My dad was an amazing dad. Like yea he was never home because he was always over the road, with the family semi business Real Jewel Trucking, he would do anything and everything to be sure he was home for the holidays and birthdays.When he finally came home and we were told he was home to stay, we all had the time of our lives together and filling my dad in on everything he missed while he was away. I hated school when my dad came home because it meant i had less time to talk to him about all i wanted to say. I was in 6th grade when he came home to stay, so of course with it being Middle School i had to go. It was a day in September when all of this happened, i had the best day until i got on the bus. When i got on the bus my sister and brother were not on, which worried me because being the oldest i am in charge of them. I spent the whole bus ride just worried and trying to figure out where they were. When the bus finally got to my house everyone (my sisters Ashleigh, and Megan, my brother Ryan, and my mom) was waiting for me. The first question was wheres Rowdy and wheres Dad. Rowdy is one of the horses my dad was working on training. There were seven horses he was training Maddie, Rowdy, Max, Uno, Lover, White Sox, and Tinker. What the owners did was put a saddle on the horse and if it acted up they put it in the pasture and left them so my dad had to start from scratch training them. Rowdy was the baby of them all, but he was the most well-behaved and my favorite. My dad had rode Rowdy a million times before today which is why i was so confused. Hold on a second i am getting ahead of myself. So my grandfather was coming by to see the horses and my dad was going to show him Rowdy and how well-behaved he was. Well when my dad got on Rowdy he did what he usually does which is just sit there and relaxed waiting on my dad to get comfortable. Well like i said my dad has rode him a million times. This time was different though, the ride started out fine and they were on the same route my dad takes them all and somehow this one time a large piece of barb wire was in the middle of the path. My dad saw it last second and Rowdy was already bucking. What i was told by my mom and grandfather (both who were there to see it happen) was that he was thrown at least 6 feet in the air and when he came down he slid across those really sharp black rocks and then landed on his neck breaking his C3 vertebra. He would have been perfectly fine with just a broken neck but because he had metal rods in his back from breaking his back at the age of 15 he became Quadriplegic (paralyzed from the chest down). How that happened was when he landed and slid one of the rods was moved and went into his neck and with that it broke his C3 vertebra. More of what had happened that i was told was that my grandfather (my dads dad) had to listen and watch his son almost die in our yard while waiting for Flight For Life to get to the house. The words my dad said were....
"If i die tell my kids i love them and be sure the baby is safe(my mom found out she was pregnant two weeks before this all happened) i don't give a crap what Kim says just be sure my kids and her have everything they need."
My grandfather replied with "you won't die as long as i am here. I will not let my grand kids be fatherless. They all need you. Amanda will go crazy without you, she depends on you for more than anyone. Ashleigh can't live without you, she may be able to handle all the rest of the kids right now but the minute you are gone she is gonna lose it on one of them. Sugar (Bethanie) is just gonna lose everything without you, she needs you more than any of them. She just will freak and become a person nobody wants to be around. She will most likely do what everyone thought she was gonna do when you were over the road Joey, she wanted to kill herself. Ryan just can't handle being without a dad like he already has anger management ADHD and takes it all out on Sugar but you were already helping him stop that and if you die everything will be the way it was before you came home and told them you were going to stay and home and not leave for a while. Megan being only 8 years old won't know what to do without a dad. You are really all these kids got other than Kim. I will not let you die because your family needs you Joey, you will not die.
When i found out what had happened the first thing i asked was "so hes gonna be gone for a while AGAIN!? This isn't fair he just got home and this was going to be the first birthday he was actually home for." I was so mad that i didn't say a word to any of my relatives that day and all i did was sit there and stared at my dad being unconscious. I wanted to just burst in tears and make myself unconscious just so my dad wasn't alone. When he finally gained consciousness again it was noon the next day and i wasn't able to see him because i had school and my mom wouldn't let me skip school so that i could be there because we had this test in some class i don't remember. When i got home and heard the news that he was conscious again i made my mom drive me down to the hospital to see him because i just wanted to give him the biggest hug i have ever given. I wanted him to know how happy i was that he was okay and not dead.
Ever since the injury he has been different and it has just never been the same around him. Every year people have asked how am i dealing with things and i tell them i am doing good but to be completely honest that was and always will be a total and complete lie because i have no clue what to do anymore. Just writing this makes me want to cry. I have put aside my dads injury for so long that I just want to die talking about it. If there was a way to back track time to go back and make sure that before i left for school that the path my dads rides on was clear so that none of this happened i would in a heartbeat. I would literally do anything to get my dad back to how he used to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment