Chapter 1: The Motorcycle

Chapter 1

The Motorcycle

I'm okay now, but in 2008, I was a real mess. On New Year's Eve of the previous year, I was riding on the back of my Deaf wife's motorcycle. As a Christmas present, I'd helped Naomi complete the motorcycle training and safety course. The drunk driver did honk, but she didn't hear it. I lost her and my left foot. I'm a teacher at a school for the Deaf, but I took the rest of the school year off. Along with the summer, that gave me eight months to recuperate both physically and emotionally.

Whether or not to give psychiatric medication to someone who is grieving has always been a touchy subject. My doctor encouraged me to take medication, but I refused it out of pride and stubbornness. I didn't refuse the Percocet for my phantom pain, and that's where the trouble started. Percocet is a mixture of OxyCotin and Tylenol, supposedly harder to abuse than pure OxyCotin as the Tylenol, while making the OxyCotin stronger, makes the combination impossible to inject safely. My physician tried to wean me off them, but I soon found an online pharmacy that kept me in good supply for the following months. I generally took two a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. I chewed them.

Did I mention I have a son? Naomi gave birth to him in 2005, when I was 29 years old, and she was 34. His name is Trout. His birth name is Mike, like me, but we've never called him anything other than Trout. I lost my father to cancer, my mother to early-onset Alzheimer's, so I was pretty much on my own. With State Disability and a little life insurance money from Naomi's work, I got by. The drunk driver was insured, but we'd be tied up in court proceedings for some time.

San Diego has a lot of things to do if you're a parent. The Zoo, the Wild Animal Park, Sea World,, Legoland, a few others. I'd take Trout somewhere every morning. Call it overcompensating, call it guilt. We got Disneyland passes and went there, too. Every day, somewhere. Every morning. I tried to be a good dad, but I was still taking Percocet and going on the computer too much. I occasionally drank. On the plus side, I read a lot. I still read book-books back then, putting my English Literature degree to good use. Trout was starting to pick up on my habits and become a reader, himself. I was very proud of that.

Music exited my life during that time. I teach music and English to Deaf students. I did before the accident, and I do now, but my digital piano gathered dust during that time. I know, you're probably wondering how you teach music to Deaf students, but it's actually harder to teach them English. American Sign Language has its own grammar, and some Deaf people never really learn English as well as they should. As an English teacher, I would sign English sentences in sign language and teach the students basic composition and the like. Believe me, it's a lot easier to hand out drums and play a simple ostinato on a bass drum, letting the students make up the rest. Maybe it's the higher expectations of an American learning English versus those of a Deaf person playing a recorder.

I lost a lot on that day, but I gained a lot in that year. This is the story of 2008.