Good Night Sweetheart -- Chapter Six

My story is all I know. Although I have been told the chronology of events, and family and friends have shared bits and pieces of conversations, I possess the emotional ties only to the story here. For years, the other stories were more than I could bear to hear. Only a little at a time was fine with me. My children own their own horror. Those I would not have wanted to live through. After hearing the details of each child’s grief, it seems I had the easy job of just surviving each day and going to the next. I would not want to have lived the moment each one heard of their father’s death.


I cannot imagine the pain Tiffany felt as she covered her ears when hearing the unexpected. She watched detached, as Chris took the news and fell to his knees, then faltered to her side. I picture the scene only because she has told me through tears how her mind left her and her legs began to run and run and run, until she fell in emotional exhaustion. Or Bree, who huddled in the arms of her new husband, drained of life before the night even began. She had been married only ten days when her bliss was interrupted with tragedy.

Kristin was with my mother and brother in Southern Utah attending a graveside service for my uncle. As my sister, Rebecca, took the phone call in the late afternoon, my family traveled home where they would be met in the driveway with a clutching hug and the shattering news. By the time my closest family members heard the news, Rebecca had called Brent’s parents, my friends and other family members then waited in grief for their arrival.

My pain was physical and was eased with medication and prayer. I could not have finished the housework that was left or walked into a room occupied with Brent’s belongings. Someone had to run their fingers across the metal cross bar of his mountain bike as they lifted it into the moving van. Imagination can take me to the cold metal touch if I want. For now, after years, I can still hardly bear to think of him without us. I am sure my heart was too tender to hear of him going away hours after it had happened.

Still, the hours are dark to me through the first day. I cannot remember the faces of the paramedics, nurses, and doctors who attended me, nor can I remember the decisions made or the words they spoke to each other. I can, however, imagine the scene and the grief they experienced. And I have reread the newspaper articles and medical reports many times in an effort to understand the facts. Trauma of this scale does not happen often in quiet Park County. As people have told me, the difference between a car wreck and an airplane accident seems more profound precisely because of its rarity. People just do not fall from the sky in the rural Montana valley. I had assumed that medical personnel, police, and rescue crews grew tough and indifferent about the people in their keep. That is not true, and it is evident from the love and care I have received from that day to now.

I suppose we sped the thirty miles to Livingston Memorial Hospital. And I suppose the medical technicians riding with me in the ambulance felt the same way for me as Bernadette felt for Steve. My vulnerable body lay before them as they assessed the damage and radioed to the hospital to prepare the staff. They were also heroes that day by reviving my mangled body twice before we arrived at the emergency room doors. I have been unable to obtain details of the resuscitation noted only as a brief note in my medical records, nor do I remember the event, but I am grateful for their successes in saving my life.

The photo published in the Livingston Enterprise showed an emergency team carrying me strapped to a flat backboard. I am no longer wearing shoes and my arms lie comfortably by my side. If it wasn’t for the airplane in the background, the picture looks like people in a first aid class in a mock exercise. There is no blood or visible injuries. But at 1:47 p.m. I was admitted to the emergency room with many. The initial diagnosis read like the index in a medical textbook. Many Latin words described my condition. Simply, I was beaten up pretty badly. I broke three ribs, and my right collarbone and shoulder blade. Both lungs were punctured and filled with fluid. My neck was broken in two places as well as three vertebrae in my upper back. I could not sit up, or use my legs and had no feeling from my armpits down. It was obvious that my spinal cord was either bruised or severed.

Breathing was difficult and raspy without the help of an oxygen tank. The immediate concern was to get me breathing independently. Chest x-rays showed a large amount of fluid in my right lung. The doctors carefully marked a spot on the side of my body where a chest tube needed to be inserted. Then a small incision was made between two ribs and a long plastic tube was inserted into my lung. Nearly two cups of fluid was drained, making it easier for me to breathe normally.

