The Bright Side of the Road: August 2012

Someone once recommended writing everything down that has happened in the last year to help close the book and to bring some closure. Someone else told me if I was tired of repeating the story over and over then I should just post it for everyone to read. I decided to follow their advice. I will post the story and I will warn you, it is long! and then I want to use this as a means of looking forward to the next big thing.

It was an away game and it was available. Anyone who has ever turned on a television on a Saturday afternoon in the fall could imagine why these stipulations dictated my wedding date in a college town. Friends and strangers alike would ask, “Why would you want to get married on that September 11th?” My answer was always the same, it is an away game and it’s available. My beloved Bulldogs lost that day to the Gamecocks 6-17 but it was the best day of my life. It was hot that day, but that was not anything unusual for September in Athens. We were married at the Taylor Grady House. There was beautiful White columns, red and black decorations, and rain. My best friends did a good job of keeping the fact it was raining from me while we were getting ready and it cleared in enough time to get pictures before the ceremony started. My sister played the battle hymn of the republic followed by the wedding march on Eddie’s old trumpet when my dad walked me down the aisle to behind the house. The ceremony went by so fast but I will always remember how Eddie looked at me, it was the same way he looked at me at our first Christmas together when I realized I was in love with him. After we were pronounced man and wife, we walked back down the aisle to Van Morrison’s Bright Side of the Road; I have never cared much for the epic bellow of an organ or piano playing the wedding march. We served BBQ outside and danced on a wet dance floor. Eddie and I danced to the Pat Green song Eden’s Gate and my dad and I danced to Coldplay’s Green Eyes, not being the sentimental type, I could not bring myself to dance to any of the popular choices such as “At Last” or God forbid, “Butterfly Kisses”. We ate delicious wedding cake, toasted with glass bottle Coca Colas, and left in a red Mustang Convertible, to match my fabulous red shoes.

Initially, two blue lines were the most terrifying thing I had ever seen. Eddie and I had argued all weekend and I had gone to church alone that Sunday morning. I had been on the Depo shot for three years since I had a blood clot and therefore had not had a regular period in quite some time. I am not sure why I decided to take that test that afternoon. I had vomited a few times, but I also had just gotten of the flu. I do know reason for testing was more to see that I was not pregnant, not to see if I was. Eddie was not home and I panicked. We had only been married four months; we did not want to have a baby for several years. How would we pay for a baby? How would Eddie react? I called my sister before I called my husband. I walked around the outside of the house four times before Eddie got home. I am not sure what it is about the outdoors, but I have told Eddie the two most important things in a front yard. In January of 2008, I told Eddie that I loved him for the first time in the front yard of his apartment. In January of 2011, I told him I was pregnant with our child in the front yard of our house. Of all the things I imagined he would say I did not think he would say, “That’s wonderful”. I am pretty sure I have never heard him say the word wonderful before but it was the best thing I had heard all day.

The next nine months were a blur of nervous excitement, paralyzing fear, daily vomiting, and a roller coaster of hormones. I gained twenty one pounds and lost nineteen over that time. Other than the nausea and it being summer time, it was a relatively easy pregnancy, from what I am told. My doctor decided to induce me five days early due to the baby measuring two weeks bigger than my due date. My last day of work was Friday, August 19^th and I was scheduled to be induced on Monday the 22^nd. They told us to arrive at 6 that night so Eddie planned on working that day and I planned on tidying up the house, getting my eyebrows waxed, and doing some last minute shopping. The hospital called me early Monday morning and asked if I could come in now. I couldn’t go in right away! My husband was at work and I had plans! I went to the hospital sometime after lunch and got checked in and started the process of induction. Eddie came later that afternoon and we waited.

My water broke sometime around 3 am and the contractions began, they were not too bad to begin with. We tried walking a little but the monitors they make you wear make it difficult to move around too much. I got an epidural around 9 am and then we waited some more. Our family came to meet the newest edition of our family but all they did was wait some more. By 9 pm the epidural was not doing much good any longer and I could not dilate more than 4 cm, they decided to do a c-section. We had to wait a little longer because another baby was in distress, so they let her go first which was fine with me. Eddie got his scrubs to put on and when they took me off the Pitocin my contractions stopped immediately. The rest is very much a blur.

