BRINGING STILLNESS TO LIFE

I was on my therapist's couch being treated for an acute PTSD episode after accidentally backing over my new, 12-week-old Saint Bernard puppy, Ziggy. I had thought Ziggy was on the porch, but he was under my car. The emergency vet said I had shattered his pelvis. And one leg was so badly dislocated, it would have to be amputated. And the quality of the dog’s life–“well, it’s hard to know”–the veterinary doctor said. I chose to put him out of his misery, kissing his sweet, soft puppy body goodbye. I cried rivers for days. Although the EMDR work was effective in terms of my functionality, some things are unforgettable, and that experience was one of them.

One of the thoughts I had right after losing the puppy was, bad things of this scale do not happen to me. And with my next breath, this is so bad, nothing horrific could ever possibly happen like this again–as if I had just checked off an item on a list of bad things that happen to people in their lifetime. I had now endured a self-inflicted traumatic event with consequences so extreme that I couldn’t imagine karmically deserving or needing more lessons to increase my wisdom or value as a human being.

I revisited that thought one month later in a helicopter on the way to an orthopedic trauma unit in Phoenix. Six months ago, my husband, Rikk, accidentally ran me over in the driveway with his lifted Ford F250 truck. It’s a beast of a vehicle with large tires. And I am a 110 pound, 67-year-old woman. But, surprisingly, I am okay.

Living near a hospital, I am very familiar with the sounds of ambulances and fire engines. Much of the time, I tuned it out. Some of the time, I paused to hope the person involved was going to be okay, and that they were not suffering. Yet, I never thought how that could be me, as a not-so-perfect driver, or grandma, mountain biker, trail runner, a plane traveler, and other kinds of things that statistically put me at a higher risk for getting wounded or killed. Including a lot of arthitus.

In my family of origin, we never talked about the suffering that my parents individually endured. One, a holocaust survivor, the other a victim of the McCarthy communist blacklisting, both presenting PTSD, but no one openly acknowledged that. Plus, my mother was highly superstitious, and you just couldn’t say certain things out loud in case the invisible forces that are would hear it. “God forbid, knock on wood, and don’t put the Kinahora on that,” (a Yiddish term intending to not attract misfortune by calling attention to good things), were frequent responses to varying manifestations of fear. We didn't talk about the difficult, heart-wrenching stuff of life or boast out loud about unexpected great things, just in case the rug would be pulled out from under our feet. My parents held their cards very close.

Early last April, 2024, I walked up our steep driveway to get the mail. My husband, Rikk, was reparking his truck. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was in space, focused on sifting through the mail now in my hand. I also assumed Rikk was pulling forward instead of backing up, so it wasn’t on my radar. By the time I realized what was happening, I tried to jump out of the way but slid on sand and snow-melt salt, landing me totally out of view and almost right under Rikk’s rear right tire. He couldn’t see me or hear me yelling over the engine of the truck as he backed up. I saw the enormous tire coming straight for me, and while time stood still, I heard myself say, “this isn’t going to feel good,” and moved my head out of the way. I heard a loud bang–the sound of my bones breaking. I remember thinking it was probably my hips and one of my legs. As soon as Riikk felt the bump, he stopped, got out of the truck, and heard me screaming.

Rikk told me later that I was screaming so much he had to put his hand over my mouth so he could talk to me. I don’t remember that happening, but I do remember thinking that if I screamed my head off, he would believe that I was really hurt and call 911. He called immediately. Listening to that call was torture.

Rikk hovered over me, holding up my head and positioning a pillow under my back that the neighbor brought over until help arrived. He maintained eye contact and told me that he loved me several times. I was scared like I never knew fear before.

The ambulances, fire trucks, and police arrived within minutes and lined the street for several blocks. As soon as I heard the sirens, I was relieved, feeling hopeful that I was going to be saved. I wasn’t afraid of death; I was afraid of what kind of an ordeal it might be to put my broken body back together. Or if my freakishly positioned leg would need to be amputated. My hips and pelvic region seemed crushed, and the sensation in my left leg felt wet, like it was floating in warm water.

