This story is my husband's story. It is his brother's story. It's his whole family's story, thus I guess it technically does make it mine now too. I didn't live the tragedy but I live the aftermath of it every day. My kids are directly impacted everyday because of one moment in time before they were ever even dreamed of. There are some events that occur that change a person's course in life. Once changed it has a ripple effect that spreads to every person they meet. This story is one of those events that stopped time for a split instant and set each of us on a new path. I was meant to meet Craig. And marry him. And bear his children. I've always known this. Thus, this event ultimately changed my course, without me even knowing it.
This story is one of tragedy, a story of dreams shattered, a story of too many lives irrevocably altered in an instant. It's a story you read about and your heart aches for that family. It's a story you pray to God never comes to haunt your life. It's a story you warn your kids about when they start driving. It's a story that keeps parents up at night until they hear that car pull safely into the driveway after prom, a night out with friends, or a party after winning a big wrestling match.
My husband's car carrying him and his best friend, his brother Mike, never pulled in after that party.
Instead, his parents got the worst wake up call a parent could get, as they thought their boys were sleeping over where the party was. My husband had been drinking and did go to sleep but when he woke up a little before 2am he got his brother to go home. His brother offered to drive but he only had his junior license so Craig said no. Though his BAC wasn't excessively high, it was over the legal limit of that time. Granted, any amount in an 18 year old is illegal. After spending all week making weight and wrestling earlier that evening his body was physically exhausted, as any wrestler can attest to. The drinking certainly didn't help. My husband dozed off about a mile from home on a long winding road with a speed limit I feel is still too high for such a road. In that instant his eyes closed he swerved off the road and hit a tree. And then some more trees. Neither he nor his brother were wearing their seat belts.
When Craig came to he saw his brother. He thought he was dead. He wasn't. But he suffered permanent brain damage which has left him confined to a wheelchair since that fateful February day 16 years ago. Mike was in a coma for some time and then underwent treatment and extensive rehab to relearn everything. he needed to retrain his brain to talk, eat, drink, move his body and walk again. Though his brain still doesn't tell him to walk or use his left hand he can take some steps with support and he's come a long way over the years. When I met him a few years after the accident he still had to get fluids through a tube because his brain didn't tell him he needed to drink and he still didn't say all that much.
Now, he does volunteer work at Good Sheppard, where he spent a great deal of time rehabbing, he has worked at a local gym and remains the funny, good natured guy that everyone in their small town knows and has always loved. I can see a part of who he was in the man he's become, despite needing almost constant care, provided by his mother. While he remembers everything up until the accident, his short term memory remains remarkably impacted from his injury. Along with a number of other body movements and functioning.
Why do I feel this story needs told? Because I believe everything happens for a reason, even the tragedies of our lives. I've written this time and time again if you're a regular here. I tell my husband this because he can not see how anything good possibly came from "killing his brother". Which is what he told me he did when I met him 3 years after the accident. Imagine my surprise when I went home with him for the first time and met Mike! To my husband though, his best friend died in that accident. To my husband, he took his brothers future, his hopes and dreams, any chance at the kind of life everyone envisions having. Marriage, kids, maybe a state wrestling title, as his brother was quite talented. He can't get past what could have been and focus on what is and all that Mike has accomplished. He graduated high school. He's a volunteer. He works. He even has a prestigious award named after him at his high school!
He doesn't have the life everyone dreamed of during his first 15 years of his life, but he is alive. He blesses everyone he knows with that each and every day. That blessing also rips my husbands heart out each time we visit.
I can't say how I would live with such guilt. All I know is there must be a reason. And there must be good to come of this. Craig was sentenced to tell his story to local schools rather than being sentenced to prison. While I think this was more beneficial to his family, than to deal with one son in a coma, one in prison and a younger one essentially left to grow up much too quickly, these talks started too soon after the accident. Their only impact for my husband was to repeatedly retraumatize an already distraught 18 year old whose life just changed forever.
But... if even one kid in one of those rooms stopped before getting behind the wheel because they remembered his story.... Maybe that saved one kid and that kid's parent's the pain and heartache Craig's family has had to endure. Maybe OUR kids will think of their uncle mike and remember to put their seat belt on every. single. time. they get in the car. And God willing, maybe they will NEVER take a sip of alcohol and get behind the wheel, or get in the car with someone who is under the influence.
If my husband's daily, lifelong guilt and pain can save our children from the same fate, that has to mean something, right? Maybe me meeting Craig and having this blog, giving me the opportunity to share this story can prevent you or your child from the same fate. But still, I feel there must be more than that. Granted, saving one life would be enough, I don't think my husband is capable of seeing it that way. Even with all his responsibilities as a father and husband, I have no doubt he would trade his life without a second thought if it meant giving his brother back the life he feels he took.
So what's more? What else good can there be? I've said it before but I truly don't think our children would exist had this accident not changed my husband's course. Yes, he was accepted to Penn State at the time of the accident but he still had an Ivy League option to consider and some scholarships as possibilities at smaller schools. He ultimately chose Penn State for the cost and to remain close(ish) to home during his brother's recovery. Had he not made that decision, it's doubtful we would have met, but hey, anything's possible I guess. And while I imagine I would have children, they wouldn't be these children had we not met. To me, THAT makes a world of difference. That's the good in all this for me. Our kids bring joy to my mother in law, whose life was altered just as dramatically as my husband's after that day. She deserves the joy my two monsters being her. That's the good.
Who's to say Craig wouldn't be even worse off with his drinking if he hadn't met me and become a father? One day we will be responsible for taking care of his brother and if his alcoholism got completely out of control, as in he couldn't hold a job, pay bills or otherwise function other than to drink, he would not be able to take on that responsibility. While that is a moot point had the accident never happened, it doesn't mean he wouldn't have become an alcoholic anyway and potentially destroyed his own future in some way.
Everything, absolutely everything happens for a reason. I read about parents starting these remarkable foundations to honor their children who were taken too early. Whether by illness, accident or crazy people shooting up a school. People everyday deal with tragedy. To me, it's not about getting through it and surviving, it's how you choose to live despite it. To me, focusing on whatever good can come from the most horrific thing life hands you is the only way to honor those we love and this one life we've been given.
Now, I certainly can't stop a drunk driver from crashing into my own car. Many things in life, such as that, are simply out of our control.
I also can't make my husband see things the way I do and to find the good and focus on it. I can't make you wear your seat belt. I can't make everyone I meet talk to their kids about not drinking and driving. I can't make anyone not get in a car with someone under the influence. But those things ARE in our control. Each and every one of us can make these choices. Like me choosing to share this story with all of you. With the hope that you remember it someday when it matters most.
This isn't some mock crash you watch before prom in your high school parking lot.
This isn't a story you read about a stranger far away and think, oh how sad, then just forget and go out drinking that weekend without a designated driver or a plan for how to safely get home. If you read this blog then in some ways, you know me. You have read how this one decision to drive home after a night out drinking can change absolutely. everything. Any one decision can alter not only your course in life but the lives of people you've never even met yet. A snap decision to drive after drinking, or get in the car with someone who has been drinking, or doing drugs, can in essence change the entire world with it's ripple effects. And THAT, we all have the ability to control.
I pray that this reality never becomes a story that any of you need to tell.
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| Leaving our annual Phillies game to celebrate Mike's birthday. |
God bless ALL of you, Jaci! Your family is blessed to have YOU in their lives. And, what a heart-wrenching, but inspiring, story. Thank you for sharing! Love you!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ann! That's so sweet :)
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