My Truth Part 2: Waking Up into the Nightmare

“I can’t go on, I’ll go on.” ― Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable

A Demerol drip saved my sanity, or rather, an intravenous patient-controlled analgesia saved my sanity. I didn’t know what that was until I started to write about my use of Demerol in the days after the accident. I woke up in a hospital room the morning after the accident. I had an IV in my arm and a little button that I could push. That little button and the drug Demerol that it fed into my vein saved me in those days spent in the hospital after the accident. In light of the ways that opioids have ruined countless lives, it seems odd to say that an opioid saved me, but in looking back on it, I’m convinced that it did – at least in the short term. It was provided to me to treat my physical pain, which it did very well after the accident. I had been in multiple emergency surgeries throughout the night and was in rough shape. The unintended byproduct of the drug is that it kept me from giving up on life in that hospital room. The drug kept my emotional pain at bay for the days after the accident. It allowed me to escape my new reality from time to time. It allowed me to not have to face the blunt, harsh reality of what had happened, at least temporarily. I could escape into a drug-induced nap if I felt the need to, and I often did.

Jason was supposed to be at Lollapalooza that whole weekend, and I was supposed to be in Traverse City for a weekend away with my parents, my girlfriend, and her family. Instead, I’m in the hospital, and Jason is dead.

I woke up that next morning, in that hospital bed, into another life, a new reality. I woke up into a nightmare that had started the night before. Usually, when you wake up from a nightmare, you find relief when you realize that the nightmare is over and you wake up into your life. You are no longer facing the fear that you faced in the nightmare. When I woke up, there was no relief, just the continuation of the nightmare. I was still facing that primal and immense fear that I had felt in the ER the night before. Fortunately, the fear had dulled. The dulling of it was due to a combination of things: I had sobered up, I was medicated with Demerol, and I was surrounded by my family and those who cared about me. My family was there now. My girlfriend and her family were there now. In the ER, I had felt so utterly alone. I wasn’t alone anymore.

The previous night in the ER was pure panic and fear. I spent the night choking on the fear, having to fight for every breath. That next morning, I was able to breathe again, while at the same time, though, facing the reality of what had happened and the ominous consequences of it.

Upon waking up and seeing my family, my first words were, “Where are the fuck are my teeth?!” My two front teeth had been knocked out. I slowly realized that the physical aftermath of the night before didn’t stop there. My face was a swollen, black & blue mess. My nose was broken. Almost half of my lower lip had been reattached with stitches. Half of my upper lip had been reattached by stitches inside of my mouth. My chest was black and blue from the seat belt. A deep gash was stapled together on the outside of my left calf and was covered by bandages. My lower right leg was in a heavily bandaged splint. As I saw the splint, the image from the night before of my foot flashed in front of my eyes. So many parts of my foot had been pointing the wrong way. It was as if my ankle and foot had been a jigsaw puzzle where someone had rearranged the pieces in the wrong order. My brother told me that the surgeon had called it a triple dislocation of my foot, and I came to find out that I was lucky that the surgeon was able to save it from amputation.

Looking back on it, I’m not really sure what happened on what day. I was on powerful pain medication, and it was 24 years ago. I spent 5 days in the hospital after the accident, and those days all run together in my memory. This is a part of the story of the accident that I haven’t really explored deeply. Up until now, I often glossed over it when I talked about it.

My dad had been woken up by the phone call about the accident in the early morning hours. The only info the caller offered was that I was in surgery for a severe leg injury and that my passenger had died. After finding out what hospital I was at, he woke up my mom and rushed out of the house to be by my side. I can’t begin to imagine what was going through their minds while they got ready and made the 40-minute drive to the hospital. My parents called my girlfriend and told her the little information they had been given and then drove to the hospital, not knowing what they would find when they got there. I will never understand how incredibly hard that must have been for them. It is gut-wrenching when I try to put myself in their shoes. It has been extremely hard for me to forgive myself for what I put my family and girlfriend through. My brother lived closest and was actually able to be at the hospital to see me in the ER. My friend Kevin was called and was at the hospital while I was in surgery. I have been told that there was such an air of disbelief about what had happened. They couldn’t believe that I had been driving drunk. It was so out of character for me. I wasn’t really a drinker and was typically very responsible.