Rikk called my daughter, who lives five minutes away. Amelia came running up the street on wobbly legs, knee-buckling-weak because her mom, whom she loves very much, was in a terrible accident. As she approached, I watched her flop over our roadside mailbox. She told me how she was trying to run to me on legs that she said “felt like they weighed a ton.” She said, “mom, I didn’t know if we were just going to hold hands for a few minutes while we said our good-byes.” She wondered what she was going to tell her kids, one 6 years old and one 13. She wondered how to tell Rachael, her twin, who lives in Tucson.

I can’t remember the pain; maybe that was shock or the selective power of memory to erase what’s unbearable. Lying there, I was able to freely converse with Amelia while Rikk managed all of the commotion and happenings. The EMTs and paramedics worked quickly and did everything they could to keep me comfortable. I didn’t ask what was in the IV drugs they administered, and I didn’t care. They worked well to relax me and stave off pain. Rikk asked out of curiosity, and they told him it was Fentanyl. Rikk’s son died from that drug.

The ambulance transferred me to a helicopter at the local hospital. I was high enough to be fully fascinated with the short flight to Phoenix. I thought about my helicopter flight with Rikk through a canyon one summer in Tahiti.

Amelia agreed to drive the 90 miles to Phoenix to meet me at the orthopedic trauma hospital. Between us, we have had too many surgeries, so we have a sense of how hospital systems work and how to be helpful advocates. I needed my husband to stay home to run our household of dogs. We have two mature, mellow dogs. But days before, we had just taken in an 8-week-old puppy.

At the trauma center, I was lifted by a team of medical personnel onto a board and sent through various imaging devices. The staff’s robotic handling of me from one machine to the next caused the first miserable pain I experienced. The pain of being handled instead of being helped.

I was admitted to a room once the diagnostics were over. A doctor came in later that night and explained that I had shattered my pelvis, severely dislocated my left leg, fractured my lower back in three places, and I would need surgery to bolt the pieces of pelvic bones to a pelvic-shaped armature made from rods. And my dislocated leg would be returned to its socket once my pelvis was stabilized. I continued to live broken, in my tiny corner hospital room for 3 days before surgery. Due to the understaffing, there was a lineup of surgeries scheduled based on urgency.

I had arrived late in the afternoon on Tuesday, and by Friday afternoon, it was finally my turn to be put back together. I was not new to surgery protocals; I’ve had arthritic bunionectomies, both wrists for carpal tunnel repaired two separate times, both rotator cuffs sewn, two major surgeries on my neck, a total hysterectomy, an elbow repair, and now this.

Days before this horrific accident, a very health-conscious friend and I talked about how my body and psyche have endured being cut open so many times out of necessity. I said out loud I had had enough and felt committed to living as safely as humanly possible from that point on, especially now old enough to receive Medicare and AARP benefits. I agreed to wear a helmet on my mountain bike, even on easy dirt roads, and supportive shoes on the trail. I was done with repairs, period.

We put the Kinahora on my bones because here I was, days after that conversation, being rolled into a temperature-controlled, cool operating room, surrendering my life to a team of skilled experts who would only know me as a broken body, like a car to be lifted and repaired. Then, with a mask over my nose, I counted backwards, making it to 7, and fell away from the world, sliding deep under the spell of anesthesia. Meanwhile, my fragmented pelvic bones were bolted to their armature, and my leg had been returned to its socket.

Amelia and my friend Leigh Ann were there to greet me in my room, which was comforting. According to them, as I was wheeled in, I was waving my hands high in the air as if I had just won a track meet. Nurses managed my pain meds, showing up every four hours as they had been. But now, it was finally in the context of healing, not just to keep me motionless. I was still very uncomfortable, even with narcotics, but also very relieved that the pile of bones inside of me could slowly knit back together over the course of time. The surgeon said a full year for full recovery. It was a finite prognosis with a promise of full recovery.

In the week that I spent there, I got to know several of the full-time workers and developed bonds over our commonalities. One gentleman who came in daily to take the trash and straighten up just happened to walk in one morning during a sudden and unexpected emotional meltdown I was having. His presence was soft and unobtrusive. He always walked lightly in the room instead of stomping around like some of the others who knew they didn’t need to camouflage their stress. While blowing my nose and sobbing, I blurted out the obvious. “I’m freaking the hell out.”