I arrived at the hospital wearing the cervical neck brace the EMTs used to secure my head while moving me into the ambulance. Carefully, but quickly, the emergency room team worked to reduce further injury to my neck and spine. I received an injection of [name of drug] which, when given shortly after a spinal injury, reduces swelling of the spinal cord and in some cases, aids in rapid healing. My blood pressure was stabilized with a low dose of Dopamine and I was given saline intravenously. Six people gently slid their hands under my neck, back, and legs to keep my body as still as possible as they lifted me onto the flat, metal bed of the MRI machine. X-rays showed that the damage to my vertebrae was severe, but only by taking a picture of the soft tissue of my spinal cord could they tell the extent of the damage and determine the level and severity of my paralysis.

Again, I imagine the sinking feeling each person on my triage team felt as they discovered that my spinal cord was fully severed and that my paralysis was permanent. In total, six bones were broken. The breaks in my neck and spine were high, which meant that I would have no use of any muscles below the highest severed part of my spinal cord.

As my head smashed into the side window where Brent sat, my chin bone broke in half, slicing my chin diagonally and deep to the bone. My upper lip was nearly severed and hung precariously crooked as I tried to answer the nurses’ questions. And although none were lost, my teeth sat twisted and askew and covered in deep red blood.

My brain was jolted back and forth within my skull, bruising precious brain tissue. At that time, it was not possible to do immediate tests to determine the extent of the brain damage, but I later requested tests that determined the effects the hard hit had caused. My short-term memory would be affected for years. Subsequent tests weeks later showed that the left optic nerve was pinched which caused blindness in my eye.

Once my vital signs were stabilized and the extent of my spinal injury was determined, the physicians prepared me for surgery to attach a support halo to my skull. Four screws were drilled into my skull and attached to a metal ring called a halo. The halo was then bolted to a plastic back and chest support, which kept the neck and back aligned correctly. It prevented my spine from further movement and I would wear the halo until the vertebrae were fully healed.

By 4:00 p.m., I was on my way to Billings in a medical air transport. The small Livingston Regional Hospital was no equipped to support trauma at the level I sustained for ver long. Once I was stabilized, preparations were made to get me to the capitol city in Montana, where a large staff could assess the next steps for my care. I do not remember anything until the next day. I lay in a strange city—a strange bed—trying to survive. The strength it takes to survive is something our soul and body musters without regard of our mind—we do not choose to survive—it happens because of a connection we have to something beyond us. I lay there seeing all the strangeness around me and only a few things I clearly remember. But that memory is the most profound surety I will ever know.

I spent some amount of time visiting Brent’s new world. It is a remarkable place! I struggle to get the description right even after thinking of it for many months. It took me years to get it to paper when I wrote a letter to my dear aunt who lost a son to suicide in 1999. Even after pen to paper, and many rewrites and edits, it is nearly impossible to describe the feelings I experienced. There are no words in English that can explicate the infinite language shared by angels. Writing and speaking of it cannot give it worthy brilliance or intelligence. Again, I will try to edit, describe, or interpret the joy it brought.

I am still not certain what got me there. There were no angels or whispers. No yearning to die or heart attack as far as the medical records shows. My resuscitation the day before was not connected to this experience and I was out of imminent mortal danger. There was no motion from a giant hand beckoning me forward or deep biblical voice urging me beyond, but I was drawn to walk to the tunnel.

To walk is not the correct description. I can only describe it as traveling because the apparatus or means of travel is not relevant there. I was drawn from every synapse within me to follow or seek a compelling presence before me. My entire soul reached toward an extraordinarily white light that emanated from within me. It was not a tunnel as the type you walk or drive through, but was more of a funnel of light pouring from my heart, only deeper. It began as a diminutive speck so small but so intense from the most fundamental part of my being. It radiated forward to a place far and beyond that I cannot imagine its distance or width. It spread out in front of me and around me. Within it the past was behind and eternity before me.


There is a paradox there where nothing should make sense but everything is made clear. It is clarity of emotion--clarity of rightness and balance. To follow something that emanated from within me seemed natural because I understood the science of it. As I try to understand it now, the depth of my intelligence does not extend to where I could ever hope to grasp the how’s and why’s of it all. But I know that eternity is immutable and definite. However, eternity is in no way tied to the religion or power or the God as I had been taught. It just was. The light was a personality—deep, and combined of millions of entities—yet of no one person. I was drawn to wallow in the feeling of it. I was in absolute pure emotion, the kind that you can only know in your quintessential rapture. It is Joy. Blissfulness. Absolute love, non-judging love, love, love.

