I didn’t intentionally set out to write/publish this blog on this day, but that is how God worked it out. A year ago today, my family each experienced the worst day of our lives. 

It started out being a very normal day. It was a school day, but we were wrapping up the school year and for some reason, we ended up with a chiropractor appointment first thing in the morning. That was unusual, but we needed to get in to see our chiropractor, so we let our school day go and went. 

I was joking around with our chiropractor and asked him to tell Isaac and Damien that they were probably injuring their necks by constantly flinging their too-long bangs, that they didn’t want to cut, out of their eyes. He was picking on them about their longer hair, and we were all laughing. 

Eventually we made it home, but I had decided to let the academics go for the day. I had looked for a specific tool the day before and couldn’t find it in our feed shed. It does become difficult to find things when everyone just walks up to the shed and throws in whatever they are supposed to be “putting away.”  Needless to say, we were going to clean out that shed and find that tool!

The younger kids and I worked on it together. We eventually found the tool, got the shed organized, threw out the trash, etc. It had been a very successful day. We’d even managed to all work and still be in good moods. 

We wrapped up and the kids headed off for a swim. I went inside the house. Later on they were asking to take a ride on our utility vehicle that we call “V”. They were taking turns and having a great time on a nice spring evening. I went and enjoyed a relaxing bath. 

While I was in the bath, Charlie received a call from one of our daughters. She had been driving V, made a hard turn on slippery grass at the edge of a terrace in our back pasture, and V had flipped over. Charlie assured her that he was heading down there to help. 

A few minutes later, I decided that I needed to get out of the bath and see if they needed anymore help. I had just made that decision when my phone rang. It was our daughter. “Mom, I need you to call 911!  Damien’s not breathing.”

Simultaneously toweling off, getting dressed, etc  with my phone on speaker, I called 911. I knew no ambulance would be able to make it back there because they were at the very back of our 25 acres and we’d had a great deal of rain leaving a great deal of mud. They also had to make it across an overflow ditch that had gotten quite deep from our pond overflowing its banks. I didn’t know what we were going to do. 

I was assured that help was on the way, but I could only focus on how in the world to get that help down there. The keys to both of the 4×4 trucks weren’t where they were supposed to be, of course. So I went yelling through the house that I needed help NOW to find the keys. Eventually someone found them for me and a volunteer firefighter showed up in his 4×4 truck. I hopped in to show him how to get down there and left kids at the house to just figure out what was going on. 

We finally made it to the accident scene. Charlie was performing CPR on Damien, and the firefighter jumped out to take over. I have no idea how cops made it back there in their SUVS and cars. Lots of trucks made it back there too.  Charlie and I held onto each other and prayed. A few of the kids showed up here and there, but I wasn’t much help to them. Tears and prayers… begging him to take a breath. But nothing ever changed. 

I think they worked on him for around 30-45 minutes with no change. A helicopter was landing across the road ready to airlift him – no change. They finally put him on a backboard and into the back of a pickup truck. I rode in the front of the truck up to the ambulance where they transferred him to go to the hospital. I knew then that he was gone. They weren’t airlifting him – they were driving him. Then, the ambulance got stuck in the mud. We had a tractor to pull it out of the mud, but our chain was back in the pasture. It had been in the back of the utility vehicle when it flipped over. 

Finally we were able to use the found chain and tractor to pull the ambulance out of the mud and get onto the road. We had a police escort to the hospital. Everyone tried so hard to save this kid. The hospital was ready for him and got him straight into a room to work on him. I had to wait outside. A close friend showed up and just held me. 

Eventually the doctor told me what I already knew. They had done everything they could, but he was gone. My little boy… he wasn’t very little anymore, but he was only 11, and he was my youngest boy. 

We’ve spent the last year putting one foot in front of the other.  We’ve had amazing support from so, so many… our relatives and close friends, our church communities, football and cheer people, and many people that we didn’t even know. Our faith has brought us closer together and closer to God. 

Life has moved along, whether I wanted it to or not. When a tragedy happens, you expect everything to just stop around you, and maybe start again when you’re ready. But that’s not how it works, at least not for me. My first and third sons were married to two beautiful young women in this last year. And one more child has graduated from high school. We’ve made it through another homeschool year, and Charlie has invested another year of work in his business. Fortunately, we were already reducing the number of animals we had on our homestead before this tragedy, and now we’re down to only some poultry in mobile tractors. The homestead will grow once again when we’re ready. 

God has been so good to us through all of this. Sure we’ve questioned Him and been angry with Him, but we have the hope that we will each reunite with Damien one day and be made whole in God. We do ask for continued prayers. If you have the chance to spend time with us, know that we love talking about Damien. He will always be a part of us. 

Rebecca