I found this article inspiring. It is written by Bob Shaw of the St. Paul, Minnesota Pioneer Press. What a solid message for families dealing with tragedies like brain injuries.
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Lisabeth Mackall stood barefoot in her hectic kitchen, eating macaroni and cheese on a countertop, too busy to sit for dinner.
“Tommy, can you please use some manners?” she snapped, as her son wolfed down his food.
Watching it all was Frank Mackall.
“I talk a little slower,” he said. “The hardest part is that it is self …”
He paused.
“Limiting?” suggested Lisabeth.
“Conscious,” said Frank. “I am self-conscious. The thoughts are there, but they can’t come out in words.”
“Well, your wife chats a lot,” joked Lisabeth, as she plucked a bug from his face.
Police officer Frank “The Tank” Mackall was injured in January 2012 — suffering brain damage that has changed his life and the lives of almost everyone who
MORE INFORMATION
The book “27 Miles: The Tank s Journey Home” by Lisabeth Mackall is available through her website, lisabethmackall.com.
The title refers to the distance from North Memorial Hospital in Robbinsdale, where Frank Mackall spent months recovering, to their home in Cottage Grove.
Her blog can also be found on the website. Frank Mackall’s progress can also be followed on Facebook, at Mackall Family Journey.
“Frank was essentially killed — the husband and the father and the person we all knew,” said Lisabeth. “He is gone.”
In his place, a new Frank Mackall is emerging. Day by day, he is clawing his way back, struggling to learn to talk, rebuilding broken family bonds.
A new Lisabeth Mackall is emerging, too.
She has discovered a latent talent as a journalist. She has written a new book, and her blog has attracted more than 200,000 visitors.
She has become a sought-after advocate for brain-injured patients, with 16 speaking engagements in May. She quit her job.
And a new family is emerging, with new rules, new relationships and new appreciation for each other.
“You know, it would have been easier if you had been killed,” Lisabeth said to Frank recently in their Cottage Grove home.
But she’s grateful that he wasn’t. “Not many people get a second chance like this,” she said. “Living is a gift. Frank being here is a gift.”
‘HE IS NOT JUST MY FRANK’
On Jan. 2, 2012, a woman in Savage called police. She had seen a prowler by her daughter’s bedroom window.
Officer Mackall was on duty. As he drove to the house, he slid on an icy road and hit a tree.
When his wife got the call,
She wouldn’t let their children see him. “They would never get over that,” she said.
Immediately, instinctively, she started a blog on the CaringBridge website.
It freed her from the onslaught of calls from well-wishers — and released a flood of feelings as her husband teetered on the brink of death.
On CaringBridge, Lisabeth laid bare her anxieties, the daily hassles, the dashed hopes and the exhilarating progress.
“I never really could write before,” she said. “Now I just sit down and write, go over it for mistakes, and I print it. I do not filter anything.”
She soon realized that her audience went beyond family and friends. She began to feel like the caretaker of a beloved public asset.
“He is not just my Frank,” she said. “He is the community’s Frank.”
Frank’s brain damage was severe. Rounds of therapy began, including hours a day to learn again how to walk and talk.
But he had one advantage. Lisabeth’s job happened to be — out of all possible careers — a brain-injury therapist. She had 17 years of experience, most recently an eight-year stint with ProStep Rehab.
“All the stuff, the ventilator and the vomiting blood, is not so scary to me,” she said.
But it made their lives awkward.
When Frank was released after almost three months, Lisabeth became the primary caretaker. She would
She lurched from role to role — wife, mother, therapist.
“It is a little yucky when your work universe lands in your home universe,” she said.
Frank felt conflicted, too. After several months at home, he made a request: More wife, less therapist.
Lisabeth felt like she was being pulled apart.
“I don’t know when it happened, but somewhere along the line of my career, my family took a back seat,” she wrote in her blog on April 25, 2012.
“They were second, or maybe even third. I loved my job — it was who I was — but didn’t I love my family more?”
‘I HATE DADDY’
“I hate Daddy.”