“Now, now,” he said. “Check this out.” He opened the shades so that light dripped into the slices of window-blinds to fill the space around me. Then he proceeded to tell me that he thanks God every day for being alive. He shared that his brother tragically died at 32. But what his brother gave him was gratitude for each day he is living. Seeing the sun-filled room with him at sunrise transformed the moment. He talked about how we all think we’re immune to accidents and tragedies until they happen. He continued talking about how we have control over how we choose to keep moving forward. He asked me what kind of day I would like to have. Challenged me to manifest my wishes. And he shut the door to continue his rounds.

My Friday evening surgery was supposed to be followed by another week in my room for care before being transferred to a physical therapy facility closer to home. That didn’t happen. The next morning after surgery, a physician’s assistant came to my room with a walker and suggested I try it out. It seemed crazy to me to expect that the body that had not moved for almost a week would grab onto a walker. I was weak, exhausted from all of the bodily trauma, and it felt like the biggest physical challenge ever set before this prideful, typically very strong and active, 67-year-old. It took everything I had, both physically and mentally, but with no more than a pause, I grabbed on, hopped down the hall on my right foot, and passed the test with many onlookers cheering.

Shortly after, I was asked if I felt comfortable leaving the next morning due to the overcrowding of the hospital and because I had proven I could use a walker. There wasn’t a spot open for me at the rehab facility either. So, I was released to go back to my home to heal, and a nurse and physical therapist would do home visits for the next three weeks. It was an outcome I did not anticipate, but I was overjoyed to return to a home I love, full of dogs and my husband. Meanwhile, Amelia welcomed Mookie, the new puppy, into her home until I was able to take care of him.

Now that I was home, Rikk’s days began early and ended late. Rikk owns a busy plumbing company. Added to his usual routine of early morning paperwork and loading up his van with water heaters and garbage disposals, began a new regimen. He cleaned up the utility table next to my couch for the day, restocking it so that I had everything I needed before he disappeared into his life away from me. He picked up the house, threw in laundry, fed and watered the dogs, and mimicked what I typically do in the morning. It worried him to leave me, but I encouraged him to go. Even if it meant deciding I didn’t need what I couldn’t reach. I knew my independence freaked him out, but we were both better off having some semblance of normal separateness in our banged-up lives. Plus, I had a huge ring of support around me of people to call, including Amelia, if I needed something, got stuck somehow, or fell.

The evening routine was similar, including providing dinner and helping me get onto the shower-bench. He helped me pull on fresh sweats and a clean tee, refreshed my water bottles for the night, tidied the house from visitor activity during the day, fed the dogs, and tended to any situations requiring attention. I said very little throughout his scurrying and tried not to watch and avoided thinking that’s not how I do it. I tried hard to protect him from my erratic emotional world that ricocheted deeply from grieving the active body that was taken away from me to spilling over with gratitude and awe at the miracle of my aliveness. I worked hard to be loving while keeping my feelings close, like my mother would have, so as not to make his life any harder. After all, he had to live with himself, the guy behind the wheel of that truck.

Rikk adores me. We’ve been married for 7 years. His chivalrous self wants nothing more than to please, provide for, and protect me. He often whispers, “You know baby, I will never let anything happen to you.” He still says that even after this accident. At first, I had to reconcile inner chatter.

Wait a minute, something bad did happen to me. But this was an accident. An accident is an accident. The truth is, we will never let anything bad happen to one another- as best as we possibly can.

Within a few days of returning home from the hospital, the news of having been run over by a truck spread like a forest wildfire among my close circle of family. And I let my larger community know through Facebook. What I didn’t expect was the overwhelming responses, love, and care that this town would offer. Everything that I needed and wanted was delivered to me every day for almost a month while living on the living room couch where I could best maneuver and support my awkward, motionless legs. For weeks, I could count on someone showing up to help. I was gifted with delicious home-cooked meals, housecleaning, treats, lattes, puzzle books, magazines, healing music, ice cream, cannabis, and so many flowers. My daughter Rachael who lives in Tuscon sent me inspirational texts, poems, and music every morning by nine, which helped me set an intention for the day. Friends and acquaintances that used to see me at the Saturday Farmers Market delivered my favorite bagels and organic goodies. In some cases, people that I hadn’t seen for a few or several years showed up, and I found our friendships endured lapses in time without awkwardness or diminished quality.

