I take quick sips of my hot coffee, which burn my lips. I can’t feel the pain, as I pace up and down the carpeted walkway at the Thunder Bay airport.
It hasn’t sunk in yet that my sweet cousin, Darryl Fox, has died after a long battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma –
a cancer that starts in the lymphatic system, a part of the body that helps fight infection and disease.
I remain in denial. Only 24, and studying to be an engineer, he is too young and has too much to live for, I reason.
During visits when he was a small boy, he would take my then two-year-old daughter, Joy, by the hand and guard her.
He treated her like a fragile little princess. Her bossy behaviour never fazed him. He would just smile and follow her around, making sure she didn’t hurt herself.
When I last saw him, in a hospital room, he remained smiling and kind despite the cancer.
Now, I have somehow convinced myself Darryl will be getting off the plane with his father, Charles Fox, and mother, Linda Redsky.
But the moment my uncle Charles steps through the airport doors, my heart drops and the tears spill out. Charles holds me for a long time, whispering “He’s gone Adrienne, he’s gone. My son is gone.”
Darryl died Oct. 17, 2002.
One of those who misses Darryl most is his younger brother, Derek. While Darryl was quiet and introspective, Derek is brash and confident. But despite their different personalities, the brothers shared a strong bond.
Two years ago, we almost lost Derek too.
A week before Thanksgiving Day, 2007, Derek, his father Charles and cousin ‘Bean’ arrived at John Fox’s trapline for a week of hunting.
The trapline, about 80 nautical miles north of Kitchenuhmayoosib along the Sachigo River, had been our grandfather’s.
Anxious to get started, the hunting trio rode upriver for about an hour. Rain came and Derek hadn’t dressed for the weather. Charles gave him a parka to wear but he was already wet and cold.
After not seeing any moose at their favourite location, they turned back. Rounding a bend, they caught sight of a large bull moose.
“It was swimming across when Bean and I saw it,” Derek recalls. “I threw off all my outer wear because I got excited.
I had so much adrenalin in me, I wasn’t thinking about staying warm.
photo by Derek Fox
“Biggest moose I’d ever seen.”: Derek Fox.
“That moose was huge. It was the biggest moose I’d ever seen – big antlers.”
They had moved within 100 yards of the bull.
“Fighting off my admiration, I knew he would make many good meals,” Derek says. “Beaner and I unloaded rifle rounds on him. I could swear we took about 10 shots each (but) he would not fall.
After losing sight of the animal, Derek followed a short trail of blood until “There he was, looking at me.
“I didn’t want to shoot him because he was looking at me like he had something to tell me. I wanted to capture that image so I pulled out my camera out and took a picture. I never did take another shot at him. He just finally laid down and died.”
The hunters gutted the moose, starting with the heart, which they always ate first.
“I forgot how cold it was out and more importantly, I forgot I was sick before I saw that moose,” Derek says.
As they neared the cabin, though, Derek’s back tightened and cramped, his whole body felt stiff, and he could sense a fever coming on.
“I knew something was wrong.”
The Tylenol didn’t help much with the fever. A bad cough followed.
The next morning, Derek wanted to help finish cleaning the moose but Charles noticed his son was sick and asked him to stay behind.
“He suggested I get wood, knowing full well I was never one to sit still, even if I was burning up with fever,” Derek says.
“When I am up at the cabin – I like going for walks in the bush. I look for signs of my brother and grandparents. I am always hopeful that one of them will appear and say ‘hi.’ But of course that hasn’t happened.
“The old people always say to look for them in other forms. So, maybe one day I’ll know which forms to look for.”
Derek attempted to get wood but when his coughing wouldn’t stop, he decided to wash dishes instead.
He admired the beauty of the day, sunny and peaceful, with a brisk wind.
He reached the shoreline with the dishes and soap, started washing, then felt compelled to look up. A bull moose stood on the other side of the river.
“He was looking both ways like a kid before he crosses a busy city street,” says Derek. The bull remained still and quiet, cautiously surveying his surroundings but surprisingly not seeming to notice Derek. Only after the moose jumped in the water and swam toward Derek did it finally sense him, veer and swim to shore downriver.
“I didn’t even think about running back up the hill to get my gun,” Derek says. “I just watched him swim .... I mused he was heading north to Beaverstone River to find himself a girl, as he slowly walked into the bush not far from me. That’s when I said ‘See you later.’
“He didn’t look back though. I don’t think he understood my broken Oji-Cree, which is what I was trying to speak because my dad always speaks to them in the language.”
Weakened, Derek finished the dishes and headed back to the cabin to sleep.
