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Your life does not suck

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Joe Philion continues to defy the odds.

Twenty-three years after he raced back into his burning Orillia-area home to search for his mom and suffered burns to 90 per cent of his body, Philion languishes in a bed at a Vancouver Island old folks home, praying each night that he won’t awake in the morning.

It has been a long, torturous journey for the boy with a big smile who is now an immobile, bloated 37-year-old man whose scarred fingers are twisted into angry fists and has stumps where his feet were burned away so long ago. His skin falls off in chunks, he has hepatitis C and has lost all his teeth.

In June last year, I met with Linda Hawkins, Philion’s mother, in Courtenay, B.C., on the day she was diagnosed with lung cancer. She said she didn’t want radiation or chemotherapy and hoped to find a cure through natural or spiritual paths.

She was still reeling from the death the previous fall of Danny, her youngest son, after he and a friend experimented with some of Philion’s medications.

On June 14 this year, cancer killed Hawkins, leaving Philion’s care to her second husband of 25 years, Mike Hawkins.

It’s been tough for the 52-year-old man, who has battled depression and had to give up his job as a taxi driver to deal with medical issues of his own.

For much of his life, he’s been defined by the struggles of his wife and her son.

“I don’t know who I really am,” Hawkins said on the line from Courtenay. “Everything has been geared to Joe and Linda for so long, for so many years.

“I’m empty, I’m empty. It so hard right now you wouldn’t believe it.”

His wife’s death has left a huge hole in his life, as have the many friends who have stopped calling, stopped dropping by the little home he shared with her.

“I think it scares people, it scares the hell out of them,” he said. “I don’t think they know what to say.”

Philion was just 14 when the family’s home in Cumberland Beach, a stone’s throw off Highway 11 north of Orillia, caught fire in March 1988. He got his brother out, then ran back into the flames when he couldn’t find his mother, who had left minutes earlier to drive her husband to work.

Trapped in the smoke, Philion burst through a window in a ball of fire, writhing in agony in the glass-covered snow.

He was hailed as a young hero, a title he never sought and one that has been an albatross for more than two decades.

He squandered as much as was given to him over the years, from the well-equipped “house of love” the Orillia community built for him, to the thousands of dollars set aside for its upkeep.

Last year, he spoke of his mortality, just as his mother was facing her own.

“I know I’m going soon,” he said. “My biggest fear is leaving her behind, not knowing how she’s going to be able to handle it.

“My little brother is gone. A parent’s not supposed to bury their child. But she’s a tough woman. I know somehow she’ll get through.”

To his dismay, Philion survived his mother and awakes each day without hope, Mike Hawkins said.

“Joe’s hanging on, I don’t know how,” he said. “Nobody knows how he keeps going. He’s a pretty strong kid.

“But it’s so lonely for him. Other than me, hardly anyone ever comes to visit now. But he’s strong, he’s got a lot of faith.

“He said the other day that he doesn’t want to wake up any more. When he goes to sleep at night, he hopes he won’t wake up.

“I don’t know how he does it, day after day in the same bed.”

For Hawkins, all that’s left is his promise to Linda, to keep watch over his stepson as long as he lives.

“There’s only love there, that’s all there is,” he said.

“It’s all that ever kept us going.”
 
Don't forget the picture.

I had that Metallica song "One" stuck in my head after reading that article.

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It isn't right that humans have to suffer until their natural death while as an animal owner, I am encouraged to humanely euthanize when appropriate.

Ever see the movie Sublime? I will never look at prolonging the inevitable the same again.

 
Are you honestly comparing this guy's story to the losers in Haiti? Give me a break nobody cares about Haiti, not saying they got what they deserved but I mean commom one time it is Haiti, their #1 export is voodoo dolls and wyclef jean they offer nothing of value to this planet at all.
 
Robyn, I've always used the animal angle when trying to debate this with people who are anti-euthanasia. It's always the same response: "Yeah, but it's JUST a dog. We're talking about a human life which is much more important."

To which I reply: "Exactly. So why do we alleviate an animal's suffering when they don't request it but deny that of a human's when they do?"

*crickets*

And beyond everything about this man's story that is so horrific as it is, why has Canada not sorted its shit out yet so that a younger adult can have an appropriate place to be cared for that isn't amongst people more than twice his age? That's an issue that appears here in the media quite a bit because Australia is notorious for just tossing younger people into old aged homes. As if life wasn't hard enough for people in this situation, their rate of severe depression is severely compounded because they now have very limited contact with people of a similar age and are constantly outliving those few people with whom they may have developed a bond since being in the home.

This whole time I was on my high horse thinking this would never happen to people back home and yet today I find out differently. Lesson learned.
 
By all accounts Shari this seemed to be a low income family, husband was a taxi driver.

So if not for the single payer health care system he would have been dead and forgotten long ago. That might be a good thing in this instance, but just saying. No way this family would have proper coverage in the U.S.
 
Oh I know Fiver. I've had enough experience with the US healthcare system to know that they would've sucked every penny that he "squandered" and then most likely would leave him to rot alone.
I just can't fathom how there is not somewhere for him to go in Canada that is a facility set up for people who need care for the rest of their lives, instead of an old aged home. It'd been one of those contentious issues here for awhile and so I'm constantly reading or hearing stories of younger people who are begging to be put in a home with people below the age of 80.

Which makes sense to me. A lot of people in this situation end up with only their family members, if they're lucky, as support because their friends tend to drop off over time when it becomes apparent the situation is not only permanent, but could go on for decades. Putting these people amongst those who have lead long lives and are now basically waiting to die themselves seems cruel to me.

Maybe this bothers me so much because my mother made me volunteer at an old aged home every weekend when I was a teenager. Not sure.
 
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