Gravel, God, and Gratitude; One Year Later

Today marks one year since the day my husband and his Ducati went down on Houston's 610/59 interchange. During the past year I thanked God for every angel who helped my family heal.  But one angel in particular stands out, and I have no idea whether or not she was real.

If my February 19, 2014, were a movie, it would open to a grainy graphite blur, muffled movements, the crackle of gravel under rubber soles.  From just outside my right ear would be a woman's voice. Loud. Strong. A firm, sturdy, Southern woman . Conviction booming with every syllable running like a rapid river with no punctuation.

 

"LORD hear me send Your angels to this soul usher them forth to carry his spirit hold this man up lay your hands upon him dear Jesus HEEEEALL this man Lord hear me send Your angels now to his side Jesus we pray...."

 

Like waking from a dream in a foreign church trying to pray in a manner unfamiliar to my own but knowing that the spirits and Gods are all of one universal understanding in this precise moment.  Gasoline, tar, reinforced steel blends as I am squinting into focus. My husband's helmeted head under my hands so careful not to move him an inch and to keep him stable.  He is as motionless as I am breathless as this woman continues overhead, eclipsing the morning sun, the only movement on a dead stopped highway. Where the hell is the ambulance!?

 

"Heal this man Jesus do not take him home send your angels to his side Lord I pray that you are here with us today..."

 

Life or death moments move so painfully slow in a dreamlike state where the words I scream don't make a sound.

 

"Tell her...." my husband utters and I am electric with surprise!  He is conscious! He is alive under all that leather road gear! I lean closer to hear him because his breath is strained, uneasy. "Tell her to shut up........  I can't think."

 

I turn to ask her to be quiet and though I still hear her voice tapering off, she is gone. As if she were never there. The noise of her voice replaced by approaching sirens and I am abruptly aware of bystanders, motorcycle debris in the road, a rush of activity closing in, forcing me out. Scanning the crowd, I look for the praying woman over this bridge of cars jammed to a halt in jagged angles to avoid crashing themselves.  I've lost her without being able to thank her.

As weeks of recovery went by and my husband began to remember his own February 19, 2014, movie, the first thing he recalled was the endless spinning of his body as it careened down the highway. The second memory was hearing the praying woman.  A memory always accompanied by a regretful cringe of speaking to someone so harshly.  Especially someone who wanted only to help.  But in that moment of sudden consciousness,  he had forgotten how to breathe.  Through the chaos and pain the brightest light was this woman praying to her God on my husband's behalf.

Now, one year later, as we look back on that day we don't remember the hospital, the injuries, the lack of justice.  We simply rejoice in the many miracles that started with one woman's fearless voice to pray to God for strangers on the road before her.  A simple act of kindness that changed my life forever.

LOVE  &  ANGELS



Six Months of Healing

Woooooooooot!!!  We have reached the six month milestone!!  Six whole months, 180 days and however many minutes of recovery tick and tocked off the clock!  Yet February 19, will forever be linked with the day the Ducati went down..... the day I nearly lost my husband.  The day I screamed like a banshee over Kevin's body where he landed crumpled and unresponsive in the middle of Houston's 610/59 interchange.  At that moment time froze solid and I couldn't see even 6 seconds into the future.

 

Wow!  Really?  Six months already!!? Six months is just a measure of time, the distance from point A to point where we want to B. At day one, six months is nothing more than passing hour by hour until day two.  At day five, each consecutive day in the hospital feels like a prison sentence without having committed a crime.  At day 180, time seems to have flown by leaving little trace of the days in between.  But there were days: long days, difficult days, and fearful days.  But mostly there were days of gratitude.

 

It's rare to get a second chance at life.  The generous gift is not one to be taken lightly.  We had to let go of anger and frustration that there is no one to hold accountable for the hit and run.  We learned to put our stock in the slow process of healing both physically and emotionally without becoming bitter.  We slowed down, readjusted, and strengthened the bond that cemented him and me as WE.

 

We are forever grateful to the February 19 angels on the highway, the Ben Taub Trauma Center staff, and all our friends and family who have cheered us on for the past six months.  We love you!

 

LOVE & HEALING

 



Healing Week 5

Five weeks of recovery is now under our belt.  We have learned to adjust to life in the slow lane- to linger over coffee, read magazines cover to cover, and put away the alarm clocks. Our home is like a time capsule. Kev's briefcase leans against his dresser- still unpacked from his flight home the night before the accident. That sofa I was reupholstering is frozen, mid-room, ghostly draped in muslin.  My studio door remains closed while healing takes top priority.

The final toll was heavy: 8 broken ribs, smashed scapula, dislocated clavicle, punctured and collapsed lung, pneumothorax, hemothorax, and the crushing blow of two pulmonary emboli.  The discovery of the emboli was nothing less than divine intervention. Had it not been for the tenacity of a student doctor to stand up to his supervising physician and push for c-scans Kevin would've been released with two time bombs in his lungs.

I have never not known this man.  We grew up across the street from one another, raided each others' forts, spent summer nights in homemade tents, and shared a first kiss playing spin the bottle in his garage.  The past two weeks at home have felt like those nights in the backyard tent- not sleeping close, but wishing we could.  Talking about dreams and childish wants until we fall asleep.  Words filling darkness, chasing away fears of mythical beasts, erasing uncertainty.

