How It All Began
It’s a summer’s eve of 1970, my 22nd year and I am anticipating acceptance in the Theatre Department at the University. I just left my interview.
I drove to my sister’s trailer to pick up my three year old and make my way home through the backroads of Greenville County South Carolina.
We set off through the country roads and I am feeling elated. A moment of success on the horizon, something to fulfill me creatively, an escape from my boring marriage to a part time mortician.
Suddenly I am waking from a deep sleep. I try to move my arms and legs but they are tied down. I am being held captive in the captain’s cabin atop his table on a pirate ship. I look to the right and I can see through the porthole about a quarter mile off, the coast of France dotted with low buildings along the shoreline in pottery colors. The buildings resemble upside down flower pots. It is bright and strikingly Clear out there. Immediately cannon fire from the shore followed by black smoke sends a ball through the porthole and startles me. I panic and try to wriggle free from the ties that bind me. I reach down my leg with my free hand and feel a gooey hole. Holy shit I’ve been hit. “Hey somebody, anybody, come cut these ties off me.” The fear inside is at level 10 and rocketing.
In the darkness of the cabin I hear a woman’s voice ask “where do you think you are?” On a Pirate ship off the coast of France. Where do you think you are? She says Greenville General Hospital. You are having a morphine dream sweetie. The pirate ship dream seemed much more real and lively than this place and what she is telling me now. It is so drab green and dark in this room and she is saying this is reality. Why am I tied down then? She says it is traction. You broke your legs, hip and arm in your car accident.
The fog lifts for a few seconds. Where is my son? Was he with me?
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She tells me he is in surgery but will probably be just fine. Was it my fault?…. I seem to be walking among the clouds searching for a ship or a shoreline but I can’t remember why. I just need to find it. I know it held terror but I preferred that terror over this one.
Next I hear the words, “Wiggle your toes, wiggle your toes” I can’t believe I’m hearing this but the male voice is insistent and repeats again and again. I wiggle away but I can tell he is not satisfied. Is that enough wiggle for you? No wiggle at all he says. What’s happening, I ask? He says you’ve been in an accident Ms. Wilson and the doctors here are trying to assess the extent of your injuries. Yes, yes I remember now what the nurse told me. I must be in shock. I’m in my body and out of my body back and forth with no seeming control. I watch it for a while and live in it for a while. This is frightening and has to stop.
I am in the clouds again and take up my search for something I no longer remember what. I float one way and then another feeling hopeless. I can’t find what I’m looking for. I’m not sure what I’m looking for. I just desperately need to get there. Some where I have no husband and no son. A place with no cars. I am free.
A hot substance enters my neck pulling me back. My mother is here, her long dark brown hair flowing down her back from its usual place in a tight bun atop her head. She only lets it down for bed so now I know it must be late. My mind is flooded with the things I’ve been told by the people in this room. I ask her, “Where is Lee?” She repeats the nurse’s words, he is in surgery but probably will be fine. Something about those words don’t seem right. I ask what his injuries are and she says his arms are broken and his skull is crushed a bit. Her words fall like daggers.
I struggle to enter that other world using every ounce of my consciousness. I sense it will never come into my reach again. Perhaps it was a previous life and I only had a short glimpse of it never to return. I feel doomed to take up the colorless depressing one where there are nurses, wiggling toes, and long haired mothers, where sons are in surgery, guilt is heavy and hope is slim.
some time later I wake face to face with an attorney. He informs me the state of South Carolina was at fault for the accident. They had sent workers to widen the road I traveled on and they dug up the stop sign but never replaced it. The forest on the roadside disguised the crossroad so a collision was inevitable. My car was a Volkswagen bug so more vulnerable than the other car in which there were no injuries. I’m relieved I was not to blame. What I did not know was that in South Carolina at that time the law stated you could not sue the state for more than $10,000 for an injury or lost life even. Images of little broken arms and skull haunt me so I beg for more morphine. My request is answered. I float among clouds of various images. I make out a ship, a flower pot, a car, a bed, nothing lining up to rouse a clear memory of which one to follow.
I surface once more, this time to a bright light in my face. I see a young surgeon with a mask hanging from his neck. He has Slavic features, blonde hair and what appears to be a smirk on his face. The smirk turns out later to be a show of nerves. This was a task new to him. He motions my parents to come in closer. He says “we lost your boy”.
What world is this? Why can’t I go back to the other life? Please don’t let me stay here. I see my parents staring at me, most likely in anticipation of my reaction…what about her will to live now that this news has been delivered. Turns out my injuries were predicted not to be survivable and his were far more hopeful, but somehow I knew his outcome before I was told. I can’t cry, they’re looking at me expecting a breakdown but there are no tears. The world is wrapped in morphine’s gauze allowing no emotion to escape. It can only rest heavy in my heart. Later my mother in law told me she wishes it had been me instead of him. Well no shit. Her words bring up all my insecurities. I can’t remember ever being a good mother. I never taught him nursery rhymes or how to count. Perhaps the blessing was his to be rid of me. Where are the happy memories? Is it normal only to remember inadequacies? These thoughts come and go, the haunting dreams fade away as the years go by. It has left its scars on my life, some you see and some I only feel. I came to know I was at choice between two options. I could allow myself to rot inside reliving the past or dance with the rhythms of life as they unfold. The choice is not made only once. It must be made over and over even today…. Stored away and brought up at certain times the memories are useful. On the one hand I gained a deeper understanding of life, suffering, guilt, regret, the will to survive and thrive I could have gained no other way and yet on the other… the meaning of it all still remains a mystery.
