Kevin
After we flew home from Florida, time seemed to move more quickly. June turned to July, marking six months since my accident. It was hard to believe I had already made it half a year in my new body. Half a year without Kristin.
I remembered my therapists telling me that I would recover the most function in the first six months. They were probably right. I felt like my progress had plateaued lately, but when I looked back on my early days in the ICU, when I couldn’t breathe on my own or sit up without getting dizzy or move a single muscle below my neck, I realized how far I had come since then. Even so, I saw the six-month anniversary as more of a milestone than anything else, a day to be acknowledged rather than celebrated.
But there were still reasons to celebrate.
Two days after the anniversary, Mason turned one. My whole family flew out from Kentucky for his first birthday party, which we held at the house. Nick came up with the theme: “One-der the Sea.” He helped Mason’s grandmothers decorate the house with blue streamers and balloons that looked like ocean animals. Soon, colorful fish, crustaceans, and sea turtles floated around the dining room. There was even a purple octopus that reminded me of Sam’s tattoo.
AJ played with Mason upstairs while the rest of us finished setting up downstairs. My mom worked in the kitchen, getting the food ready, while Kristin’s mom set the dining room table. Nick and I sat at the kitchen table, wrapping the last of Mason’s gifts: a Little Tikes T-ball set we had picked up after coming back from Florida. Hearing Brian talk about Baylee’s T-ball games had inspired me. Mason may have been a little young for it – the box said it was for ages eighteen months and up – but he would grow into it.
“Hand me another piece of tape, please,” I said, extending my left hand to Nick. He tore a piece of Scotch tape off the roll and stuck it to my thumb so that I could clumsily apply it to the wrapping paper I was holding in place with my right hand.
Wrapping a present with paralyzed hands was a slow process, but I was determined to do it with minimal assistance. Susan had wrapped the rest of the gifts I’d gotten Mason while I was out of town, which I appreciated, but I wanted to wrap this one by myself. I had bought a pair of adaptive table-top scissors that I could cut with. All I had to do was unroll a length of wrapping paper and place it between the open blades, then push down on the handle to cut it. Wrapping the paper around the large box was more difficult, especially given that it was at eye-level with me when it was laying on the kitchen table. Nick helped me get started and handed me tape while I tucked and folded with my fists. It wasn’t going to be pretty, but finding ways to accomplish small yet meaningful tasks like this made me feel good and gave me a much-needed sense of normalcy.
I was working on the last side of the box when I heard AJ call, “Kev, c’mere! Quick!”
Frowning, I glanced up at Nick. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll finish this.”
“Thanks,” I replied, reversing away from the table. There’s no such thing as “quick” when you’re a quadriplegic – everything takes way more time than it would for an able-bodied person. I was at the mercy of my power chair and the elevator; I could only move as fast as they did. “What’s wrong?” I asked as I finally rolled into Mason’s room.
I found AJ sitting cross-legged on the floor with my son in his lap. “Nothing’s wrong,” he answered, looking up at me with a grin. “Watch this.” He lifted Mason up by the armpits and plunked him down on his feet. “Wanna show Daddy what you can do?”
I raised my eyebrows curiously. Mason had been standing for a few months, even walking while holding on to furniture or other people’s hands, but he had yet to take his first steps unsupported.
“Call him, Kev,” AJ urged as Mason stood in front of him, not moving.
“C’mere, Mason,” I said, clapping the heels of my hands together.
Mason looked up with a slobbery grin, showing his tiny bottom two baby teeth. I expected him to drop to his knees and crawl toward me the way he always did when he wanted to get somewhere fast, but this time, he didn’t. My breath caught in my throat as I watched him take one wobbly step forward, followed by another. His arms flailed over his head, his hands instinctively reaching up for AJ, but AJ wasn’t helping.
“You’re doing it!” I gasped as my eyes welled with tears. “You’re walking all by yourself!”