He woke to the sound of a boat approaching. Bean and Charles had shot three more moose.
Noting Derek’s condition as they ate supper, Charles wanted to call for a plane so his son could get medical attention.
“I would rather die than leave this place,” Derek told him.
In hindsight, he says, “I probably shouldn’t have said that.”
That night Derek suffered through the worst fever yet. He reasoned his sickness was reaching its crest and he would be better the next day.
Instead, his condition grew worse. Again, he stayed at the cabin when his father and Bean set out to hunt.
Derek busied himself constructing a bed of branches for the moose meat that would be arriving.
When a live moose visited the camp, he shot at it but was too weak to give chase. His energy drained, he crawled into his sleeping bag for more sleep.
“I had really bad dreams that afternoon.”
Derek awoke sweating. Glancing at the space between the cabin door and floor, he saw shadows roaming back and forth. It wasn’t a bear, he hoped, since he’d left his rifle hanging outside.
He fell back asleep, then woke again to pacing shadows beneath the door. Somehow he mustered the energy to get up. But when he opened the door nothing confirmed the shadows. He loaded his rifle just in case.
“I felt really awful,” Derek says. “When my dad and Bean came back I couldn’t even smile with them.
“That night was one of the worst nights of my life. I couldn’t stop coughing. I was sweating. And I wanted to cry because I was in so much pain. I’d even pulled a stomach muscle because I was coughing so much.”
Each cough wracked his body with new pain.
“I thought I was dying,” he says. “Something was really wrong with me. I wasn’t going to deny it anymore.
This time he agreed a plane should be called.
The next morning, after he’d packed, he slept while he waited and his dad searched for the moose Derek had shot at the previous day. The plane woke him.
“I opened the door to find two wolves and cub looking right at me,” recalls Derek. “The small pack wasn’t more than 20 feet away. Without flinching, they calmly turned around and walked into the bush.”
He remembered the pacing shadows.
“My grandfather used to tell me stories about wolves – stories I’d dismissed as just stories told more to entertain,” Derek says. “It was during a bad bout with flu, during a particularly harsh winter, he’d said, the wolves had come.
They were there … throughout his sickness, staying nearby, not leaving until he was well enough to get up and take care of himself again. A lot of their paw prints, he’d said, had been near the door of the cabin.”
As Derek left the cabin, he searched near the door for paw marks but could see none. The image of one of the wolves continued to play in his mind’s eye. The wolf had one blue eye and one green. It reminded Derek of a Siberian husky.
Derek’s uncle, Bob Fox, met him when he arrived in Kitchenuhmaykoosib (Big Trout Lake). He suggested Derek go to the nursing station immediately.
“I must have looked really pale because if you knew my uncle, you’d also know he doesn’t say things lightly,” says Derek. “I was also still coughing a lot … every 10 seconds or so.”
He started intravenous antibiotics after X-rays showed fluid in his lungs. The medical staff thought he had pneumonia.
“For the first time since getting sick, I felt scared and alone,” Derek says.
He had been laying in bed for hours at his uncle’s, coughing and trying to fight off another bad fever, when his cousin, John Fox, arrived.
“He took one look at me and offered me some incredibly strong painkillers,” Derek says. “I didn’t question their origin; I was in too much pain.
“Within minutes I was able to get up. I actually felt better. My fever subsided.”
John sat with Derek for hours, soothed him with banter, entertained him with the movie Ghost Rider after a second round of antibiotics, and once slept on the floor beside his ailing cousin’s bed.
“I’ll always be grateful … for the way he stuck by me,” Derek says.
Over the next four days, after John convinced Derek to move into his house so he could better care for him, Derek’s condition worsened.
When Thanksgiving Day arrived, Derek had an epiphany: “I remember telling John, ‘I don’t think I can last another night here. I don’t think I can survive another night in Big Trout.’ ”
As he made another trip to the nursing station, the sound of a float plane circling overhead signalled the return of his father and Bean.
Once on the ground, Charles saw his son’s condition had worsened and arranged a medevac south.
Fawn Wapioke, Derek’s girlfriend and mother of their two boys, Kairn and Darryl, waited in the emergency room at the Kenora hospital as Derek arrived. Her worried expression told Derek how sick he must have looked.
His mother, sister and brother got there later, in time to join the wait for test results.
Finally, the doctor told Derek he had blastomycosis – a fungal infection caused by an organism called blastomyces.
An ambulance transported Derek across the provincial border to the Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre.
“I’ll see you soon,” he told Fawn as he was wheeled to an operating room.
He remembers at least 10 medical staff in the operating room and hearing he would be put on life support.