Thirty-three years ago, I was a kindergarten teacher at a local private school. One of the parents from that time showed up with an exotic, uncooked but prepared meal. He had never been in my home before, but comfortably moved about it as if he were a frequent visitor. When he arrived, he put dinner in the oven so that my friends and I would have a fresh meal prepared and ready to devour. My friends even washed and styled my hair. When called to the table, I hobbled with my walker into the kitchen, albeit awkward in a chair, looking darn pretty for a truly special night in.

I have grown deep roots here in Prescott. And what I came to know literally in my bones was how strong my roots are and how blessed I am to have such relationships in this community. Young children, now grown adults that were in my kindergarten classrooms, families of those children, faculty, students and staff I have worked with in my thirty years as a college professor, and comrades I have hiked with on the local trails, expanded my heart in ways I could not have predicted.

Something as simple as having help to prop pillows under my legs a certain way or a bar of dark chocolate being delivered was significant. These gestures were the medicines that helped me to shift from what could have been a very dark time to a time of deep reflection. The timing of this accident was ironic since I had just begun to explore my newly earned unstructured time post-retirement, four months prior. Under normal circumstances, I am independent to a fault. This was not a normal time, and letting go of I-can-do-it-all behaviors was challenging, but it was also empowering.

Before the accident, I consulted a mystic Tarot card reader regarding my retirement, and she emphasized that more than anything, I needed to be still. From that place of stillness, projects will arise deepening my life’s creative trajectory, and perhaps be my most fulfilling work yet. Her words spiraled back to me numerous times. And as much as having been run over by a large truck challenged my faith and long-held assumptions about safety and security, I also realized the value of being versus doing.

I was in the process of seeking balance with this newness because my first impulse was to dive quickly into too many projects that I was self-imposing unrealistically high standards upon. As if autocorrect slammed into my intentions, my new ambitious endeavors were limited to crafting an efficient route from the couch to the bathroom using my walker. Initially, that was it for accomplishments. I was so vulnerable yet surprisingly able to melt into this new level of humility.

For the first three weeks, nights were long and miserable due to the intense pain that erupted in my legs despite trying to manage it with medicine, ice packs, heat packs, healing music, and Netflix. I would shift my body this way and that way to find the most tolerable position, which would go on and on until morning. And I had spontaneous bouts of crying that would catch me off guard every few days without a particular theme attached.

Each new morning provided the possibility that the upcoming nights would start becoming easier, which they did by the very end of week three. My husband and the doctor suggested Ibuprofen religiously. Every 4-6 hours seemed to do more than anything else. Three weeks had passed, and my body was loosening up a bit, sinking more naturally into the puffy couch underneath me, and no longer resisting my wounds but ready to work with them. I began using the walker for much more than the essential trips to the bathroom and regularly made my way to the kitchen for meals. I got myself outside to sit by the front door for a more immersive dose of sunshine. Into the next month, the trajectory just continued to leap forward for more engagement in life beyond the couch.

I had plenty of time to think about the subjective nature of time. From moment to moment, my experience of time felt like a series of pauses with different subtle qualities. The significant events that occurred used to be the things that happened in between the stacked busyness of how I lived before the accident. Now, I could spend hours feeling the wind blowing through the hairs on my body, watching the constant activity on the bird feeders, listening to the neighbor kids playing on their trampoline, eating a guilt-free, expensive piece of chocolate, writing circuitous journal entries in scattered notebooks, and spending time with the dogs.

All these sensory-rich activities used to be what I would fit around the other seemingly necessary clutter of my life. Now they were my life, in my liminal space of healing, where a quiet but persistent current ran through me, holding me tight as the calendar ticked off days and turned pages toward summer.