Mason took two more steps before he fell and landed on his bottom. Unfazed, he got back up onto his hands and knees and crawled the rest of the way to my wheelchair. Clawing at my legs, he finally climbed to his feet again in front of me.
“Way to go, buddy!” I cried, reaching down to wrap my arms around him. “I’m so proud of you.” But beneath my bubbling sense of pride, I felt a pang of sadness.
I had imagined this bittersweet moment months ago when I was in the rehab center, still working on my stamina for sitting up in a wheelchair. How would it feel, I’d wondered, to watch my son take his first steps, knowing full well that I would never walk again?
But in the actual moment, that didn’t matter. I wasn’t thinking about myself at all. Instead, my mind went to Mason’s momma. With tears pouring down my cheeks, I wondered how Kristin would have reacted if she could have seen our son walk for the first time. As much as I wanted to believe she was looking down on us from Heaven, I wished she were with us to witness it in person. She should have been sitting where AJ was.
“I let go of his hands, and he took two steps before he realized I wasn’t holding on to him anymore,” AJ said, smiling.
I smiled back through my tears. “He’s been close to walking for weeks now,” I replied, wiping my eyes. “He just needed to gain some confidence.”
“If only it were that easy, huh?” AJ gave me a knowing glance.
I shrugged, trying to shake off the gnawing feeling of grief. “I’m not bitter about it. I walked for thirty-six years before winding up in this chair. I had plenty of time to enjoy life on two legs. Now it’s his turn. I hereby pass the torch to you, my son,” I said, patting the top of Mason’s head.
“Very wise of you, Mufasa.”
“Honestly, I’m happy. This is a happy day, and these are happy tears,” I insisted as I wiped the last of them away. “Now, when he’s potty-trained and can use the toilet by himself, then I might be jealous of him. I’d take bladder and bowel control over the use of my legs any day.”
AJ laughed. “I don’t blame you, dude.”
I straightened up in my chair. “They’re about done downstairs. Should we go down and show everyone else Mason’s latest feat?”
“Yeah, let’s go,” said AJ. He lifted Mason onto my lap for the ride downstairs. I wrapped my left arm around him while I worked my joystick with the right, taking us down the hall and into the elevator.
“Hey there, birthday boy!” Nick grinned at Mason as we came into the kitchen. Then he glanced up at me, his smile fading when he saw my tearstained face. “Everything okay?”
I nodded. “Everything’s great! Mason learned a new trick.” I looked around. “Where’s Susan?”
“Right here.” My mother-in-law popped her head in from the dining room. “What’s going on?”
“Mason wants to show you something,” I said. “Will you help him down, AJ?” I still didn’t trust myself to pick up or put down my son without dropping him. Mason was sturdier than he had been when I first came home from rehab, but he was also heavier.
“Sure.” AJ scooped him up off my lap and set him on his feet on the floor.
“Go get Mammaw,” I urged him. “Call him, Ma.”
My mom bent down in front of the fridge and stretched out her arms. “C’mere, Mason! Come to Mammaw!”
Mason only hesitated for a second, then toddled toward her. This time, he took five steps before falling.
“Oh my goodness!” My mom didn’t give him time to crawl the rest of the way. She ran to him and wrapped him up in her arms, lifting him off the ground. “Such a big boy!” she cried, smothering him with kisses. “Mammaw can’t believe how much you’ve grown!”
Smiling, I turned my head to see Susan’s reaction. She was standing in the doorway, watching with tears in her eyes. “If only Kristin could see him now,” she whispered, shaking her head. “She would be over the moon.”
“I know,” I said, nodding. “I hope she can.”
Kristin remained on my mind throughout the rest of the day. As we celebrated Mason’s birthday, I remembered the day he was born. Kristin was such a rockstar, laboring through a very long night before finally delivering him close to dawn. That day was one of the happiest days of my life. I was exhausted from being up all night, but I couldn’t stop looking at him long enough to close my eyes. While Kristin took a well-deserved nap, I stayed awake and stared down at the beautiful baby boy in my arms, amazed by the tiny human we had created together. Our son, I kept saying inside my head, repeating the words until they felt real. I almost couldn’t believe that I was a father. I never could have imagined that, in six months, I would be a single father.