A mask covered his face, his world went black and his dreams began.
“I call them dreams but they were more than that,” Derek explains. “They were very real, like everything was happening as it unfolded in my mind.”
The dreams took him hunting with his dad and best friend Travis Boissoneau.
In another dream, a young Asian woman helped him escape death by warding off a strange swarm of bees. She again appeared by his side through dreams where death sought him until he was shot and killed, only to reappear afterwards. The woman also took Derek through futuristic scenes.
“One scene showed me my brother Lyle,” he recalls. “He was in a bad way, doing drugs, dealing, stealing. He had become a changed person as a result of my death.”
In another scene, “I saw my older boy Darryl a mute because I had died. It was his birthday and everyone was trying to cheer him up as he played in his own solitary world with his head down. He looked much older, maybe 10 or 11. He missed me.
“I cried because I was trying so hard to talk to him, sitting beside him, telling him ‘Hey, your daddy is here and I am OK.’ But he couldn’t hear me. I tried so hard to touch him or put my arm around him, but couldn’t.”
The scenes seemed to go on for days.
At one point, medical staff revived Derek after his heart stopped.
Family members felt as though they were on deathwatch, sobbed quietly into each other’s shoulders, stayed until they couldn’t keep their eyes open, and returned to their posts the next long day.
In Derek’s dream state, everything went dark.
The song “Black Balloon” by the Goo Goo Dolls started playing. A theatre came into view, with stairs that seemed to light up as the song played. With nowhere else to go Derek started a long walk up the stairs, and as he went higher it got brighter.
His late older brother Darryl appeared at the top of the stairs, sitting and smiling.
“I wanted to hug him, kiss him, jump all over him or at least say ‘hi’ to him,” Derek says, “but I wasn’t able to do anything except stand there and look at him.
“He looked the same but really healthy and he was all lit up like an angel. There was pure whiteness behind him until I looked deeper and saw figures moving around behind him …. He raised his arms as if to say ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it? This is my home.’ ”
Derek remembers Darryl then speaking: “It’s not time to come home yet bro’.”
“I was crying,” says Derek. “I remember the tears coming down my face because I was frustrated. I couldn’t talk to him or touch him. I wanted to say something like ‘I miss you so much’ or ‘I wish you would come hug me.’
“As I think about it even now, ... this was not a dream,” Derek says. “It was very real and he was real.
Derek looked behind and saw the stairs lit again. When he turned back, Darryl and the bright white place had vanished.
“A small part of me wanted to go with him because I missed him so much, but I also wanted to go back,” says Derek.
“I knew that I would miss my family way too much.”
Derek is sure this encounter with Darryl will stay with him.
“I don’t know what to say about my visit with Darryl, except that it was very pure and very powerful,” he says.
Some of Derek’s ‘dreams’ may have been influenced by the morphine he received in hospital, he says, and some he doesn’t detail just make him laugh.
But he’s convinced his dreams also carry meaning.
“I am not one to believe too much in the spiritual side of life and usually think everything has a logical explanation,” he says. “But I really don’t know how to explain what I saw or what I felt during my journeys. I don’t think I was in my body. It was very strange and I still don’t know if I’ll ever be able to explain it without sounding too crazy.
“But each (dream), I believe, carried some kind of message.”
The next time I saw Derek awake and lucid was a powerful experience.
He was gaunt, naturally, after having lost more then 40 pounds. He had a smile on his face as I kissed his forehead, relieved and ecstatic to see him again.
But there was something that had changed. His energy was calmer, more spiritual.
I would have sat there all day with him if I could have. Being near him felt peaceful.
Walking out into the cool sunny day later that afternoon, my step was definitely lighter. I was grateful.
Derek played hockey in Sioux Lookout at the Northern First Nations Hockey Tournament four months later, and will again this year, although he’s still on medication to kill any remnants of the deadly fungus that nearly took his life. The medication weakens his immune system in the process.
When I see him early this year in Shoal Lake #39, where he and Fawn raise two-year-old Kairn and Darryl, 5, another bout of strep throat is just subsiding.
Fawn works as a band councillor and studies for a bachelor of education degree.
While being a stay-at-home dad, Derek, 27, studies for law school admission tests. He plans to attend law school at the University of Saskatchewan next year.
“I still don’t feel 100 per cent,” he says. “I want to give myself another year of rest before I attempt to go to school.
“I know it’s going to be hard being away from my family,” he adds.
“The way I relate to my family now is that we’re a lot closer. We’ve always been close but sometimes it’s so hard to believe that I was almost gone. I know my time will come … and I just want to spend as much time with my family as I can.”
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