ACT OF GRACE BORN OF TRAGEDY
Lives transformed with gift of wheelchair van
The tragic death of a Calgary grandmother eventually changed a family’s life, one that had been stuck in neutral for years.
It’s been seven long weeks since Linda Tuck, a blind MS patient who was confined to a wheelchair, succumbed to a house fire in the Dover area.
Her longtime common-law husband, Milton Henders, was left with a broken heart after losing a woman who loved the neighbourhood kids more than anything.
He had been trying for the past month to sell her wheelchair-accessible van, a 1992 Plymouth Grand Voyager, putting it up on various classified pages in hopes of finding someone who needed it.
Last week, he listed it on Kijiji, marked as open to offers.
That’s how he met Sarah Wilkinson.
“Maybe there was a reason no one else had replied; it was meant to go to her,” Henders told the Herald.
Already a mother to two boys, Wilkinson gave birth to a daughter, Mia, on Oct. 7, 2005, in Ontario.
Twenty-nine minutes later, Mia suffered a seizure, the first of thousands that plague her life.
Doctors diagnosed her with Ohtahara syndrome, a rare disease with about 200 confirmed cases around the world.
Most cases end with the child dying during infancy, and at three months old, Mia’s doctors recommended she be put into hospice care.
Wilkinson wouldn’t have it, asking the doctors to give her daughter a potential life or death drug. It worked.
But the family’s life was put on hold.
Wilkinson had to quit her job. Her husband has worked on the road for almost six years. Her oldest son was pulled out of hockey. All focus was put into Mia, because they knew at any moment, she could be taken away from them.
Mia would endure status seizures, which last upwards of eight and a half hours before doctors can stabilize her.
Each status seizure is life-threatening, and Wilkinson always wondered if that was the seizure that would claim her daughter.
Mia can’t walk, can’t talk, can’t crawl and can’t sit. When in a vehicle, she sat in modified child’s car seat — painful for an average-size six-year-old. And she’d scream.
“It seems stupid. We have a car, she had a car seat, but she was so freaking miserable in that thing,” Sarah said. “Going to hockey games — and sometimes hockey games are two hours away — and she would scream the entire time. I would avoid taking her places just because she hated it. She liked going out but she hated driving.”
The family moved from Windsor, Ont., to Edmonton, to Wetaskiwin and finally to Airdrie earlier this year.
Wilkinson met a doctor at the Alberta Children’s Hospital, and for the first time, there was optimism.
“After talking with him, I got hopeful again and thinking that the other shoe isn’t going to drop and maybe perhaps we do need to start looking at getting her some things around the house that would make it more accessible,” Wilkinson said.
Dr. Luis Bello-Espinosa has come up with a list of ideas to help make Mia’s life easier.
Last year, the family was not going to hold back on life anymore. Her two sons, aged 13 and nine, signed up for hockey, the first time for the younger one. And Sarah started to look for a wheelchair-accessible van.
The family could afford maybe $5,000 and it would most likely be a Christmas-time purchase.
Wilkinson scoured Kijiji, seeing that most came in the $50,000 price range, before she came across Henders’ ad.
They talked on the phone, and Henders asked what she needed it for. She explained the story of Mia, but didn’t know a price for the van.
He told her not to worry about the price, saying, “How does a dollar sound?”
Last Sunday, he dropped it off for the family. She ended up giving him a toonie, but he sneaked the change back to the kitchen counter.
Sarah took her family out for a ride that night, with Mia riding shotgun, laughing and smiling as the stereo played Nicki Minaj and Lady Gaga.
“I told him, ‘You know, you have no idea how much you have helped my family,’” she said.
Deep down, Henders knows. It was the same ride that transported the love of his life for all those years.
As he was leaving, he tapped on the windows, just like he did thousands of times before to let Linda know he was there, this time with tears flowing down his face.
“Let’s face it. It was a ’92. How much are you going to get for it? And even if she would have given me a lot for it, it wouldn’t have changed my life at all,” he said. “It was just as good as for me as it was for her. I know she was very appreciative of it. That makes it worth it.”
Linda was smiling down on them that day, he said.
And after seven years in neutral, the Wilkinsons’ lives are moving forward.
“The biggest thing is my daughter is happy now. It means we can do hockey tournaments without having massive meltdowns in the car. It is a pain the (butt) taking apart her wheelchair. … This way we can just wheel her out and it’s done,” Wilkinson said.
I know she was very appreciative of it. That makes it worth it MILTON HENDERS