They took me back to the operating room and started running more medication to make sure I was completely numb. Because of the combination of it being so cold and the medications they were giving me, I could not stop physically shaking or keep my teeth from chattering. They had to strap my arms down because I could not hold them still. They also piled several hot blankets on my arms and chest to try and warm me up. One thing that really bothered me about the whole situation was that they started before Eddie got to come back. He didn’t miss anything important, just prepping, but I did not like being alone. I really don’t think a c-section is something anyone should ever do alone. On August 23, 2011 at 11:19 pm Anna Kate West was born at 7 lbs and 10 oz and was 20 inches long. It seemed like it took her forever to cry and even longer for me to see her. I could not touch her because of my arms being strapped down but I loved her even more than I already did.

Eddie went with her to the nursery where our family waited long enough to at least see her once before they had to leave. I was still in surgery having a difficult time. I could feel so much pressure when they were putting me back together. It felt like they had taken all my insides out and they were just stirring a big spoon in my stomach. The doctors went ahead and put me all the way under to finish stitching me up. I woke up in the labor and delivery going in and out for about an hour. They would not move me to the mother baby unit until I was completely awake. I had no idea where Eddie or Anna Kate were and even if someone had told me, which they probably did, I don’t think I would have remembered. They finally took me to my other room where my sister and Eddie were waiting for me. Anna Kate was in the nursery but they brought her into the room when I got there. My sister stayed awake with me all night. I asked her the same questions over and over every time I would wake up and not remember what she said before that.

We did not get to come home until Friday afternoon. My mom met us at our house and stayed the night with us. The first weekend home was very stressful, I had some difficulty breastfeeding and Anna Kate was not gaining any weight and we had not figured out a schedule. My mother in law stayed with us a few nights and took us to Anna Kate’s first doctor’s appointment. Tuesday night was our first night on our own. I took the first shift and stayed up with her until 1:00 am until I just needed a break. Eddie took Anna Kate into the living room and got her to go to sleep in her bouncy seat and he slept in the recliner while I slept in our bedroom down the hall. Around 2:00 am, Eddie woke up because he heard a noise and rolled over. He looked down the hall and noticed that it seemed like sunlight was shining down the hall, he then noticed a little puff of smoke roll around the door frame it was at that point he realized our house was on fire. He yelled at me to get up and grab my phone. I do not remember him yelling, all I remember is waking up and looking down the hallway and seeing the ceiling in flames. I screamed. I grabbed my phone and ran down the hallway. I was yelling, “Where’s the baby? Where’s the baby?” Eddie gave me the baby and I ran outside. I ran around to the sunroom door to try and get back in that side to let the dogs out but it was locked. The smoke detectors did not go off until we had been outside for several minutes because of there was no smoke inside the house since it had already gone through the roof. I stood in my front yard, with my one week old, in my hospital underwear and a tank top watching the flames come out of my roof and burn the pecan tree that hangs over my house. I screamed over and over, “Why is my house on fire?” Eddie put the dogs in the backyard and turned all the breakers off and closed all the doors in the house to cut off airflow to the fire, him doing these things probably saved some of our belongings. Before the fire department arrived, he put me in my car and moved all the cars away from the house and tried to put the dogs into an old pickup but he could only get two of them before the other ran off. The six minutes it took the fire department to arrive was the longest six minutes of my life. I watched them run hoses to my house, I watched my husband put on his gear and go back in, several of the men spoke to me and tried to reassure me that everything was okay. I watched the fire get bigger and come out the side above our bedroom and I watched them start to put out the fire.

