It was 2000 and the couple had hatched a plan to surprise their daughter at her wedding by swinging each other around the reception hall.
But Mike, then 52, couldn’t get his left leg to follow his lead.
It would be years before the navy veteran was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
Despite a doctor’s written opinion that his Parkinson’s disease could be related to repeated exposure to a cleaning chemical and two concussions suffered while serving in the military, it took nearly eight years and two appeals before Mike was granted a partial disability award.
“Giving the appellant the full benefit of doubt, the board has determined that the combination of his service-related head injury and chemical exposure was, as likely as not, to have contributed to his Parkinson’s disease,” reads the May 14 decision by the Veterans Review and Appeal Board of Canada.
The board granted him three-fifths of the maximum disability award — meaning he is eligible to receive about $180,000 — and sent its decision to Veterans Affairs Canada.
Six months later, Mike has started calling Veterans Affairs weekly to get an update on when he’ll be paid.
There’s work they need to do to their home in Port Greville, Cumberland County, so his independence can be maintained as his condition progresses.
“One frustration after another,” he said Thursday.
Twenty-four years and one week in the Canadian military enriched Mike’s life with friends and opportunities to see the world in ways a civilian never does.
He’s thankful for that.
But it has come at a cost.
This isn’t a story about bureaucratic delays.
It’s about two people who have clung tight enough to one another to not let life’s powerful forces tear them apart.
It’s about Barb and Mike wanting to take care of each other in a place where the loudest thing they’ll hear is a logging truck.
It’s about two people who don’t want to fight any more.
HMCS KOOTENAY
At 8:21 a.m. on Oct. 23, 1969, Mike was two months married.
It was the height of the Cold War and the able seaman was scrubbing the deck of a destroyer doing 52 kilometres an hour while heading west down the English Channel.
He felt his ears pop.
HMCS Kootenay’s gearbox had exploded, sending a fireball the length of the ship down below.
For the next three hours, Mike and the crew fought the fire.
He would see a friend with third-degree burns screaming on the ship’s deck, the muscles hanging from his body.
He would see a sailor being held down by four men, screaming to be allowed to go down into the fiery hell that had been the engine room to save his brother.
He would be one of the sailors sent into that steel tomb to recover bodies.
In total, 53 were seriously injured and nine died.
The ship’s captain later said that if it hadn’t been for the crew’s heroism, the Kootenay would have sank and more lives would have been lost.
“When he came home, he said to me, ‘I saw some things I never want to see again and I don’t want to talk about it,’” Barb remembered Thursday.
He kept his mouth shut for 14 years.
The term post-traumatic stress disorder didn’t exist in 1969.
“I was only married to him for two months when this happened — I thought I was just married to a man with moody tendencies,” said Barb.
She and their two children learned that small things could set him off. He might punch a wall in frustration.
He, meanwhile, realized that being busy was the best defence against the images that haunted his quiet moments.
“On ship, you were always busy,” Mike said. “You would work so you could sleep.”
He spent a lot of time at sea and that, Barb said Thursday, probably helped both of them.
They raised their two children.
He got to see the world.
He noticed some of the men who had been with him on the Kootenay were having a hard time of it.
Two committed suicide. Some others did it more slowly with drink.
Barb noticed at Kootenay reunions that she was the only original wife.
Then at 4 p.m. one day, he sat her down and started talking about the memories that wouldn’t leave him.
“He cried his heart out — he talked until one in the morning,” said Barb.
So began their healing.
Mike looked for other things besides work that helped.
He took to painting pictures of military aircraft, taking particular pleasure in the clouds he fashioned in the background.
He spoke to psychologists and would eventually be diagnosed with PTSD.
In 1989, he retired from the military and went to work for General Dynamics as a sonar instructor.
This time, Barb got to travel the world with him.
“She helps,” he said, pointing to his wife.
It was around 2004 that, after an incorrect diagnosis that led to two pointless surgeries, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
A handful of scientific studies have linked workplace exposure to trichloroethylene, a cleaning solvent, with increased risk of developing Parkinson’s.
The disease is typically passed down through family and Mike didn’t have a family history of the disease.
His neurologist, Dr. Roger McKelvey, said the two concussions he suffered during his service and his significant exposure to the cleaning solvent could have contributed to him developing Parkinson’s.
But it’s not the sort of thing for which there can be concrete proof.
“There is insufficient evidence to indicate the specific likelihood of prior head injury or chemical exposure having caused Parkinson’s in any one individual,” McKelvey cautioned in his written submission to the board about Mike.
Over eight years, the claim was denied three times.
Port Greville
With Mike’s condition slowly worsening, the couple bought an acre of land in Port Greville from one of Barb’s uncles.
“We needed to be somewhere quiet,” she said.
Her childhood memories of summer vacations were located in windswept Port Greville.
What remains of the once-prosperous little shipbuilding community between Advocate Harbour and Parrsboro are a few stately turn-of-the-century homes and a United Church that look out over the Minas Channel.
One lone Cape Islander is all that’s left of Port Greville’s fishing fleet.
They built their house with wide doorways to accommodate the wheelchair that looms in Mike’s future.
But they will need to buy a chairlift that can take him to his workout equipment in the basement.
They’ll probably need to pave the driveway because the small wheels of a walker don’t do well on gravel.
So they appealed again and in May, citing requirements that demand veterans be given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to what brought on their disability, the appeal board granted their claim.
Now they’re waiting on their money.
“The department has reached out to the veteran regarding his concerns,” Kate Murphy, spokeswoman for Veterans Affairs, said in a written response for comment.
“While we cannot comment on a specific case, for privacy reasons, we can assure you the care and well-being of veterans and their families is a priority. Veterans Affairs Canada is committed to ensuring that all veterans who come to us for support have access to the services and benefits to which they are entitled.”
Meanwhile, life is good in Port Greville.
Barb has dived into community organizing — she’s chairwoman of the Shore Drive Community Development Association.
She’s made friends and set up little take-a-book/leave-a-book libraries in Port Greville and Diligent River.
She was recently declared the 2015 Canadian Caregiver of the Year by Canada Cares.
While Mike, now 67, can’t draw a straight line anymore, he’s built a life-size checkerboard in the backyard and spends much of his time lost in books about ancient Egypt.
Once a month, he makes the three-hour drive to Halifax to have breakfast with fellow former crew members of the Kootenay.
The 25 pills he takes each day are keeping Parkinson’s at bay.
“We’re seniors, but we’re not 92,” said Barb, who’s 65. “There’s lots to do around here and if you have an idea, all you have to do is make a few calls and everyone is going to come out to help.”
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