By the eighth week, I had discovered ways to use the walker to support navigating stairs of varying widths, heights, and depths as well as the topography around our house and garden. Friends had done some planting, and Rikk had been faithfully watering twice a day, but I was getting antsy to be in the dirt myself. My increasing self-reliance and energy inspired me to challenge myself further, and I supported my husband in taking time for himself.

I may have been physically broken and arduously healing, but I was also concerned about Rikk’s overall sense of well-being. He was in this with me with his own invisible deep wounds. Rikk deserved time to decompress from the daily grind, the sight of his wife and her walker, and the counter full of prescriptions and supplements.

I was able to safely manage with Rikk away, but the shape of those days was complex. Bouncing around on my right foot, dragging my left foot behind me, with both hands firmly on the walker, leaning on anything that could support me, and reaching for things I hadn’t yet grasped. To feed three dogs required more patience on the part of the dogs than me, having to wait the length of time it took to fill each bowl and place them into three separate rooms to avoid food battles. I had the dogs wait outside while I filled each bowl and placed it on the floor. Having to care for dogs, especially a new puppy, meant I was up and down the front steps of our home multiple times a day.

As June came and went, I was back in the garden, and the plans I had for summer were manifesting. The vegetables, flowers, and bumble bees played well together, while I was back at strategizing to eliminate pesky rodents and birds that undermined garden efforts. Time still passed on its own terms, but I began to wonder what I would do when I could walk and drive again.

There was so much about life that I didn’t miss; I didn’t miss working, but then again, I was newly retired. I didn’t miss the various volunteer commitments I had participated in. I didn’t miss the back and forth of running to the store for something and then running to the store the next day for what I forgot. I began to understand the dire importance of rebuilding a life on a new structure of priorities that included the stillness that had become such a source of contentment. Time with the people I love, with the dogs I love, in my art studio, and time without any assigned activities at all.

My surgeon said that I would be able to walk and drive on July 12th, three months after my surgery. As that date came into view, I had more questions than answers. Would it hurt? Would I be stiff? Would I fall? Would I make it across the house or yard? What time on July 12th should I try?

Since that was the weekend that Rikk was away, my loyal dogs would be the first witnesses. The dogs knew me better than anyone throughout my recovery, so it was fitting that they would be the cheerleading committee when it came to walking for the first time.

I went to sleep early on the 11th, which was nothing new. I’d been sleeping a lot through this process, but this time it was like a child going to bed early to rush the arrival of a birthday or a trip to Disneyland. Getting settled with my blankets and pile of pillows, I was giddy with playful energy in my bones, awaiting morning. I woke early and did not hesitate. I pushed the walker out of the way. I used my left hand to push myself up until I was standing, then slowly slid my left foot out onto the floor. My foot was almost totally numb, and my whole left leg had patches of numbness. I was not in pain, but my balance was very off, and I had to be very careful not to fall. As awkward and heavy as my legs felt to move, I challenged myself to practice walking as much as I could stand it.

It only took a couple of days to feel competent enough to drive and run errands. For the most part, once walking, I could move toward a schedule of something close to the normalcy of a life, one that included the mundane tasks of going to the grocery store, post office, and maintaining our home.

As I write this, it’s been six months since I was injured, and I have six more months to go until I am fully healed. Although from the outside I look put back together, recovering is an underscore to everything else that goes on. My pain levels are minimal to non-existent, but there are movement restrictions. I am tired by 8 and sleep no less than 10 hours, no matter how inactive I am. And I take exercise classes to build strength and to mitigate the sporadic depression.

I still attend occasional EMDR sessions for trauma. It has not been a linear process; sometimes I need to desensitize myself from the sight of large trucks, sometimes I still need help with the guilt from harming Ziggy. Rikk sold the truck. Both him and I have become extremely careful about ensuring the dogs are in the house when there are moving vehicles in the driveway, and I do not look at the mail if there are moving vehicles anywhere nearby.

Now entering the living room, I pause to stand in between the cross breeze from the windows. I smell the ripeness of autumn, and feel into the subtle shifts of a season changing. The uneaten garden tomatoes sink back into the earth while the persistent mint leaves claim their indifference to time. I’m inspired to pick up my journal and write down a few lazy thoughts as I notice a busy woodpecker tucking acorns into the tall wooden power line pole on this side of the yard.