When the fire department arrived, one of the firefighter’s wives had driven over with him because they knew it was either our house or our neighbor’s based on the address. She had a blanket in the car so I could cover up before I walked to her car and she took me and Anna Kate back to their house. My in-laws came over and sat with me while I waited for my mom and stepdad to get there. At this point, I was in shock. I could no longer cry; I just sat on the bed rocking Anna Kate. When my mom and stepdad arrived, they took me back over to my house to collect a few things and talk to Eddie. Eddie would not allow me to go inside because he knew how I would react. There was a huge hole right in the middle of our roof and all the wood above the brick going up to the roof by our bedroom was gone. They had started bringing our things out and putting them in the front yard, most of our living room, kitchen and dining room were okay but everything else was damaged. Some friends went in and tried to find me some shoes that I could wear home. Eddie hugged me and kissed me like he would never get the chance to again. We grabbed a few items, said good bye, and headed towards Smyrna.

On the ride to my mom’s house, we had left Anna Kate’s pacifier in the house and she cried all the way to Commerce. She even sucked on my finger part of the way. We stopped at Walmart and picked a few things up, including more pacifiers. For the next week, I was a zombie. I didn’t sleep at all and only ate a little. Many people came by mom’s house to bring us clothes, diapers, or anything they thought we could use. Eddie stayed in Comer to sort things out with our house, schedule Servpro to come pick up our things that could be salvaged and found us a place to rent. He came to get us on Labor Day weekend. Mom watched Anna Kate for a little while so we could go shopping for the essentials we would need. On Monday, we packed up what little we had and headed back to Comer to our home away from home.

The rental house was perfect. A friend from church had recommended we rent from someone that was currently living in California and her house was fully furnished. It had everything we could possibly need; beds, linens, towels, dishes, couch, and we even worked out cable and internet. It was never a comfortable place for me because sometimes it is weird to live amongst other people’s belongings. You can never really settle in because you would not have things set up the same way someone else might have their home set up. Our dogs never adjusted to the living arrangements. They would constantly would dig out of the fence and go home. One of the three we had to keep inside all the time because she would always find a way out of the fence.

I went into our house about a week later, Eddie had not offered to take me because he probably did not want me to go inside and he knew how it would affect me. It smelled horrible, like moldy soot. The living room looked okay, it was dirty but too bad considering what had happened. The hallway and the back bedrooms were what did me in; I still have a hard time looking at those pictures. The hallway floor was covered with charred, wet sheetrock and insulation that squished when you walked. The walls were charred black and dirty and the blue tarp covering the hole where the attic and roof use to be gave everything an eerie glow. The bedroom on the right had been the guest bedroom and it had my bedroom suite from college and our gun safe in it. The bed was completely covered in sheetrock and insulation along with some of our belongings Eddie had sorted through. The item that stood out the most in that room was a doll my Great Aunt had made for me that I was saving for Anna Kate. It had been knocked out of the basket and was laying face down in the wet mess on the floor. The bedroom to the left was Anna Kate’s room. She never even slept one night in her crib. My sister had come and painted a beautiful cherry blossom tree with pink and white flowers on her lime green walls. The tree was still in one piece but the entire ceiling lay on top of her crib, changing table, and bookshelf. Her message board with all her pretty bows still hung on the wall. The hall bathroom was more of the same wet sheetrock and insulation. The master bedroom was difficult to look at as well. Our beautiful bedroom suite that was a wedding gift from my in-laws was covered in insulation and sheetrock. You couldn’t even walk around to the bathroom. A painting of poppies hung crooked above our bed.

The six months we lived in the rental house were very difficult. I took thirteen weeks off of work for maternity leave. I was depressed and anxious about the future. I didn’t sleep at night because I would have nightmares about the house being on fire and I had a very difficult time putting Anna Kate into another room for fear of the house burning and not being able to get to her. Eddie and I argued a lot because I felt like he could not understand why I felt the way I did. He said I needed to get up and do something but I could not explain to him that it was difficult to do anything with an infant and it was also difficult to keep someone else’s house clean and laundry done when we really had no place to store our things. I picked lots of fights with him over him not doing enough with the baby or not spending enough time with me or not understanding why I was depressed. I always felt that I could never do enough to make him happy. Christmas came and went and the rebuilding of our house continued and my panic attacks and depression kept at a steady pace.