My relationship with my brother was strained in the months leading up to the accident. We had been extremely close though out my childhood and teen years. Although there are 10 years in between us, we were as close as brothers could be. I looked up to him my whole life. He was my best friend up until the months leading up to the accident. The reason for the rift is not worth discussing in detail here, and to be honest, it was ridiculous as I look back on it. It was very real at the time, and we had not really been on speaking terms. The problem with having 3 siblings in a family is that the one not directly involved in the issue is almost forced to take sides. We had always been an extremely close family, but the trivial disagreements between my brother and I had sowed division amongst him and me, which my sister got caught up in. We didn’t feel as close, and that was such a foreign feeling for me. When I woke up in the hospital, all of that nonsense was quickly forgotten. My brother had been the first to the hospital and was there as I laid in the ER screaming my head off. My family was there when I woke up. They were together as one to support me. We were all together. The way that my family came together while I was in the hospital showed me just how strong our bond was. This has been the case in all of the years since. When something happens to one of us – we all drop everything, even if there is an issue between any of us, and show up for each other. There is never any question; we will always be there for each other.

My family has never really talked about the real emotions hanging over us in that hospital room. I’ll never know what it was like for them. I’m not trying to put words in their mouths, but I know what I felt and saw in that room. Although they would never say it, there had to be some feeling of unbelievable disappointment and even maybe anger for what I did. There had to be thought, “What the fuck did you do? We raised you better than this.” They would never say it, but I have to imagine that those thoughts had to be there somewhere. I was the baby of the family. I was a good kid who didn’t really do anything out of line. Sure I dabbled in some questionable behavior from time to time, like any teenager – but I followed the rules for the most part. My parents had always told me that they would trust me until I broke that trust. I hadn’t broken that trust…and then the accident happened. What a hell of a way to break their trust in me.

I will never forget the pain and concern that I saw on each member of my family’s face as they sat and stood by my side during those first days after the accident. The looks on my parent’s faces hurt the most to think about. My mother’s emotions had always flowed freely. She felt everything deeply, and she was often in tears in the hospital room. Who could blame her? Conversely, my dad is the toughest person that I know, physically as well as emotionally. He had always kept his emotions well hidden, and there was no coaxing them out of him. I had seen tears in his eyes only one other time in my life when his mom died 18 months earlier. There were tears in his eyes at times during those days in the hospital, but I remember the pain shown on his face the most. I had never seen such emotional pain on his face as I saw on it in that hospital room. He was struggling, and it was my fault. My dad had had an extremely tough life growing up, filled with adversity, hardship, and suffering. He had done everything in his power to protect his kids from a life like that. We weren’t sheltered, but we had it very, very easy compared to him. As I look back on it, I think he may have been mourning the loss of the easy life I had had. I hadn’t really been knocked on my ass by life. He wasn’t protective, but he kept life simple for my siblings and I. That is, until the accident. Even though we didn’t know what the future held for me as we came to grips with what had happened, my dad knew it was going to be extremely tough for me for the foreseeable future. I can only imagine that he was feeling the pain any parent feels when they see life unleash its fury on their child. He was mourning my innocence. Life was beginning to reveal its harshness to me, and my dad knew the pain I would face. He knew the feelings that I would be feeling now that life had removed the filter of the naivety of my youth. He knew that the gloves were off now. The pain and emotions he had tried to protect me from my entire life until that point were going to be unloaded on me. The car accident just hours before was the first gloveless punch, and it had knocked me to the ground and taken the wind out of me. This was going to be a multi-round fight, and I was already down on the mat, bleeding and hurt. I was going to hurt like I had never hurt, and I was going to suffer like I had never suffered, and my dad knew that there was nothing he or my mom could do about it. Regardless of what happened to me, my life would never be the same.

There were so many unknowns during those 5 days in the hospital. Those unknowns hung heavy in the air in that room. We all knew that life would be different from that point on, but we didn’t realize how different.

No one knew how I would react emotionally to everything that had happened. No one knew how I would handle the trauma. I was fortunate to have the hospital room to myself, so I could have someone spend the night with me, keep an eye on me, and be there if I broke down during the night.