 

At times in the hospital I would see that 10 year old boy with eyes green as early spring moss blinking awake in an unfamiliar room.  Through the night he woke often, sometimes believing he was in Thailand, other times in Dhaka, and he wondered why the airline let us linger so long in this hallway. His days blended, confused in hydrocodone mists and blinding fury of pain. Those days are memories now and despite the trauma, Kevin has little recollection of just how much danger he was in.  For while he hallucinated, I hung tightly to the precipice of every breath, every lab result, every unmade memory for which I foolishly believed we had time.

What unfolds in these moments is the realization that life was getting the best of us.  Before the accident, days were planned according to outdated goals.  We endured weeks apart for the few days together between work, travel, and jet lag.  We became normalized to love in fragmented time.

Slowly we are reclaiming what routine has a bad habit of burying.  Perhaps we're that half full type of folk who see the positive shining brighter than the bad.  Maybe it's the scare of nearly losing life that sharpens one's focus and blurs out the frivolous.

 

 

Now as we reconnect, we see the disconnect and are not content to resume that mode.  In many ways the accident brought us closer than ever before.  Words left unsaid have been spoken and roads we've wanted to explore will now be traveled.  What lies ahead will be greeted together, with one voice, and hands clasped with the strength of every life past life we lived together.

LOVE  &  RECOVERY

Comfort in Trauma

You never know how it feels to be alive until you know how it feels to die.

I've sang these lines a thousand times while listening to Noah and the Whale in my studio.  Until two weeks ago these were just words. The moment I saw my husband hit the highway pavement, his motorcycle still spinning ahead of his limp body, those lyrics became my greatest fear.

Today is day 16 of my husband's recovery at Ben Taub Trauma Center in Houston. 

 

Time is amorphous in the hospital.  Foggy days, mixed up nights, stripped of every normal human routine.  Our section of a room shared with three other patients has no window.  Minutes dissolve into hours and drain away the days.  Progress is measured in tubes in and out, x-ray results, and ambulatory devices.  We have watched many roommates arrive and go home while we remain. Bunking with people with whom our paths would least likely cross, we all ride the roller coaster together. And perhaps most of us are better because of it.

In a trauma hospital there are few illness patients.  Our roommates have been shot, run over, stabbed and involved in horrific accidents.  Police officers sit outside many rooms waiting for the accused to heal and to take victim statements.  There are those in grave condition and those with mere wounds requiring a one night stay.  Some we have befriended through the curtains, others we couldn't wait to see discharged.  Though we are a truly diverse group, we share common bonds of pain and healing.

I have met two other women tending their husbands, remaining at the bedside to give comfort: one Asian, one Hispanic.  We don't speak the same language but we communicate through our expressions.   Looks of fear, worry, relief and sadness are universal and within these facial cues we lend one another support. Through the curtain we hear each other's cries, the sighs of relief, and laughter.  I know these women are like me refusing to leave the loves of our lives. Over the weeks we have learned basic greetings in each other's dialect.  We offer awkward hugs sometimes misread between cultures but in our need to not be alone we have found each other.  

Life changed without warning two weeks ago.  I feel I've lived a lifetime in between then and now. My husband is healing and soon we hope to go home, to regain a sense of truly living, to feel the sun escort the true hours of each day.  Life will never be the same.  In fact I believe it will be a more authentic, more tolerant, more understanding, more loving life.

 

LOVE & HEALING

Snippets

Accidents like this are recalled in snippets.  Sudden flashes that remind me it's all real.  Images that greet me before I even open my eyes in the morning, waking into another day of getting up, splashing water on my face, and getting to the hospital.  As I drive I remember what day it is and what the original plan was before the crash.  Hotel reservations never cancelled, road trip dates passed, and daily routines slammed to a halt.  It's all a blur as I make it from League City to Ben Taub Hospital in downtown Houston.  Though the days are long I carry on.  My husband is alive.  Everything else is insignificant. 

 

 

On February 19, 2014, Kevin was riding his motorcycle to Mancuso Power Sports to check out some bags for his new Ducati Mutistrada. He just returned from Singapore the day before and in three weeks he would be riding a motorcycle through the back roads around Cape Town, South Africa.  It was a good day. I followed behind him so we could grab some lunch while we left the bike at the shop for a routine check. Merging on to 59 South from 610 North in Belaire, my husband was blind sided by an SUV that made a crazy last minute, illegal lane change.  That snippet plays over and over. I see a car beginning to change lanes.  One car separates me from my husband.  Though I can't see my husband's bike I know there isn't room for that vehicle coming over. And then I see something like a ragdoll go up in the air and back down out of my sight. I know he's down.

There are other snippets that endlessly loop: my frantic screams, my husband unresponsive on the road, the stillness of traffic halted, the deafening fear in the silence of knowing this is life or death.

 

Angels also come in snippets.  It's amazing how many people stay in their cars and watch but then there are the few that come to help.  The man who sees everything and is first to call 911.  A complete stranger who prays over my husband and in that moment he wakes. A man who reminds my husband to breathe. The neurosurgeon just ahead of the scene who runs back to assess Kevin while we wait for first responders to make their way through snarled traffic.  Every driver who pulled aside to let the ambulance through.  The woman who gave me a hug.  I'll never know who these people are in their everyday lives but in their moments of stopping for strangers and doing whatever they could, they will always be angels in my heart.

 

Today is day 8 in the hospital.  These hours also play out in snippets though they feel like one uninterrupted sequence of lightless days. Emily, our daughter, and I take our comfort here.  We pass the moments with quiet pursuits waiting for the day we remember the healing journey in distant snippets.



LOVE  &  HEALING