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All true.
We are also the result of fate, sometimes.
7/16/08 I was in an accident that killed me. Literally, coded six times - in the ditch, on the life-flight helicopter, and on the table. Surgeon came right out and told me a year after "man, we all (in the E.R.) thought you were going to leave in a bag."
I went to work that day...and didn't come home for nearly six months.
Part of my internal injuries included 2 closed-head brain traumae - swelling, bleeding and bruising to my stem, and to my frontal lobe. Coordination....and emotion/personality.
We all change. We all make choices. Those choices bring about gradual change in our lives and personalities. These injuries....were a global shift in who I am, how I thought, how I felt, how I behaved...and they were instantaneous. I came to in the hospital 2 weeks after the accident, and my first thoughts were "where am I" and "who the hell is inside my head". It was years of therapy coming to terms with the fact that a) I was never going to get "myself" back again, and b) that was O.K., and I just had to make the best of who I'd become in the blink of an eye.
I am nowhere I ever thought I would be in life.
I am no longer married. I was when I had the accident...but apparently it was too much for her. I had to keep forging ahead; she chose not to. I was pissed at the time. Extremely angry. I still probably wouldn't piss on her head if her hair was on fire...but the anger is gone. I see her all the time anyway - she's currently married to one of my drummers (I work with live bands, when the world is open for business). Whatever. Just another landmark, on the highway of life.
My life has gone down a completely unexpected path. I cherish every memory I have - good AND bad - because I know those memories can be wiped out in the blink of an eye. My life has been good to me - this new path is not a 'bad' one, it's just not anything I ever expected myself to be doing, or a place I ever expected to be in.
I am extremely lucky, on many fronts...not the least of which, simply still being alive.
Cherish everything, good AND bad. It can ALL be taken away from you in an instant.
Trust me.
I've been there.
I been there three times now. I can relate...although I just good old fashioned bleed
out and croak, results of cancers and ulcers and all that ****.
Traumatic head injury is a whole 'nother critter, though.
My best friend when we were 19 was thrown from a convertible MG one night and
went down a similar path as you. Kids, out on a Friday night doing stupid kid things
and went airborne on a country road, that's all....
I wasn't there that night, called away for something else. Otherwise, I would have
been.
He spent months in a coma. His parents, the best sort of people, had their lives
wrecked....and I spent all my free time each day in the hospital room with him,
giving them a break to go eat or some such.
I talked to him all the time, brought in things to try to get him to wake up like
his musical instruments (he was an amazingly gifted musician), just anything -
knowing he probably wasn't hearing me.
Didn't matter. Had to try.
When he did finally start to come out of it months later, it was a surprise to the
staff. It took several days for him to get back enough to start to function and it
was excruciating to witness, but it had to be done.
We had witnessed a miracle!
Unfortunately, he also was not who he was before the wreck - at all.
A formerly very happy, intelligent gifted young man was gone, replaced with one
who had a lot of anger issues and was disrespectful to about anyone.
I took it and stayed supportive long as I could, speaking up only when he'd
give his parents hell - I was uniquely in the position to interject there, as I'd
known the family a long time and they trusted me.
After a while, it was his parents that basically ordered me to stop coming - not
because of anything to do with what was going on with Rick, but because they'd
seen how it had destroyed my own well-being over time and, as surrogate parents
of a sort, they knew it was in my own best interests to go.
It absolutely broke my heart....but they were right.
But you know the only part of the whole thing that actually pissed me off?
His other "friends" - the ones in the car with him that night, including the driver -
never came to see him once in the hospital.
Not one damn time...
Yeah, that sort of thing early in life will open your damn eyes in a hurry.
I still pray for that family to this day and I've tried to find him for years since, to
no avail.
God love ya man, you've been down a hell of a rough road and survived it!
Glad you're still here with us, my friend.