We all knew that I would be facing charges for what had happened. I was drunk, underage, and had caused the accident that led to Jason’s death. My parents got in touch with a lawyer, but we didn’t know how the legal part would play out. The charge that I was likely facing carried a maximum 15-year prison sentence. That hung over the room like a dark, heavy cloud. There was also a question of if the police would show up and arrest me at the hospital.

I wasn’t out of the woods in regards to my injuries either. Every so often, nurses would come in to pinch or tickle my toes, and ask me if I felt it. I found out later that they were doing that to see if the circulation had been restored after the surgery. If it hadn’t, I was looking at amputation. The surgery performed on my foot was a new procedure that the surgeon had just learned overseas. There was no guarantee that it would be successful.

During my hospital stay, there was, what seemed to be, a constant stream of visitors. They were friends, family, co-workers, classmates, former teammates, former coaches, and people from my church. I was so grateful for all of the support and love the people showed during those early, dark days.

As visitors came and went, the Demerol helped me escape from the negative feelings that I was having about myself, knowing what happened. It also helped me escape from the day-to-day emotional rollercoaster that I was on. I remember at one point during the constant stream of visitors, I was suddenly not up to seeing more people. I was so thankful to have people stopping by to see me, to offer their support, but it wore on me. I was tired of seeing the looks on their faces when they saw me lying there. At first, it was a look of shock at my condition. My face was a swollen, black and blue mess from the impact with the steering wheel. The shock on their faces usually gave way to a brief look of judgment and pity. Judgment and pity for what I did to myself, for throwing my life away at 19 years old. Everyone did their best to hide those feelings, but I still saw them written on their faces, no matter how fleeting the looks were. I felt so much shame in facing them too. It was hard for me to look at many of them in the eyes because of the immense shame I felt. In my mind, I had disgraced myself. I felt that I had let down all those that loved and believed in me. During one of the moments where I wasn’t up to seeing anyone else, I remember seeing an old friend of mine walking in the room, a football teammate. I didn’t have the courage to face him. I didn’t want to feel that shame again, and see the pity on his face. I hit the Demerol drip. As he stood next to my bed, my eyes slowly shut, and I gave him a thumbs-up as I drifted away.

I had a rule in the room: If anyone needed to talk about the accident, they needed to go into the hallway. My mom had countless hushed conversations with visitors out in the hallway. Although the reality of that night was everywhere around me and was the sole reason I was in the hospital, broken, I couldn’t stand to hear about it.

I still had no memory of the accident or the moments leading up to it. The last memory I had before it was being on a dance floor with Jason while “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems”played, and then nothing. The only memory that I had after the accident was the brief, hellish scene in the ER.

Jason’s funeral happened while I was in the hospital, and my mom took it upon herself to go. At this point, we knew that Jason’s parents didn’t blame me for what had happened and didn’t want anything to happen to me legally, but that was out of their control His parents came to be two of my biggest supporters through it all, and we were just learning that. I can’t imagine how difficult that was for my mother to go to that funeral. She knew Jason. She liked Jason. She would see him when she stopped in to see me at work. He had been over to my house. She had talked to him on the phone when he had called the house for me. She knew how much his friendship meant to me. My mom was an amazing woman who had a heart of gold and was known for her kindness. One thing that I have to come to realize is that she was also the bravest woman I’ve known, and her going to that funeral alone speaks to that bravery. As I lay in that hospital bed, I wasn’t in a place in my life to understand the guts it took my mom to do that. My mom was an emotional person. She wore her heart on her sleeve and allowed herself to feel fully the feelings that she felt. She often laughed until she cried and would weep at any hint of sadness. I can never fathom how hard it must have been for her. She passed in 2006 and we never really talked about what it was like for her to go to the funeral. I wish that we had. I wish I had told her how much it meant to me that she went and how much I looked up to her for doing that. No one had asked her to go. She felt that it was the right thing to do.

A few years ago, while going through some old stuff, I came across a box of things from the accident. In that box was a pamphlet from Jason’s funeral. I had seen it in there before, but I decided to open it and read it again for some reason. As my eyes came across his birthday, I couldn’t believe it – my son, who is named Jason after him, was born on his birthday. Without my mom going to that funeral and bringing that pamphlet home, I don’t think I would have ever known that.

