Four months after James Jones was released from a 265-day stint at a hospital recovering from a brain aneurysm that led to a stroke, his wife of three years asked for a divorce.
“She said, ‘I can’t do this,’” Jones recalled. “But I begged her: Please don’t divorce me.”
Though more difficult days were in the offing for Jones, eventually he would overcome his physical impairments, even learn from them to form the basis of a successful business offering personal training to people living with disabilities.
But at the time, wheelchair-bound, Jones tried his best not to rely on his wife, who was a registered nurse, for care. He said he’d rather take the three hours to shower on his own rather than depend on someone else to do it for him.
Eventually, Jones and his wife decided to try and make their marriage work. They packed up their belongings and moved from Kansas City, Mo., back to Montrose.
It was there his wife finally decided to leave.
“(Getting sick) should have brought us together, but it did not,” he said. “But that’s one of the heartaches of relationships. Something like that is either going to bring you together or not bring you together.”
Still recovering from a stroke, and now alone in a place without friends or family, was a dark time, and Jones wasn’t sure what he’d do, or what he was even capable of doing because of his disability.
Looking back now, he says that’s where the healing began.
Jones couldn’t speak
Jones and his wife first moved to Durango 10 years ago. She had just graduated from a school in Kansas City, where Jones was working for FedEx. She wanted to move, so they did, he said.
Just two months in Durango, Jones woke up in the middle of the night with an unfamiliar pain. His wife stirred from sleep and said he was talking crazy. They rushed to the hospital early that morning.
Doctors said Jones had suffered a brain aneurysm that caused a stroke. He was put on 27 pills a day and told he would never walk or drive again. For the first 3½ months, he wasn’t able to speak. Medical staff was so concerned that Jones could die at any moment, they kept him hospitalized for more than seven months.
Slowly, Jones – who previously was completely healthy – had to come to terms with his illness.
“My family lived in Orlando, and not one of them came to visit me,” he said. “Not my mother, not my sisters, not my aunt. You can imagine, being in a hospital and I thought something was wrong with me. What did I do to them? They said they didn’t think I would die, and that was hard.”
One day, Jones decided enough was enough, and he resolved to take his chances leaving the hospital. The couple left Southwest Colorado and moved to several Midwest towns because of his wife’s job as a registered nurse.
By the time they moved back to Montrose about three years ago, Jones had rehabilitated himself out of a wheelchair, a walker and then crutches. Still, he and his wife were unable to repair their relationship, and she left.
“It was very lonely, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I tried to figure it out, but I couldn’t. It was horrible,” he said. “But that was the beginning of my healing. It taught me I didn’t need to depend on anyone else. To have someone there to help take care of me is great, but I needed to know I could do on my own anything that needed to be done.”
Jones then moved to Durango and started going to the gym every day. There, he said he started to feel better and better – as if his life had taken on a new form. He’s now able to walk, though some health risks still linger.
Jones also started volunteering as a cook at the Shelter for Volunteers of America, and joined the board of The Southwest Center for Independence and Community Connections. And then, he turned his sights on other disabled people.
He said many who are deemed disabled after an illness have a tendency to become depressed and prefer to stay inside. He wanted to fix that.
“They have unique ability to want to stay home, not go out and do anything because there is this idea nobody likes them,” he said. “After I looked at it, of the 57 million people in the U.S. that claim a disability, only 2 percent said they exercise. That’s unacceptable. That’s when I got on the bandwagon of my own business.”
Jones launched Be Fit Be Able, a personal training program for people with disabilities. He now has 150 clients throughout Durango, Cortez and Farmington, and works out either at gyms or in homes.
“There’s been excellent results,” he said.
“I want them to do everything they want to do. When they start working out with me, those things start to generate slowly but surely without a doubt. Being disabled has opened my eyes, and shown me life is so much more worth living now than it has ever been.”
Jones said he holds no grudges for his wife or family that didn’t visit. Life’s too short and there’s too much to do. But after his long recovery, and the challenges ahead, he said he’s been renewed with a sense of compassion that wasn’t there before he got sick.
“I think I’m a better person than I was 10 years ago,” he said.
“I’m so different now. I’m always happy, excited, motivated and always trying to motivate other people. I realized I was never lonely, I just thought I was lonely.”
jromeo@durangoherald.com
