FOR MORE THAN two decades Clarence Hiles has been the principal figure behind Hilltop Publications, producing a variety of publications covering a host of sporting activities in Barbados.
Today the writer is experiencing bouts of frustration as he fights to regain his writing skill. Sometimes he struggles with the use of everyday words and is occasionally confused when identifying daughters Clare and Kerry.
The Irishman, who adopted Barbados as his home after his marriage to Barbadian Pamela Toppin 29 years ago, suffered a devastating stroke last February after undergoing surgery in Britain.
Now on a slow road to recovery with the assistance of three therapists, whom he sees three days a week, he can again speak in sentences. This is significant progress from ten months ago when he lay on a hospital bed unable to say anything apart from “yes” or “no”.
With his wife Pamela, his “partner in marriage and business”, constantly at his side, he is making his way back and dreams of being well enough to write another book.
Sitting across from Pamela at their St George home recently, with their latest publication open at a photograph of a Barbados sporting great, Clarence said in somewhat halting speech: “I usually do the writing and Pamela has really had to do that in the past eight or nine months.”
He had barely completed the editorial writing for his “labour of love” publication entitled 50 Barbadian Sporting Greats last February, when he decided to head to Britain for heart surgery.
At last he had decided to take the time to address a condition known as atrial fibrillation, a type of irregular heartbeat that had dogged him for many years. Taking his local cardiologist’s advice, he set down his pen and went off to have the corrective cardiac ablation procedure done.
The memory of his father dying from a heart attack at age 38 was enough to persuade him to have the surgery, though he was aware that blood-thinning was one of the risks involved that could lead to a stroke.
It was a panic-stricken Pamela who realised her husband was in the battle of his life hours after the five-hour surgery, when she saw him in the recovery room of a London hospital just repeating numbers in a meaningless babble.
“There was my husband; he could not say my name,” Pamela interjected, her voice still bearing traces of her initial fear.
Clarence was the Romeo whom she had met when he first visited Barbados on a cricket tour; the “old man” – as she had then described him to her mother – who had caused sparks to fly when the two first set eyes on each other at a popular Bay Street nightclub.
“When that stroke happened, it was extremely dark for me and I needed to speak to people who had been through this experience and had come out the other end. A lot of people called me from all over the world and said, ‘Don’t panic, he will come back’,” Pamela said.
It was the kind of hope she desperately needed.
Clarence added: “I suffered dreadfully from that experience. It involved staying four days, which I don’t really remember very much about, and then three weeks in the intensive unit and then a rehab unit.”
Like a child, he had to be taught the alphabet all over again in what he now describes as “the start of the blackest period of my life”.
”The fact that I could not write was a dreadful blow. To be honest with you, I thought I was going to die. I didn’t think I was going to make it,” he said, all the while stroking the family dog sitting on his lap.
But he is full of gratitude for the way his family rallied around him. He acknowledges he has “a long passage” ahead trying to regain good health and with the re-education process.
“I struggle a bit with reading and with my knowledge in terms of [having] lost a lot of the vocabulary that I was used to – the everyday words – but it is coming back slowly,” he said.
His love for reading is also coming back and he is heartened by this because reading, along with writing, is his “lifeblood”.
Pamela is also reassured, especially after seeing Clarence again exhibit his skills as a former banker – and doing a faultless accounting job – when he took over accounting responsibility for the business from someone she had hired one month after his hospitalisation.
He is still a mortgage broker and tells you realistically: “Writing books does not pay the bills but it has been very satisfying.”
He pores over 50 Barbadian Sporting Greats with a sense of fulfilment. It is the publication that he and his wife worked on together and came out of an idea to do something special for Barbados’ 50th anniversary of Independence.
The itch in his fingers is there and he says: “I would like to write other books once I can get back to full speed, but one of my challenges is the vocabulary and to get fluent in terms of reading.”
His wife reveals that nine months after the stroke, he is starting to write “a little bit”.
“He will tell you I have to fix it because some words are inverted and some of it does not make sense, but I know what he is trying to say and I will fix it,” she said, with Clarence nodding his head and looking at her lovingly with a warm smile.
He no longer feels “destroyed” by the stroke. He believes he is well on the way back to doing what he loves most.
“The fact that I could not write was a dreadful blow. I felt depressed about that. For quite a long time I did not believe that I could actually write, but at this point in time I reflect on how much [progress] I have been able to make. I know I can write; I know I will write at some stage; I know I will be able to write good articles at some stage,” he said deliberately.
His brush with death has opened his eyes to the difficulties experienced by stroke victims and he and Pamela are now partnering with the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Barbados, to which they give $10 from the sale of every copy of their latest book.
Clarence’s friends at the Rockley Golf Course, where he used to play, have been taking him back to the greens to practise. Along with golfing and the morning walks he takes with Pamela, he has managed to lose weight.
The 67-year-old writer said: “I feel that life has given me a second chance because a lot of people prayed for me,” both in Barbados and in his Irish hometown where, at one stage, the word went out that he was dead.
Before February 2016, he felt he was “invincible“ and there were no problems in life he could not tackle. But Clarence’s illness has brought him to a point where he says: “Now I believe that there is a reason for me to exist; that I have a purpose.”
However, he does not know yet what that purpose is.