At one point, as I laid in my bed, a woman who I had never met before walked in. She had a warm smile on her face as she entered the room. I had never seen her before, but I knew instantly who she was. It was Jason’s mom. As she approached my bedside, I started to cry, and the only words that I could find were, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry…”. She reached down to hug me, and I tried to collect myself. How does someone face a parent of their friend who is dead because of their decision? In that moment, though, she comforted me and showed me nothing but love. We shared some smiles and some laughs during our time together. I will be forever thankful for her love and support.

I don’t think I would have ever had the courage to face her in person if she hadn’t come to see me in that hospital bed. It took me 20+ years to meet his father face to face, and that was only after he reached out to me on social media.

As I noted in my last post, there are so many lives that were affected by the accident, so many lives that were forever changed. I can only speak about my experiences and my perspective. No matter how difficult things were for my family and I, I know that they will never compare with what Jason’s family and friends went through.

One day, just some of my family members and I were in the room when my High School football coach, Mike Taylor, walked into the room. I had played for Coach Taylor my senior year, and we maintained a close relationship after the season ended. In a way, he was a mentor-type figure for me. I had helped at his football camp just weeks before the accident. He had met Jason earlier that year and had given him some advice about his future plans. Coach Taylor knew my family well, and they all liked him. As he entered the room, he said “Hi” to everyone and then politely asked that everyone leave the room, telling them that he needed to speak to me privately. Once everyone was out of the room, he approached the bed and put his hand on my shoulder in a reassuring way. He leaned in and proceeded to talk to me like a coach talks to a player after making an inexcusable mistake. His tone was serious yet compassionate. He spoke to me and coached me like I needed to be talked to and coached at that moment. My world was still spinning, and I didn’t know which way was up. I needed some sort of guidance or direction as I faced the challenge of facing my new reality. He talked about how I had lost focus. He talked about how there was no quitting now, and that I was living life for two from this point on. He told me that every time I looked in the mirror, Jason would be there right behind me. As he finished talking, he pulled out a small Michigan State flag that he had bought me. Coach Taylor had coached at U of M and had deep ties there. As he handed the flag over, he laughed and said, “Kraley, you don’t know how hard it was for me to buy this. I had to hide it until I got into this room.” We both laughed. It felt good to laugh amidst the grimness of the hospital. He had written on it, “Carl – DBs are tough and confident – Coach Taylor.” I had played defensive back (DB) for him, and those words echoed how I would need to live my life from that point on. I needed both confidence and toughness to face what I was facing. That flag has been put up in my room everywhere I have lived from that day on. It currently hanging on the wall above where I am writing these words. The flag and Coach’s words have watched over me and have seen me through some of the most challenging times in my life.

During my stay in the hospital, my parents learned that friends of the family saw the accident scene shortly after it had happened, not knowing that I was involved, and had said that they didn’t think anyone survived it. I was lucky to be alive. There was an idea that I had survived for a reason. As a 19-year-old kid who faced his mortality in such a traumatic way, I wasn’t sure what to believe. People were telling me that by all accounts, I should be dead, but I walked away. That was so much for me to process and try to understand. The question was, “why?” As I sat in that hospital bed, I started to think about the possible reasons why I was still alive. Some reasons seemed to become apparent to me relatively quickly.

When I was in high school, my dad used to talk to me about how he knew that a lot of my classmates and friends were out partying a lot. He knew that I wasn’t one of them. I never drank in high school and could count the parties I had gone to on one finger. I remember him growing more concerned with the partying as I got into my Junior and Senior year. He would say to me, “You know, I hate to say it, but it is going to take something bad happening to one of them for them to learn their lesson.” I would just nod along as he said that and not think anything about it since I wasn’t out there partying with them. I wasn’t necessarily a partier in the year between high school and the accident, either. I probably drank 10-12 times in that entire year. Here I was, though, I was the one that something “bad” happened to. In my mind, I had become the poster child for anti-drunk driving. If this could happen to me, it could happen to anyone. You don’t have to be an alcoholic that goes out and drinks and drives every weekend to ruin your life like this. When friends of mine would come into the room, I wanted to say, “Look at me and remember this visual of me, broken, bruised, and wracked with guilt over Jason’s death the next time you want to get behind the wheel after drinking. Remember the concern and hurt you see in my family’s faces. Learn from this and don’t make the same tragic choice that I did.”