Life can be as cruel as it is kind.
Kristin should be here, I thought again as we gathered around Mason’s high chair to sing “Happy Birthday.” Instead, her mom carried his cake out of the kitchen, her face illuminated by the glow of the lone candle flickering from its center.
“Happy birthday to you!” My mom led the singing, her sweet soprano voice ringing out as Nick, AJ, and I joined her in harmony. “Happy birthday to you!” My brother Tim and his wife and kids sang along while our older brother, Jerald, stood in the background, looking like our father as he filmed the scene with his digital camera. I thought about the many birthdays my dad had missed in the seventeen years he’d been gone. Our family celebrations had never felt the same since he’d left us. “Happy birthday, dear Mason…” As Mason grew, it would be the same way for me without Kristin. “Happy birthday to you!”
It would have been easy to be bitter. But, looking at the smiling faces of the family and friends who had helped me with Mason over the last few months, I felt blessed to be surrounded by so much love.
As we finished the song, Susan set Mason’s birthday cake down on the tray in front of him. “Here you go, birthday boy!”
“Blow out the candle, buddy,” I encouraged him, demonstrating how to do it. But Mason was too mesmerized by the dancing flame and the blue frosting to watch me. “Careful,” I warned as he reached toward the cake.
My mom caught his hand before he could touch it, and Mason began to cry.
“Aww, it’s okay. C’mon, blow out your candle… like this!” As I put my lips together again and exhaled a puff of air, I couldn’t help thinking of my time in the ICU, when I couldn’t even do that. Again, I was reminded of how far I had come.
Mason finally caught on and blew out his candle. As we all clapped, Susan whisked the cake away. He started crying again as she went back into the kitchen to cut it, but quickly calmed down when she returned with a small slice of cake for him. Smiling, we all watched as he curiously dug into it with his hands. By the time he was done, there was blue frosting smeared all over his hands, face, and tray, and the floor was covered in cake crumbs. But the mess didn’t bother me. Seeing my son enjoying himself on his first birthday was more than worth it.
Afterward, my mom carried Mason off to wash his face and hands while I wiped down his high chair with a wet rag. Susan swept the crumbs up from the floor. Then we all went into the family room, where we’d piled Mason’s presents.
His cousins Will and Olivia helped him open the gifts as the adults watched. It took them a matter of seconds to tear the paper off the T-ball set it had taken me almost twenty minutes to wrap. Tim opened the box and assembled the plastic tee while the kids unwrapped the rest of the presents. Later, when Mason got tired of playing with his other new toys, we took it out to the yard to show him what to do with it.
When Kristin and I had found out we were having a son, teaching him how to play baseball was one of the things I had looked forward to doing someday. It was such a classic father-son activity. I’d always imagined myself playing catch with him in the yard, rolling ground balls for him to scoop up with his glove, pitching underhanded so he could practice hitting, putting my hands over his to help him learn how to swing the bat.
Instead, I found myself sitting on the patio in my wheelchair, watching while Nick knelt behind Mason, guiding his hands as he wielded the little plastic bat. “First, we bring it back, and then we… swing!” I heard Nick say as he helped Mason hit the ball off the tee. “There you go, buddy! Base hit! Now we run, run, run to first base!” He scooped Mason up, lifted him onto his shoulders, and trotted toward an imaginary base. Listening to Mason laugh and squeal as he bounced on Nick’s broad shoulders made me smile. But it was another bittersweet moment. On one hand, it made me happy to know Mason had so many wonderful uncles to help guide him as he grew up. On the other hand, it was hard for me to see other people taking my place, fulfilling the fatherly duties I wasn’t physically capable of doing.
