Good Night Sweetheart — Chapter Seven

I do not remember the conversation Kristin and I had that day. It was probably rather benign and uneventful. I fell in and out of sleep and she sat beside me until she could no longer bear the image. I imagine she walked the hallway not knowing what would come next and struggled with her emotions. She typically does not share her feelings; they are a very private part of who she is. I imagine she was quiet through dinner and returned to ask if I needed anything. She may have held my hand; I do not remember her touch. But I do know that she saved my life that day and made me understand that the most important thing I will ever learn is that I need her more than she will ever need me.


For a couple of months after, I toyed with dying. It is easy to die and so comforting. It was a familiar path and I had learned the way. Once you have been there, an indelible map is seared on your soul. I perfected the skill of meditation with help from friends and the hospital psychologist and visited the edge of death often in hopes I could feel the incredible joy again. I did not seek Brent’s presence because I knew he was happy and I had the incredible gift of saying good-bye. I sought the bright white light of love. Of course I was afraid I’d stay too long or step too far beyond coming back and I would leave Kristin alone. I finally relented to the hardware and attachments to my body and meditated only for pain relief, gratitude, and strength.

The details of the time I spent in the hospital immediately following the accident are gone. If I ever was aware of everything that was happening around me, the time I was in Deaconess Hospital in Billings, Montana is now gone, as are huge chunks of days and some weeks as I continued to recover. I absolutely know that I’ve consciously suppressed many of the details surrounding the trauma of the crash and Brent’s death. I know my own survival tactics and remembering the fear and pain is not something that would be beneficial to me, or to any other family member. The details we have are graphic enough and our imaginations can run rampant, but for now, there is no reason to undergo any kind of remembering exercise like hypnotism. I’m sometimes asked if I remember everything, or if I want to remember. No.

There was a time that I briefly entertained the thought that I might be expected to recount each detail and if I couldn’t do that voluntarily, I should offer to undergo hypnotherapy. That was entirely my sense of duty to explain the best I could what happened. Everyone knows that it was an accident and at no time did I ever feel like I was being blamed for the deaths of Steve and Brent. Except that I blamed myself, and still, years later although I’ve been through counseling, and have reconciled the role of death with my personal faith, I have dreams that clearly suggest that I still harbor some degree of guilt for living. Rational? No. But very real feelings just the same.

Memory is not a reliable source of the facts. But many times it is all we have. Fortunately, I could discern the difference between actual events and dreams. I was aware of things that were happening around me and I was coherent and talking, but for the most part, I forgot conversations quickly. I would fall asleep from survival exhaustion or pass out a few seconds after I pressed the button for the morphine drip. I rambled in mumbles at times while other times I made perfect sense. What was happening in my head was often different than what was happening around me. Trauma and drugs are superb cures for reality; however, there will never be doubt that I received two immeasurable gifts: the chance to say good-bye to Brent and the chance to say hello to Kristin. That resonance of absolute reality is as clear and pure as eternity itself.

My most profound memories of my hospital stay in Billings are Kristin’s voice and my mother sitting by my side as I dictated Brent’s obituary.

“We need to do this,” she said. “I know it will be difficult.”

It wasn’t. But writing anyone’s obituary other than your parents’ is unthinkable. Had I taken a vow to write his obituary, or for that matter, had I ever considered having to write his obituary, I would have prepared better. I would have jotted down something poetic about him every time he made me smile. I would have formulated the perfect words that told the world about how his eyes glistened when his children walked through the door. I would have outlined a ten-thousand word essay so the world could understand just who my love was. Instead, I mumbled through sedation small ordinary things and aside from the historical details and the funeral date and time, it was printed as I told her, it was about him, and it was true.

Between hospital visits and calling home to report my condition, my Parents, Kristin and her father, Randy, killed time with Bob and his family. Randy and I had married the year after my Freshman year of college, and along about the fourth year, my maturity took a nose dive and I decided I needed a break from marriage. It devastated Randy to lose his little family. We had a few tough years trying to find our own way through life without each other, and to make a sturdy bridge for Kristin as she jumped from one parent on weekends and the other on weekdays. But through the struggle, we remained friends and at different levels, we really never fell out of love. The day after my accident, Randy hugged Kristin as he put her on an airplane to Montana with my Mom and Dad. He cried all the way home and immediately bought an airline ticket for the next day to be with her.

“I can’t believe I put her on that airplane all by herself,” he told me later that year. “I wasn’t thinking. And I made her face that without a Father at her side.” He flew to Billings to spend a night and a day with Kristin as she numbly faced a tragedy that a sixteen-year-old shouldn’t have to face.

Randy and Brent had become friends because they shared a daughter. As I worked long hours at a fast-paced, demanding job that also required three hours a day of commute time, they made time to see all of Kristin’s school sports. They sat next to each other on the basketball bleachers cheering, urging, and cussing. Randy drove the fifty miles between our houses to coach Kristin’s softball team three days a week. Brent never missed a practice or a game. I worked through most of them.

In the hours that had passed since Thursday at noon, Kristin had been to Southern Utah, returned to Sandy where she heard the news in my Mother’s driveway, to Ogden to pick up her clothes, back to Sandy to live with Randy and his wife, and on to Montana to be with me. It had been a long exhausting 30 hours for her. She was also by my side a couple days later as she and I boarded an air ambulance jet with a team of intensive care nurses to fly back to Utah. We landed at the at Salt Lake International Airport Executive Terminal then rode in an ambulance to LDS Hospital where I was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit.

Kristin walked behind me as the Salt Lake City medical team pushed my gurney through the hallway into ICU. My little family was in the family lounge waiting for us to arrive. I had no idea that the day of our accident they were told to prepare for my death. She will not make it through the night. So they prepared themselves to say goodbye to a son and a daughter, a sister and a brother, their father and their mother. I made it through the night because of great health care professionals and because I did not take Brent’s hand. I chose to stay and I knew that I would be here with my family for many years. But they continued to ready themselves for my passing each day.

“Hey, Sis,” Dave said as tears streamed from his eyes. “How was your flight?”

I felt like I was lucid and alert but I also existed in a fog of fear, pain and despair.

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Sidebar:
You've reached the abrupt end. I have several more paragraphs and half chapters that I've started throughout the last 14 years, but it felt forced to write further about my survival because it was just about me. I've told the world what I needed to say. Good Night Sweetheart, I will always miss you. But I am doing fine. I'm happy.