The Accident

On Saturday morning, September 13, I was in Yakima for my high school reunion, stayng with my mother-in-law. I went down the hill to the barn with Mike in his pickup. It was the first time I had gone down there since October 3, 2003. We were looking for Western things to use as decorations in the upcoming fundraiser I am doing for John’s memorial scholarship. We found a few things but on the way back up I asked Mike to stop and show me the spot where they found John and to tell me a little more about it.

He tried to explain what he thought had happened with the tractor. John had a pallet or something similar on the hydraulic forks on the back of the tractor. It appeared that he had parked the tractor diagonally against the edge of the hill and had gotten off to try to clean some of the brush prunings off or push them back towards the edge or in some way prepare the tractor to dump the load he had on the forks. Then he had apparently gotten back on the tractor and started to back it up and possibly hit the brake, causing the tractor to spin perhaps 180 degrees. Somehow that caused the tractor to lose its footing and it began to go down the hill. The forks must have caught on the hillside and flipped the tractor and he thinks it rolled at least twice. At least one of those times it rolled on John and caught him below the sternum.

I had known his pelvis was crushed; they told me that when he was still at Memorial, but I didn’t know the extent of the injuries. I just knew he was bleeding profusely, but I had no idea where the blood was coming from; I’m not sure the doctors did, either. From his broken bones, from crushed organs, maybe everywhere.

Mike went to the hospital as soon as he learned that John was there, and he talked to the doctors. He was the one who called me from the hospital to let me know of the accident. The doctors told him John’s veins and arteries had been crushed, that they didn’t know if they could patch them back together and weren’t even sure they could tell which veins went where.

Mike said he was conscious part of the time, his eyes were open, but he was clearly in shock. Mike talked to him and stroked his head, telling him what had happened and asking him to blink if he understood. Mike says he blinked several times, and he didn’t think that was a normal reaction from someone in shock unless they were consciously able to move their eyes in response. Mike seemed to think that with his body in shock, John was not feeling the pain – his body had taken as much pain as it could and his nervous system was no longer able to process the pain.

Mike flew on the plane that took John to Boeing Field and then on the ambulance that raced from the airport to Harborview. While they were in the air, flying over Mt. Rainier, John’s heart stopped. Mike told him he didn’t know of any way to get him closer to God than where they were right at that moment and if he had to go, now would be as good a time as any.

But the medical personnel plunged a needle into his heart and pumped it full of adrenaline, they performed cpr almost non-stop until they arrived at the hospital, simultaneously pumping blood into him to try to staunch the flow and keep him alive.

At the hospital they rushed him into emergency and began working on him. At first they wouldn’t let Mike in but then they did and as they were working they suddenly all stopped and it was clear that John had died. They left Mike with him, giving their condolences as they left the operating room. Mike wasn’t sure if seconds or minutes had gone by since he first arrived at emergency.

This confirms my belief that if he had survived, John’s life would have been horribly painful. With the extent of his injuries, it would have cost a fortune to do the medical interventions necessary to just patch him up and keep him alive. We would have probably had to file bankruptcy once the medical insurance was topped out. There is no knowing if there was a brain injury. There is no knowing whether he would have ever walked again – most likely not. There is a strong probability that he would have lived with excruciating pain, both physical and psychological. Undoubtedly he would never have been the same person.

While I miss John on an ongoing basis almost daily, even five years later, it is abundantly clear that this pain is far less than it would have been to see him suffer as a result of the injuries. It is abundantly clear to me that regardless of the struggles I have to face now, they are nothing compared to what we would have had to deal with: physically, emotionally, financially.

I told Mike if it were me on the plan with John, I would have stopped them from restarting his heart, if I were aware of the extent of the injuries. That’s easy for me to say now, but would I have really been able to do that? And then how much, how often would I have second-guessed myself.

For me this is the final piece of perspective. I know God has welcomed John home and he is whole and happy and well and deeply beloved there. He is remembered with love by many here. I am quite sure if he had lived, it would have been hell for us both. So once again, I find strong reason to trust in God and know that things happen for reasons we can’t always understand at the time, maybe never. God did not cause this accident, but God had the kindness to allow John to lose this battle and, ultimately, win Heaven.