The words hung in the air. In the silence, Lisabeth looked sadly at her 7-year-old son, Tommy.
She knew what he meant. The boy missed his old daddy. His old daddy was funny, outgoing, brave. His old daddy was a policeman, tougher than any bad guy.
But his new daddy moved slowly, hardly spoke at all, and couldn’t play or read to him.
“That is one of the real feelings children have,” said Lisabeth, recalling the comment she posted on her blog last winter.
Their kids — Mariah, 16; A.J., 11; and Tommy, now 8 — had seen Frank as invincible. The new Frank, as Lisabeth called him, seemed weird, distant and alien.
“Tommy threw the mother of all temper tantrums,” recalled Lisabeth. “He said: ‘How could this happen? Dads don’t get hurt. Police-dads don’t get hurt.’
“He said, ‘Is Daddy here? Is Daddy not here?’ ”
Frank said recently that his boys have backed away from affectionate father-son horseplay. It’s as if they were afraid of hurting him.
“They are more gentle. They don’t play as hard,” he said recently.
“I miss it more this year. I don’t remember much of last year.”
‘HAD TO BUY ANOTHER FREEZER’
Neighbors responded to grief in the usual Minnesota way — with hotdishes.
The tide of food flooded in. “My mom had to buy another freezer to put it all,” said Lisabeth.
“Tommy would look at the spreadsheet on the fridge and say, ‘Oh, so-and-so’s bring us enchiladas tonight,’ ” she said.
The supply is so steady that she hardly cooks any more — which inspires teasing from Frank.
“I have a head injury,” he said in the kitchen one day, “but at least I didn’t forget how to cook.”
“You,” she smiled, “are such a brat.”
‘NOW WHAT?’
Since the moment he regained consciousness, Frank has been consumed with one goal — to get his old job back.
He works on his recovery every day. He got a driver’s license. He wears a camo T-shirt with “Police” on the back.
He exercises almost fanatically — running or lifting weights daily.
“He is in the best shape of his life,” said Lisabeth.
And yet it might not be enough.
Talking is still frustrating, Frank said. Thoughts form in his head, but words stumble in his mouth.
He struggles with his memory. “I can remember brief instances, but not long periods of time,” he said, haltingly. “Learning something new is hard.”
Frank’s progress has been “miraculous,” Lisabeth said. But the job of a police officer is difficult. “You want a police officer to be quick-witted, and at 110 percent,” she said.
One of Frank’s vocational assessments suggested an alternative career that left him stunned — a grocery bagger.
“I saw that and I just laughed,” Lisabeth said bitterly. “There are people born to be in law enforcement. That is Frank. You don’t tell a cop that he can be a grocery bagger.”
In February, a formal assessment of his abilities recommended giving Frank another year to successfully reapply for his old job.
“Then we will have a conversation,” said Lisabeth.
‘CURLING UP IS NOT AN OPTION’
Lisabeth’s new life has its rewards. She quit her job in May to devote more time to what she loves — being a mother, a wife, an author, a public speaker and an advocate for the brain-injured.
“Every time I talk, there is always someone crying,” she said.
“They say, ‘My sister has a brain injury, and you have given me hope that it can be OK.’ I have had law enforcement people crying too, and they aren’t supposed to do that.”
Her advice has changed. She no longer dispenses the usual sayings: “You can get through this.” “Don’t do everything yourself.” “Ask for help and support.”
“Now I just tell them: ‘Prepare to be overwhelmed,’ ” she said.
“I have more support than anyone else in the world. But I can’t do it. No one can ask for enough help.”
Whatever the future holds, she said, she and Frank will face it together — two new people in an emerging relationship.
In the kitchen, Frank listened, looking like a picture of a strong, tough cop. But across from him, eating macaroni and cheese, was someone just as tough.
“You can make the decision to work through it or you can just curl up,” said Lisabeth, between bites.
“Curling up is not an option.”
Bob Shaw can be reached at 651-228-5433. Follow him at twitter.com/BshawPP.