I’m not sure what day it was on, but I made a decision that changed the course of my life forever. Seemingly out of nowhere I stated. ”I’m not going to let this car accident define me. I’m going to do something positive with it. This isn’t going to ruin me.” Saying those words changed the course of my life. Without making that decision, I’m not writing this. I’m not speaking to schools, and to be honest, I’m not sure that I’m alive. That mindset has waned at times, but I’ve done my best to live by it, and it has driven me during some dark times.

I don’t remember where those words came from, who was around when I said them, or what the reception was. Honestly, at that time, they were just words. Those in the room probably just nodded along while thinking to themselves, “Ok, that sounds good, but we don’t know that. There is a high chance that it may ruin you”. Everything was unknown at that time. It was a nice thought, but was it realistic? Was like another athlete predicting certain victory, only to lose the game and have their words mocked and eventually forgotten? Those words only mattered to me. I was the one who was between a rock and a hard place. I was the only one who could make those words true. I was the one facing what no one in that room had faced. My ability to handle adversity was an unknown. I was 19 yrs old and hadn’t really faced anything heavier than being cut from the varsity basketball team my senior year. How was I going to handle this? Did I have the mettle to not cave under this kind of adversity? No one knew, not even me. At the time, they were just words spoken by a 19-year-old kid who had no idea of what the future held.

During one of my last days in the hospital, my brother took me on a wheelchair ride down the hospital hall. It was nice to get out of the room and spend some time one-on-one with him. As we got to the end of the hallway and turned around, we stopped for a minute. I looked up at my big brother with tears in my eyes and said, “Mike, I don’t know how I’m going to live with myself.” Even though I had made the decision to not let this ruin me, I still struggled with the weight of what had happened. I didn’t know how I was going to live with the immeasurable guilt that I felt for what had happened to Jason. I was facing a lifetime of guilt and remorse, and I didn’t know if I could live with that weight.

As I got closer to being discharged from the hospital, some of our focus turned to the immediate future and how we would navigate it. I had transferred to Michigan State University earlier in the summer, and classes were beginning in less than a month. I remember overhearing a discussion in the hospital room between my parents and some of my old teachers. The teachers were telling my parents that it would probably be better if I didn’t go to MSU that first semester, even if the legal process allowed me to. My parents seemed to agree based on the concern that I wouldn’t be up to start classes at a new, bigger school given everything I had been through and would continue to go through. They were all talking about me probably not being prepared for it emotionally. After a few minutes, I sternly said, “I’m going to MSU. End of discussion.” Of course, that was contingent on me not being in jail, but nothing ,other than the legal system, was going to stop me from starting at MSU weeks later. I was going to do everything within my power to be at there for the start of classes. In my mind, staying home and not going to MSU was not an option.

I had also become vocal about my decision to speak out against drunk driving at schools as soon as I could. I felt that using my story to convey the dangers of drinking and driving and hopefully stopping someone from making the same decision that I had would be one of the ways that something positive could come from such a tragic situation. It would also help honor Jason’s memory.

My decision to not let this break me and try to do something positive with it was all talk unless I put it into action. Speaking to schools and going to MSU were my way of putting that philosophy into action.

So many of us think and act like the difficult situations we face in our lives have control over us, but as Maya Angelou has said, “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” No matter how difficult of a situation you are facing, you always have control over how you respond. The decision I made helped me avoid feeling sorry for myself and feeling as if I had no power over the situation I was in. It helped me to take responsibility and understand that I had control over my attitude and my actions. I could let the accident itself be my legacy, or I could let my attitude and actions write a new story for me from that day forward.

My decision not to let the accident ruin or define me set my mindset to find opportunities in the adversity. However, I was still facing so many unknowns and what would end up to be a long, arduous journey over the next several years. Little did I know it then, but that decision would forever change the trajectory of my life and still guides me to this day.

#depression #mentalhealth #trauma #struggle #mentalhealthawareness #healling #selfimprovement #healing