To travel there, I did not walk or run or glide. I thought myself forward. And as I did, the light and love surrounded me. I felt it particularly in my chest, but deeper than even my heart of hearts. It could be that I walked for hours amid the whiteness. Or I could have walked for seconds, or was it a million of our lifetimes? Maybe it was the briefest of milliseconds. Time is as insignificant as distance there. As I walked forward, I began to recognize the familiarity of the emotion. Brent.

He formulated in the distance as a very small shadow. The light or love that surrounded the shadow made him look black in the midst of the white light. He was growing in size as we traveled closer to each other and though I recognized him by his soul, I did not recognize the shape of him for quite some time. I cannot gauge time, but I waited in anticipation for a very long time as the shadow came toward me—or was it I who came to him? I recall that he walked forward as a convenience, a frame of reference created for me so I could understand what was happening and not spend time analyzing the logistics of movement. He walked confidently, slowly and gracefully. I remember thinking that he walked without pain. I knew the figure formulating before me was for context only because I was incapable of fully recognizing that it was Brent if he was not contained in his body. He stood before me close enough to touch, however; I knew that we did not need to feel each other physically to know the reality of each other. He was surrounded with white so immaculate that the dark outline of his arms and legs was outlined in even purer white light. He emanated an aura of strong tenderness.

We stood, feeling each other together, and I closed my eyes and breathed in his essence. He spoke to me in his dear sweet voice that I miss so much now, and told me how much I was loved. Not only by him but a universal love that spread around me forever. Imagination cannot take me there again. I cry for the yearning of it. My soul aches for it just as my breast yearns for hugs or my eyes seek light. It is a feeling so powerful that if it were given to the strongest of us, it would make his knees weak and leave him so immensely fulfilled that he would spend eternity seeking even one more second of the experience.

As Brent spoke to me, in an instant I knew his thoughts. He did not mouth the words. Telepathy was something we had practiced when he was alive, and it became evident that it was natural once he began to speak to me again. I immediately understood that this mental power was a skill our bodies had lost through always speaking.

“My sweetheart,” I said with calmness. “I love you.” I had said those words thousands of times to him, but never was I able to convey how I really felt. Only once, this time, did I know that he understood the depth and conviction I felt. I thought love to every part of his soul. I cannot characterize where I concentrated, but I felt a reflection back from every organ, flesh, and cell confirming that he heard me and understood my love. I had no mechanism to hear his reply, just as he had none to speak. My ears were superfluous because I listened with all of me, and he spoke without saying. But there was a wholeness about us that felt solid and withstanding and right. And I heard his love as well.

“I love you, Kelly.” And he began to tell me about himself. “I am happy and well. You do not need to wish me there. It is good here, as you can see.”

“But, I miss you so much.” And longing welled inside me until I could not stand the intensity.

“I am well and busy. There is so much we can do here.” I did not ask him to explain because I knew that it was something more than I could understand at that time. Again, the science of it made sense. Now, I picture that he is busy enjoying his mind and his ability to do what ever his limited body did not allow.

Brent and I talked for quite some time about very personal and spiritual things that he and I share for eternity. He explained the complexity and simplicity of life beyond and my role in it all. It is not so very far from what I had believed for many, many years. We talked of Gods and Goddesses and about loving forever.

We talked of religions and the role of ritual and ceremony. And I understood that for some people, ritual is a necessary path to find the love I was feeling. I have since spent much time meditating about the things he told me. And in the same way that I immediately understood the physics of how I saw and spoke to Brent, I absolutely know the way to return. It is an intuitive understanding that cannot be explained. It is the act of seeking and giving to others the love I was feeling.

