to her calmly, "I'm lost, I don't know where my mother is".  So, she took me to a lost and found place. There was my mother and my brother sitting on a chair. My mother was crying, but was happy that I was there and ok. As she was crying, I was excitedly saying that how much fun I had and I told her what I did. I don't think that she was too impressed of me walking away like that, but she was happy that I was ok. We even in Florida got to swim in the ocean, go mini golfing, etc. It was a lot of fun. We spent two weeks there, but we drove there. Well, my mother drove there with us. We stopped at a few motels on the way there and back. It was a long ride but the scenery was nice going through the states that we drove through. I still went to camp in August for a bit. Then in September, I went back to St. Judes for 1 more year. I still did my physio, well kinda. My worker, therapist guy opened up a gym in Waterloo, not too far away from my school, so sometimes I would get a ride there from my mother on certain days after school or sometimes I would walk there because I knew the directions to get there from the school and it wasn't that far of a walk and I was careful and stayed on the sidewalk. I was also careful crossing the road. My mother picked me up after or even my sister sometimes because she could drive at this time. When I was there this time, I would do the treadmill and bicycle on my own with a bit of assistance to set the right weight. I would also do one day a week for a few months piano lessons. The piano lessons were in Waterloo not too far from my school. I remember on one particular day, I was feeling frustrated and didn't want to go to my piano lesson. I was feeling angry for some reason.  I can't remember why though. Maybe it was because of something that was happening to me. I was hearing voices in my head. I told my mother that I was hearing voices in my head and the voice was saying, "Be bad, destroy everything".  I was scared and so was she.  She drove me to the hospital because she didn't know what to do. The doctors gave me a needle to calm me down because I was almost out of control. Then, I was put in a room in the hospital, my own room in the Cambridge hospital. I was in there for 1 or 2 weeks. They wanted to see what's wrong and stuff. My mother brought me a tape player with a cassette tape of Eric Clapton with a song on there called, "Tears in Heaven".  I was also given a get well soon card by a few students from my school. When I finally got out of the hospital after a week or two, not long after, my mother drove me to London where I would stay for a little while at a place called C.P.R.I, which stands for child and parent Resource institute. It was a mental health clinic in London Ontario. There was a psychiatrist there that talked to me and there were different cabin houses there where it was all set for different ages. I was in a cabin with other people my age. It was close to a cabin where the younger children were and there was a little track in the middle below, where you can ride bikes, walk or run on it. I remember, I was always careful when the younger children were riding their bikes on there. One of the sfaff noticed this and said to me, "Thank you for being careful around them".  That made me feel good hearing that.  I would attend a school class there. We even played baseball a few times there with our class. We had a trip one time to the Story Book Gardens. It was fun. I would stay over night there during the week and home on the weekends.    
Except for one weekend, in which after my mother picked me up and started to drive me home, l can't remember why, but I got upset again and this time I almost opened the car door and jumped out. Luckily, the car was going slow but on a busy road. Well actually, it wasn't that busy at the time. My mother drove me back to the C.P.R.I. They were still open because some of the kids there do not go home on the weeekends or at least not all of the weekends. So there I was with some of the kids there. There was a Nintendo so we played some games there. During my stay at the C.P.R.I, I had a sleep EEG done while I was there. I had to go elsewhere to get it done though. I remember also one time there at the C.P.R.I , a few of the kids planned on running away and I was also going to come along. As soon as we started running, I stopped running and stood against a tree. The others kept on running but I couldn't do it. I don't know why. A staff there that saw us all running but I stopped, he thanked me for not running. I spent one year at the C.P.RI and then I went back home. At a certain age, you can't be there any more. At least back then it was that. When I got back, I wasn't no longer going to St. Judes school, but a school closer. A high school.