We moved back into the house in March. It was very beautiful and we made a lot of changes that we could never have afforded had we remodeled it ourselves. Servpro delivered what they could save and we purchased new furniture for the bedrooms. The first month back was very difficult for me. There was no way to change how our master bedroom or the hallway were so every time I went to bed, I had the same view I had when I awoke to the hallway in flames. I have an irrational fear of closing our bedroom door because I am afraid I won’t know if the house is on fire. After several months in the house, I am finally sleeping several nights out of the week without having nightmares or waking up in fear.

Everything had seemed to be looking up until June 21, 2012. It was an ordinary day at work when I arrived at 8:45 am and parked in the gravel lot that no one was happy about parking in. We all felt it was unsafe and some of the girls had called it the “rape lot”. I came into the office and at 9:05 am my phone rang; it was a resident reporting a water leak. Our maintenance technician was not in yet so I decided to go over there and make sure the water was shut off so it did not cause any unnecessary damage. I walked out to my car looking at my phone not paying much attention to my surroundings. I got right up on the end of my car before I realized that my passenger side window was broken and there was a man standing there going through my things. At first, I thought the man was a homeless man I knew named Aubrey. The first thought I had was I have given you food and money and this is how you repay me?” I was livid, so I asked the man, “What the fuck are you doing?” He turned around and I realized it was not who I thought it was I felt I was far enough away I would snap a picture of him with my phone and then run back to my office. The moment he realized what I was doing he came at me. He had a camera bag in his hand and he swung it at my head so hard it knocked me down. I got up swinging. I hit him several times before he knocked me down again. He said, “I’m going to hurt you girl”. I remember getting up the second time thinking no one is going to drive by, no one is going to see me lying here on the ground. I fought with him over the bag because he kept hitting me with it. He knocked my purse and phone of my hand and I knocked a jar of change out of his. I remember the sound it made when the glass broke and the change spilled onto the gravel. He told me he was going to hurt me several times and I kept getting back up every time he knocked me down. The last time he knocked me down he kept hitting me in the head. At one point I just knew he was about to kick me in the face and at that time I heard someone shout, “get off her or I’ll shoot, nigger you let her go or I’ll shoot you, you won’t be the first one I have shot!” The man ran off into the field behind the parking lot.

I picked up my phone and called my office and told them I had been attacked. Two of the women I work with came outside while the man who probably saved my life called 911 while my boss called Eddie. I was upset but it really did not hit me until I was riding in the ambulance alone. I sobbed all the way to Athens Regional; everyone apologized for what had happened. The police came to the hospital and took pictures of my injuries and my statement. I was released from the hospital before my car was released from the police. Eddie finally made it to the hospital in time to pick up my prescriptions and meet my mom out front. We went to lunch and the police met us at the restaurant to return some of my belongings. We picked up Anna Kate and went home. My mom stayed with us until Eddie got home later that evening. I ran through what happened a million times. I could not wrap my brain around why all of these things had happened to me. What if he had shot me with my own gun he took from my car? Why didn’t I run away?

I know looking back that God was there through all of these things. God was with Anna Kate when she was restless that night causing Eddie to sleep in the living room with her. God was with Eddie when he woke up that night. God was with us as we rebuilt our lives. God was with me in that parking lot and he was with Mr. Terry who said he never drove down College Avenue but had decided at the last minute to go that way. God was with the police as they searched and captured the man who attacked me. We saw him in the things that were saved from our house. The only Christmas ornaments that were saved were the ones we had bought on our honeymoon. Irreplaceable pictures were recovered and all the little things we had argued about several months before were gone. Athens-Clarke County gave Mr. Terry an award and the grand jury came back with a 15 count indictment for Samuel Evans. I am still questioning everything and I am still having nightmares about the fire and the assault. I have had panic attacks on occasion but mostly I am anxious. I am worried about what could happen next. I worry about what might happen with Evans’ trial and what if someone else wants to hurt me. I have to continue to look forward to the next exciting thing; Anna Kate will turn one next month, and then will be our anniversary, Eddie’s birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. At this point, I am living for the next big thing.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

The anniversary

Thursday, August 2, 2012

The Next Big Thing....