I felt no righteousness in Brent’s world. No judgment or guilt or ownership or possession. There is not custody to one person, there is only belonging to something that encompasses every person and every thought. Love is not exclusive to one man and woman. The type of love I was experiencing was more mature than what I felt on earth. I understood that there is no one who stands apart and above us. There is an entity that embraces everyone, everything, and we become a powerful loving part of that entity. We become an entire All who shares knowledge and emotion and experience. I cannot understand it now. It is an understanding whose intensity has faded in time. But I remember my conviction of its truth and I know that I will feel it again. I was not surprised by my sudden knowledge and as we spoke to each other about what is there and what we can experience, the simple truth he gave me that day was trust your heart.

“You are doing fine,” He whispered into my heart. “You have figured it out.”

It became instantly clear that I was asking him how we could be together. He answered clearly and definitely.

“Love.”

I understood simultaneously that I didn’t need to master love, but I needed to do the best I could, and nothing, no one but our mortal neighbors, judge whether we deserved to be together forever.

“You may come with me.”

My breath caught, and with a conviction so sure, I knew his invitation was genuine. He turned slightly to the right to open his world to me, gesturing come with me. “You can come if you want,” and I watched his lips and mustache make a grand smile as his head dipped a bit and his chin gestured into the broad expanse of light.

I saw the next few moments before they happened. My gaze focused on his extended hand. I imagined my fingers slowly feeling their way into his palm, and felt his grip as he lovingly bent his arm and pulled me toward him. I imagined the light getting whiter around us and my world leaving as I entered his. I could almost feel the warmth surround me and pour into the crevices of my spine. And I imagined us walking farther and farther away from my world.

I took a breath, righted my shoulders, and with anticipation similar to the expectation of that first dive into the icy quarry lake at Chico, I watched my hand reach for his.

I did not speak.

I simply moved closer with such a resounding, “Yes,” escaping my spirit then felt an overpowering force welcoming me forward toward him.

“Hi, Mom!”

Once again, instantly, my world changed forever, for better, and for love. I was startled from my soothing surroundings. Brent froze in time, my mind turned in on itself, and for the first time in many hours felt the intimacy of a familiar human voice. A noise outside the expanse of the eternal love intruded my consciousness.

Kristin opened my hospital room door and for the first time saw me lying in what must have been her ultimate horror. Nothing could have prepared her for the condition of her mother lying flat, immobile, with metal screws imbedded a quarter-of-an-inch into her skull. A bruise was growing deep shades of purple and green around my left eye. Stitches held my upper lip and chin in place and tubes of varying diameter attached me to monitors and IVs. I do not know if others followed, I suppose my mother and father entered the room as well, but the room was filled with overwhelming care and concern and Kristin was the source. But as though my condition was normal and nothing had changed between us, she came into the room with her confidence and unreserved charm. I realized it was her voice with no trepidation that called my name as though she was proudly introducing a new friend. With her happy, singsong voice, my darling baby was there to abruptly teach me more about love.

With a certainty I knew I would not go. I could not go. I was drawn to Kristin’s spirit as strongly as I was drawn to Brent’s. I looked into his eyes and did not need to tell him. I had already sent my message. I needed to stay to love my daughter.

“She needs me,” thundered through me and echoed throughout eternity.

I saw his smile clearly. His soul told me, made me realize, that was exactly what he knew I would say, and with that he began to grow smaller and smaller as though he was shrinking into the distance. Until the last thing he thought to me was, “I’ll be here.” And even with that thought it was clear he didn’t mean I should save myself for him or he would wait for me. It meant that we are always together—just a prayer away. And in the long run there is no ownership as a couple, he was not my sweetheart, I was not his wife, but we were together as one spirit, always.

And in that moment that he faded, I felt and heard the brilliance suck itself back into my chest—into that miniature spot where my soul is tied to my body. It began as a feeling of motion as though an image on a movie screen was sliding past me. The motion grew faster and faster until I could almost hear the light leaving. The edges of my vision began to fill with darkness and the funnel shape formed again. The far distance of it grew narrow and the point that was connected to me became more pointed. It pulled itself like an elastic band stretched tightly and rebounded itself deep and tight into my heart with a physical jolt and audible “pop,” and was gone.