The Day It All Changed

I remember the day everything changed. I remembered it like it was yesterday. I was 11, it was September, school started the week before, but we had the Labor day weekend off. My mom was mowing the lawn and my dad was on a bike ride. We were all minding our own business when Ron drove up and had a hurried conversation with my mom. I didn't hear what was said, but the look on my moms face was memorable.

My mom looked like she went into shock and told us to stay at home and she would be back soon. Have you ever had that feeling that the world as you knew it was ending? I knew something was wrong, I knew everything was changing.

I remember our neighbor from across the street came over and tried to tell us that everything was going to be alright. It wasn't.

Everything else that day happened in a kind of blur. I remember going to the hospital and that there were a bunch of people that I knew in the waiting room for the ICU in support. I remember mu grandmother asking why these bad things kept happening to her. The thing I remember most of all from that night, was that because I was 11, I was too young to be on the second floor of the hospital.

I don't remember what words they used to tell me that my dad had been in an accident on his bicycle. I don't remember crying, I remember being confused like any 11-year-old would be.

The doctors wouldn't let my older sister and I in to see our dad. He was too hurt, we were too young. My 13-year-old sister sat in the waiting room with our family and friends, while I wandered the 1st floor by myself. Looking back that seems so wrong.

Someone finally came to get me from my first floor wanderings and said the doctors were going to allow us in the room with my dad. One at a time, but something was better than nothing. I remember the doctor saying to me, an 11-year-old, that I needed to go see my dad because he wasn't going to make it through the night.

What? Who tells a kid to go say goodbye to their dad?

I was devastated. I was the true daddy's girl. We climbed trees, rode bikes, played catch and all the other things girls and their dads do. He was my knight in shining armor, my protector. I think I died a little that day.

My sister was the first to go in and see him, because she was the oldest and it was only fair. I remember thinking, when she came out bawling, that I had to be strong. I had to be strong for my mom, dad, and myself.

When it was my turn, I straightened up, held my head high and braced myself for the worst. What was the worst my 11 -year-old brain could come up with? Whatever it was, the reality was worse.

There he was, lying on a flat bed, hanging upside down attached to the bed by straps, he had bolts in his head, his hair was shaved and his skin was yellow from the iodine. His elbow was shattered and pinned, his fingernails ripped off, he'd broken every bone in his neck and back and worst of all, his spine was severed. He was never going to walk again.

He thought he was going to die, because it's the first time I really remember him telling me he loved me.