I started writing a Sunday column for the News & Record this month. This one, published today, is for you, Rick.
I did not pack a black dress.
I thought about it, in those crazy moments after the phone call from my best friend, Cindy, on Jan. 4. A scuba tank filled with oxygen had blown up in her Fayetteville garage the night before, severing her husband’s left arm at the elbow and leaving him badly burned.
After being treated for minor injuries herself, she was headed to The North Carolina Jaycee Burn Center in Chapel Hill to be with Rick, and wanted me to meet her there. I was packing because I planned to be at her side for as long as she needed me.
I stood over my suitcase with the dress in my hand. I put in, then took it out. It sat there on the bed, a stark reminder of what might lie ahead.
I am a practical woman. A realist. I knew how badly he was hurt, and what the odds of survival probably were. That woman put the dress back in.
But I am also a woman of faith — not just in God, but in people. If I packed that dress, it seemed to me I would giving up on Rick, when I knew he would never give up. That woman took the dress back out. And hung it in the closet.
Rick would tell us later, after he emerged from more than two months in an induced coma, that as he lay in the front yard of his home, being tended by the EMTs, he had a moment in which he knew he could just let go. He didn’t have to think twice. Uh-Uh. No way, he thought. I’m not done yet.
In the next few months, those of us in the circle of support became experts on gloving and gowning and Burn Center protocol. We learned about skin grafts and ventilators, black sponges and the problems associated with traumatic amputation.
Rick, an underwater videographer, battled through dark dreams of drowning and torture. Though they said he could not hear us, we talked to him, kidded him, touched the few places that weren’t burned. We would find out later that we did break through, making appearances in his dream state that comforted him.
Cindy filled his room with posters of underwater scenes; my kids and others drew pictures for his room. We told the nurses and doctors all of our favorite Rick stories. We told them to get ready, because when he woke up, they would be entertained by his wit and surprised by his determination.
In January, they had said he might be ready to leave the Burn Center in June, but that was being optimistic.
He walked out the door March 23 after multiple surgeries and skin grafts, rehabilitation and therapy. He still had a long way to go, faced with learning how to open the orange juice container, get dressed and perform all the everyday tasks of life with one hand.
By July, he was practice diving in a swimming pool. At the end of October, he performed his first ocean dive since the accident.
So I do not have to think very hard to say what I am thankful for this year. I am thankful, most of all, that Rick is alive and well. But in what has been one of the most challenging years of my own life, I am also thankful that it reminded me of lessons I learned long ago, but sometimes forget.
It reminded me that you have to find a way to laugh, no matter how bad things are. That you have to be more determined than you think possible.
It reminded me that you need to have faith, not just in whatever god you worship, but in yourself. In each other.
There have been times in recent months when I have felt as discouraged as I ever have in my life. I think about Rick, and this is my answer:
I’m not letting go. I’m not done yet.