“Don’t beat yourself up about it, little bro,” Tim told me when I confessed how conflicted I felt about it. “It’s only been six months since your accident, and look how far you’ve come! Who knows where you’ll be this time next year.” He was a man of faith and, like Brian, still seemed to believe I might make a miraculous recovery and regain the ability to walk. “You can’t give up hope,” he said. But I wasn’t holding my breath waiting for it to happen.
After six months, I had accepted my circumstances: both the good and the bad.
***
The day after Mason’s birthday was the Fourth of July. I hosted a barbecue, spending most of the day outdoors with my family and friends. Tim and Jerald took turns manning the grill while Nick and AJ played with the kids in the pool. The afternoon was overcast with temperatures in the upper seventies – too cold for me to swim, but perfect for sitting on the patio. With my mom’s help, I transferred from my wheelchair to one of the cushioned wicker chairs, where I could watch Mason float around the pool in his inflatable sea turtle.
“Daaa, na… daaa, na…” I heard Nick humming the theme from Jaws and looked out to see him low in the water, gliding stealthily toward my son. “Dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun…” He suddenly lunged out of the water and grabbed Mason, who shrieked and giggled hysterically as Nick started tickling him.
With a wistful smile, I watched them play for a few seconds before turning back into the conversation I’d been having with my mom and mother-in-law. “Sorry, Susan, what were you saying?”
Kristin’s mom took a sip of her iced tea. “I had an idea I wanted to run by you,” she said, setting her glass down on the side table next to her. “As you know, Kristin’s birthday is coming up next month.”
I nodded, swallowing the hard lump that had risen in my throat. Kristin would have turned thirty-eight on August fourth, exactly one month from then. I was already dreading that day, expecting it to be just as hard as our anniversary had been.
“John and I were thinking that would be a fitting day to hold her celebration of life,” Susan went on. “Not another funeral, but a birthday party in her honor. How would you feel about that?”
I thought for a moment. Kristin’s parents had always said they wanted to hold a celebration of life for her at a later date, since I hadn’t been able to attend the memorial service they’d held shortly after her death. It would be a way for me to give her the kind of send-off she deserved – and maybe get the closure I had been deprived of before. “I think it sounds great,” I replied honestly.
“Good.” Susan let out a sigh of relief, seeming to relax a little. “Now, the next question: Would you be okay with us having it in Kansas?” Before I could answer, she continued quickly, “I know it would be a huge inconvenience for you, having to travel all that way, so if it’s not doable, you just say the word, and we’ll have it here in California. But I was thinking it would be nice for our family and friends back home who weren’t able to come out for the funeral to be able to attend.”
I nodded again. “No, that’s fine. It makes the most sense to have it in Kristin’s hometown. I don’t mind traveling.” After our trip to Florida, I felt more confident about leaving L.A. “I just have to figure out how I’m going to get there – who’s going to help me and Mason get there, I mean.”
I still hadn’t hired a nanny for Mason or another caregiver for myself. Between my hospitalization, Hoke’s funeral, and Mason’s birthday, the past few weeks had passed by in a blur, and before I knew it, it was July. By the end of the month, the Backstreet Boys would be back on tour, and I would have no one but Sam to help me. I needed to find someone fast, someone who could go to Kansas with us in four weeks.
My mom cleared her throat. “About that… I know I’m supposed to fly home with your brothers on Sunday, but what if I stayed out here longer? I could stick around to help with the transition after Nick and AJ leave, then accompany you to Kristin’s celebration of life.”
I gave her a grateful smile. “Oh, Ma… I appreciate the offer, but you don’t have to do that.”
“I know I don’t have to,” she replied. “But I want to. I miss you and Mason. Seeing how much he’s grown just in the last few months since I left has made me realize how I miss out on while I’m clear across the country. I really wish you’d reconsider moving back to Kentucky.”
I sighed. Not this conversation again.
“I know you don’t want to, but would you at least come home for a visit?” she begged. “I want you to see the renovations your brothers have done to make the house more accessible for you. We could fly home from Kansas – you’d already be halfway there!”
