I'm Here to Share
The minute that you start living your life like it’s a blessing, it becomes one.
Did I really leave a cliffhanger in the last article? It makes me laugh a little just thinking about it because of the response it’s received. The backstory is I didn’t even reread the last article before submitting it. I wrote from the heart, and I knew if I wanted it to be out there, a second look would cause doubt in my mind about saying these things out loud.
Many people think my hesitation is about guilt over the situation, which is a piece of it. It’s a guilt you wouldn’t believe. People assume I have guilt because we should have left when it started raining, or I should have known somehow it was going to be bad, etc. But that’s not even close.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve thought about what life would have been like without that trip. My brain and, more likely, my heart can’t comprehend it. I’ve never gone back to Albert Pike and, until recently, haven’t been able to even say or write those words. I’ve not tent camped, and I can’t even look at Facebook when I see people posting pictures of that area. There’s no more being in a car when it’s raining without me thinking of those I love in a car, scared and hurt. Even small things cause heartache, like using black trash bags because I see body bags.
However, my guilt comes 100% from having someone else’s child in my care that awful night and knowing, day in and day out, her family must feel what I feel every day. Knowing I was responsible for their sweet girl during that time and wasn’t able to deliver her safely home… there’s no coming back from that guilt. I don’t know how to explain the pain of losing your only child, but extending that pain to someone else is unbearable. I know there is nothing we or any of the other (maybe a hundred) campers could have done to know this would happen, but it doesn’t erase the responsibility we, as parents, take on to protect our children or those in our care.
Jokes are made all the time about parenting. “Well, they’re alive, so I’m not that bad, I guess.” It sounds flippant and is meant to be funny, but for me, it’s real. That’s how we think of parenting and if that is the standard, then I’ve failed. Not only for me but for someone else. That guilt is real. Guilt about not leaving or not knowing? Nope! I was there. I know there was no way of knowing what would happen, and now I know that place, one I thought was safe my entire life, simply wasn’t. I want to get to the details of that in another article, so you’ll have to have another cliffhanger for now.
I’ve been asked what happened to my Pomeranian Rocky. The heart will keep the belief alive as long as possible. I left that day believing Rocky was out there. I was dead inside and couldn’t speak, so Clark took control, driving us home. I remember this part, unfortunately, well. After that terrible moment of seeing my stepdad, who I call “Ba,” and coming to terms with our new reality, things began moving in slow motion. We had to wait for as many of the missing to be found and for their bodies to be identified. I’ll still hold most of this part private, but it was hard. It took a while to find my mom, and we had to wait to identify our loved ones. "Ba" did that for me, trying to shelter me from more hurt in any way he possibly could. That’s who he is and has been all my life.
Clark was the same. Oh, that man. He has been a rock for a good 12-13 years of our 15 years together. If you’re married, you can laugh with me when I say that. There’s never perfection, just progress towards it, right? He gathered what we had left, handled the paperwork, and talked to the Rangers. They told us to stop at the therapy station, which was on the way out of the scene, and we did as we were told. There was even more mass chaos waiting outside of that once tranquil piece of land. People, cameras, horses, dogs, and more were waiting there. We stopped long enough to talk to one or two people, and Clark quickly knew I couldn’t do it. We got in the car and drove home, making the necessary calls one must make when you’ve just lost loved ones. Little did we know all of this had made the national news, so this part you may know better than I do because by then, I had tuned out. I only tuned back in around the time friends and family began coming over. By friends and family; I mean anyone that any of us has ever walked past in our entire lives. It was a circus; it was like walking the tightrope with no safety net (or training) while everyone below was watching, gasping at your every move.
There was a lot of funeral planning, and some seriously messed up stuff that needed to be done in the next couple of weeks, but we managed. We managed to get past three funerals in one day. We managed, smiling and pretending like we were not crumbling, to make arrangements and to somehow go on with life. If I’m being honest, that’s all it was for years, just managing.
There was such a gathering of good from everyone around. I can’t possibly do that sentence justice on paper, but it was the most touching display of human-to-human love I’ve ever witnessed. People from all around the country gathered to find the missing people, the animals, and the possessions that the powerful, ravenous river swept away. Our four-wheelers alone were found miles and miles apart and nowhere near where we camped. Our belongings were gathered and organized into sections in a very large building. Survivors and family members of those who were lost were able to come in and recover what we could. The efforts of those strangers would have been an incredibly beautiful gesture if the circumstances surrounding them hadn’t been so utterly devastating.
On the day "Ba" and I drove up to look through what was salvaged, one of the Rangers found Rocky. No matter how hard I had clung to hope, the truth was that he hadn’t made it either. Gathering our items and hearing that final piece of horrific news was the moment that made it all real. Things had slowed down, and it was no longer just motion after motion in a movie. It was real life, and it was mine.
Not talking about pieces of this day has made it fester inside of me, causing pain and agony, but it’s also kept it mine. Maybe I thought I didn’t have to have the whole world know what happened, how I felt, and maybe even how bad it was. I’m not sure why I thought that was what I needed to do, except that maybe it was a form of punishment, and I thought I should be in pain and agony since living happily was no longer possible. For years I have made sure that when I was happy, I would pull up those memories and use them against myself. Why would someone do that to themselves? Your guess is as good as mine, but we all do. We all self-sabotage when things start going well, thinking down deep we don’t deserve to be happy or to enjoy the blessings that are right in front of us.
Once I found peace, I knew I needed to release all of this. Whether it’s in therapy, with friends, or in articles for everyone that I know to (hopefully) read, it needed to be told. For myself and for others to have a true grasp of what we put ourselves through. We really do self-sabotage and keep ourselves from seeing life as it is… a blessing. Don’t worry, I’ll get to how I personally changed my point of view, but first, we should all know that it’s possible to go from this deep, dark place to a world where all you see is light. In my case, sharing means letting everyone know exactly how dark it has been. Even today, there are struggles that a lot of people will never have to experience in their lifetime that I’m dealing with. I don’t say this for sympathy; I’m actually better than I’ve been in years because I still see all of the incredible light in my life. I know there’s a purpose and a reason for everything that is happening, and I’m here to share.
