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Meet Francis:

But we all just called him Frank.

I don’t know what made me scan these in and post them, but there’s something of a lengthy story behind them that I feel I need to get off my chest. Don’t continue reading if you don’t like sad endings.

I took these two portraits of him three or four years ago before I moved to Rochester. I had only a few months before started working with Frank and his eight housemates at the Nichols home. This was all part of Woodlane Residential Services in connection with the Wood County Board of MR/DD (Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities).

Nichols was a group home for adults with the most severe mental and physical handicaps in the entire county. For this reason we were sometimes called the “sick home.” The other Residential Assistants and I did just about everything there. We cooked meals, we cleaned, we did laundry. We assisted the residents in getting up in the morning and going to bed at night, getting dressed, using the restroom (including those who couldn’t actually use the toilet), and taking baths, mealtimes, getting in and out of wheelchairs, activities and outings. We handled all their medications and other medical needs, including albuterol breathing treatments, oral suctioning, and working with G-tubes (we had a resident who had to take all his meals and medications that way). Sometimes we even had to give out the dreaded “silver bullet,” a rectal suppository, when one someone was having trouble going to the bathroom (and when no amount of prune juice would help them).

Frank was the least physically disabled out of all the residents as he was the only one we could let walk on his own. (Carol was the only other person in the house who could physically walk but we absolutely couldn’t leave her unattended and everyone else were confined to their wheelchairs.)

Frank was almost completely deaf, so he never learned to speak. He tried, though, he mostly just talked to himself, making sounds to try and imitate what little he could hear. He knew a small amount of sign language–just how much I’m not sure because he only ever used one sign, the sign for “bathroom.”

And Frank had a tremendous collection of large toy trucks and stuffed animals. Each day he would load up his wheelchair (he had one but he didn’t necessarily use it) with trucks and toys and would wheel them out to the living room. And before he could go to sleep at night he had to load up his bed with them while carefully arranging them so that he could still lay down. Needless to say, everyone loved Frank. But this just made it harder to learn that he had cancer.

He had already been diagnosed when I started working there. I don’t know what exactly he had or whether it was untreatable or not. But he wasn’t getting any treatment for the cancer. We were just waiting it out and making him as comfortable as possible. He was dying.

I really got to know him before he finally passed away. I had maybe six months or so. We had, I like to think, a kind of bond between us.

Actually, I think he just liked me for my hair.

There were a lot of times where he’d give me a big hug that would last for several minutes while he patted my head. Or there were times when I’d come sit down next to him on the sofa and he’d pull my head down into his lap so he could use it like a pillow.

One night I remember in particular, he was playing with one of his trucks. It was a new one that his sister (his only relative) had recently given him. It was a toy version of the Mystery Machine from Scooby-Doo. The thing wasn’t really meant to be played with, for it was die cast metal with plastic wheels. That night, as it happened, one of the wheels broke off. He was upset about this and he wanted me to fix it. It couldn’t be done. But he couldn’t understand that and he kept trying; he kept pushing the black plastic wheel into its original place under the wheel well as if the truck could heal itself with enough pressure.

I felt something powerful there. There was something profound in his innocence and his naivety. I wish I knew what it was.

As Frank’s health declined he slept more and more. At meal times he began throwing his plate and cup onto the floor before grasping his head in both his hands and screaming. That was the only time you could ever tell if he was unhappy or in pain. The entire lower half of his body filled with fluid. We started giving him morphine.

He finally passed away one night after my shift ended. Our home superviser as well as a few other supervisers were hovering over him while he laid in bed, sleeping. They kept insisting he was in pain and kept giving him morphine. How much he got that night I dn’t know. And I honestly don’t know how they could assume he was in pain. If he was his face never showed it and he certainly couldn’t tell us. Thinking about the supervisers there makes me angry they were so clueless. In the end, we don’t really know if it was the cancer that took him that night or if it was the morphine or if it was a combination of the two.

And the supervisers never told us lowly residential assistants when the funeral was.

I took these portraits of Frank months before he passed away. I still find it remarkable that he made those poses completely on his own and that they show such different personalities. I used my 4×5 camera which confused him I think. During the setup I was using a graycard to get a halfway decent light-meter reading but Frank thought I was giving it to him. I didn’t have the heart to try and take it back. I never found out what happened to it.

He was one hell of a guy.