Dying promise leads elder home

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Doris Paul feels she may have died long ago if she hadn't promised her dead daughter she would take care of four children she left behind.

Tears welled in the eyes of the 75-year-old Cree woman as she recalled going to Lac La Biche to identify her daughter, who died in a car accident 15 years ago.

"I saw her at the morgue and I couldn't believe it. I couldn't cry. I made her a promise I would take her kids," Paul said. "That's when I felt she died."

Paul was 60 at the time and didn't have the will to go on.

But her sorrow was quickly replaced with the responsibility of raising the family, who she considered her sons and daughters.

There was a large "communication gap" between her and the children. The youngest and eldest were boys, aged five and eight. The girls were six and seven-years-old.

"I didn't think of what I was going to do. I wasn't in my right mind," she laughed, adding it was a lot of hard work to raise the kids.

The children's father couldn't help because he had no house and his job took up all his time. He eventually drifted away from the family, Paul said.

Now the four children have families of their own.

That she had been orphaned at the age of two was a "heavy factor" in her decision to raise the family.

It wasn't until she was 14-years-old that she found out her mother and father were actually her aunt and her uncle.

Her mother, a Cree, had died when Paul was two years old. And her father couldn't take care of her after her mother died.

"Someone came down here and told me (of my adoption)," Paul said. " I used to do all my cleaning and cooking lovingly for my mother (her aunt). After that, I rebelled against anything and everything. The cleaning and cooking became more of a chore."

Because of her own experience, Paul pities foster children from broken homes, who are searching for their original parents.

"I feel sorry for the ones wanting to be accepted somewhere and finding nobody."

Paul finished school, took a business commerce course and got married right after graduation at the age of 17 and promptly moved to the Enoch Reserve with her husband.

Her life took many different turns. She left her husband and found another. Later she left him, as well. When her life seemed to be coming apart, she turned to drinking.

Life was "rough" for about 15 years until she finally settled down with a fisherman from Lesser Slave Lake.

"I had five good years with Frank. He dies," Paul said with a sad expression on her face.

Paul would rather not mention the trials she endured but took her last drink when she was about 52 and began to live a life of "total sobriety".

About three years ago unable to cover her medical expenses stemming from the arthritis in both knees and diabetes, she successfully applied for treaty status under Bill C-31 so her bills would be paid by Ottawa. Her mother was a Treaty Indian from the Sawridge Band near Slave Lake.

Her ill health hasn't been without its embarrassing moments, she says, recalling the first, and last, time she used the city's Disabled Adult Transportation System (DATS), which provides shuttle service to anywhere in the city.

She called the DATS office and asked to be picked up.

"They sent me a big vehicle, all to myself. I felt so guilty," Paul said, smiling. "The driver asked me where I wanted to go, and I said to him, The Moose Hall."

"He said, 'Moose bingo?'"

"I said 'Yes.'"

"I never got a DATS (vehicle) after that."

Before she had treaty status, a lot of her money went for taxis and medical bills. "Now I don't pay anything. I just give my treaty number."

That's how she got a walker, a wheelchair and other needed medical equipment.

When Paul got her first $5 treaty payment she "almost framed it. But I needed it, so I spent it," she laughed.

Now there are no major trials for the senior to face. She's enjoying her old age in Edmonton.

Paul has faced a lot of difficulty during her life: dealing with deaths in the family, having to raise youn children and overcoming alcohol abuse.

Now living in the stability of the Ansgar Villa seniors' complex near Edmonton's downtown, life seems to be getting easier and more fun as she grows older.