Moments of Impact

This day last year, I was having a bit of a pity party about the fact that I hadn’t seen Talon a lot lately because he was on summer break from school, I still had to work, so he was spending a lot of time with family.

Little did I know that later I would learn just how unworthy of a complaint that really was. You see, because hours later, I would be reminded how fortunate I am to have a son to complain about not seeing as often as I’d like because there are some parents who don’t have the luxury of seeing their children at all. 

Some of those parents would become my aunt and uncle.

There’s some quotes from the movie/book, The Vow, that have just stayed with me ever since that night.  

“My theory is about moments, moments of impact. My theory is that these flashes of high intensity that completely turn our lives upside down actually end of defining who are. The thing is, each one of us is the sum total of every moment that we’ve ever experience.”

“The moment of impact proves potential for change, has ripples effects far beyond what we can predict..”

'That’s the thing about moments like these. You can’t, no matter how hard you try, control how it’s going to affect you. You just got to let the colliding parts go where they may. And wait, for the next collision.”

June 22, 2014 was one of those moments. I can still remember that night as vividly as I can remember this morning. The phone call I received from my mother telling me Brianna had been in a wreck and was being flown to UofL hospital,  that it was bad, that her liver was damaged and they couldn’t stop the bleeding. I remember getting to the hospital and being with my family in the second floor waiting room just waiting, and praying, and hoping, and wishing, and still had hope that she was going to pull through and be okay. Then moments later, a nurse would come to the waiting room very frantically and tell us to ‘get back there now!’ I remember her mom, my Aunt Tonya, crying out, “Please don’t take my baby, God!” I remember my sister and I walking and then crawling down that desolate hallway because we already knew what was to come, and the pain that we were already baring made it too difficult to walk. I remember when we finally made it to Brianna, she was lying in a hospital bed, lifeless, surrounded by doctors and nurses pushing and pushing on her chest trying to get her heart to beat again. I remember seeing her dad, David, by her side, kneeling, yelling ‘fight baby girl, fight!” I remember seeing her brother, Brice, stand behind David in shock, in disbelief, and in true heartbreak for what he was witnessing. I remember one of the doctors coming up to my sister and I and saying, ‘she’s gone”. I remember I almost passed out from hyperventilating from crying and pain because I had never witnessed such tragedy.  The scene was surreal. It was chaos. It felt like it was in slow motion, like I was inside of someone else’s’ body. It felt like a nightmare. It was a nightmare.

That moment is a moment I will never forget. It's a moment that I think about every single day. That was a moment of impact, and it was a moment that would have ripple effects far beyond what we could predict...

It's fair to say the ripple effects have also been life changing. Some of those ripple effects, one in particular, was just as tragic, unfair, and heartbreaking and still doesn’t feel real. But as crazy as it may sound, some other of those ripple effects have been truly amazing. To see a community come together for two family's in pain, to be there to support them, to rally behind a law that needs to be changed to hopefully prevent at least one family from having to endure such an unimaginable pain and heartache, to see so many people’s faiths become stronger, to watch a young girl, Mickayla, who was also involved in the wreck, beat all odds and continue to recover and inspire many, to get to know her wonderful family, being able to witness two parents who would embrace the mother of the man who took the life of their child, because they can empathize with the pain she is feeling,  two parents who have lost so much, still stand and continue to be an example to so many those are some pretty amazing ripple effects that I’m blessed to be in the wake of.