“Yeah, okay,” I finally agreed. “I’ll come for a visit.” It would be good to go back to my old Kentucky home, where I hadn’t been since the previous Thanksgiving. Mason had been too little to do much then. I had looked forward to taking him horseback riding and hiking in the hills when he was older. Now, I was the one who couldn’t do those things.
My mom’s face split into a wide grin. “And you’ll let me stay here until then?”
“Of course, Ma. You know you’re welcome anytime. I just don’t want you to feel obligated to take care of me while you’re here. I’m a grown man, and-”
“And I’m your mother,” she said firmly, reaching out to take my hand. “That means you’ll always be my baby. I’ll gladly take care of you for as long as I’m able.” She squeezed my hand. I couldn’t feel it, but I could see her fingers tightening around mine.
A lump rose in my throat as I looked down at our hands intertwined. Hers was weathered and wrinkled, the fingers gnarled with arthritis, reminding me that she wasn’t a young woman anymore. Mine was limp and contorted, the fingers curled into a loose fist, reminding me that I would never be as independent as I wanted to be. I wouldn’t be able to return the favor by caring for my mother in her old age the way she had taken care of me as a child and again after my accident. Knowing my mom, she wouldn’t want me taking care of her, anyway. But she wanted to help care for me and Mason. The least I could do was let her.
I cleared my throat. “Thanks, Ma. That would be a big help while I’m in the process of finding more long-term caregivers. And I know Mason will love having you out here longer.”
She beamed. “It would be my pleasure.”
***
Later that evening, everyone lined up their lawn chairs at the edge of the yard to watch fireworks. Perched high in the Hollywood Hills, my property had an amazing view of Los Angeles.
I held Mason in my lap as we looked up at the sky. “Ohh!” he kept calling excitedly, pointing out each colorful explosion. They were close enough to be impressive, yet too far away for the loud booms to scare him. It was almost perfect. I only wished Kristin could have been there.
My mind wandered back one year to the day after Mason was born, when Kristin and I had watched the Fourth of July fireworks from our third floor room at Cedars-Sinai. We turned off the lights and sat side by side in front of the window. I wrapped my arm around her, and she rested her head on my shoulder, both of us exhausted but happier than we had ever been. Mason slept soundly in her arms, oblivious to the festivities outside.
“Funny that it’s Independence Day,” Kristin had remarked as we watched the pyrotechnic display. “You realize that we’re about to lose our independence, right? Our lives have already changed. Once we bring this baby home tomorrow, nothing’s ever going to be the same as it was before. No more doing whatever we want, whenever we want. We’re parents now. We have responsibilities.”
“I know, and I don’t care,” I’d replied, kissing the top of her head. “I wouldn’t trade him for anything.”
“Me neither,” she sighed. “I just thought it was kind of ironic.”
She was right. After that day, everything was different. But as we adjusted to parenthood, my life was the best it had ever been. Even during the late night feedings and messiest diaper changes, I loved being a dad. I cherished every minute of the five months and twenty-nine days we’d spent as a family of three.
Last Fourth of July, Kristin and I both knew our lives had changed forever. But on New Year’s Eve of that year, we had no idea that our lives were about to change again. If we had known what was going to happen, we never would have gone out that night. More than anything, I wished that we had stayed home and rung in the new year watching fireworks from our yard, just like this. If we had, everything would have turned out differently. But, of course, neither of us could have known that.
The bright flares blurred before my eyes as they filled with tears. Gazing up at the night sky, I imagined Kristin looking down on us from somewhere up above, watching the same fireworks we were. I hope you have the best seat in the house, baby, I tried to tell her without talking out loud, hoping she could somehow hear my unspoken words. Wherever you are, I hope you’re happy. I wrapped my arms more tightly around Mason, hugging him closer to my chest, where I could feel the hard band of my wife’s wedding ring digging into my skin. We miss you.
***