It started with a
phone call. Seeing the caller ID read “MOM <3” Katie picked up the
phone. Immediately expecting a typically cheery soothing tone, Katie began,
“Hey Mah!” After a few seconds of silence, she questioned to see if she had
lost the call, until she heard slight hiccups and muffled sniffling. Then what
she heard has impacted her life ever since.
“Dad is in the
hospital.” Those were the first words she heard. That was when the panic set in,
unlike any she’s ever felt before, as she listens in to detailed updates of a
car accident her father encountered. Updates that thankfully included recovery,
and after a year’s rest and recuperation, her father will forever bear the scar
of his surgically placed plate, now removed, which was in his shoulder to keep
the shattered bones in place.
Katie is a daughter who has been through difficult times, but none like this before. She explains, “Nothing
tragic has ever happened to anyone close to me before that point in my
life. I had only known of other people’s
struggles.” She hadn’t understood how fragile anyone’s life can be. At that
point in time, it was always sympathy Katie gave to other people, never the
other way around.
Although
Katie’s dad had not died in the accident, it was another level of her reality
that shook her to the bone. It was because of that accident that she changed
her lifestyle. Her mother mentions how it wasn’t instantaneous, and she didn’t
know it at the time, but every better decision she made related back to that
accident. She then tells Katie, “His helmet shattered once he was thrown off of
his bike from the impact of the car. I can’t imagine how I could have handled
the situation if it was one of my girls.” Katie admits that statement resonated
with her.
Years
of bad decisions became less and less prevalent. From being heavily influenced by
people and substances at an age much younger than when people are normally
exposed to those kind of influences or peer pressures. Her mother makes
scrapbooks of her daughter’s journey’s through high school and college. As you
flip through Katie’s portraits, year to year, there is a visible maturity seen through
the confidence she yields, the smile she holds, and her brighter attire.
The fragility of
life she felt so close to her heart, moved her more emotionally than she
realized, until she looked back at the path she has taken, and saw how dark it
could have been, but how bright it is now since that once moment in her life.
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