My Defining Moment

A synopsis about some of the events that contributed to how I am now.

A life-altering event. According to Thesaurus.com, a defining moment is a very crucial moment and is synonymous with decisive moment, climax, and point-of-no-return. To me, each of those synonyms describe any life-altering event and illustrate my vision of a defining moment. We each have at least one life-altering event during our earthly existence. Sometimes, we have many. I've had a few life-altering events and most have been defining moments for me.

I was born on September twenty-first, nineteen-hundred and fifty-eight. That was my very first life-altering event and, by my own translation, a defining moment. But, that is only one of the defining moments during my life. So much more has happened throughout my lifetime. Many of those events may rightly be called defining moments.

There is one lonely, sole event that stands out above all other events as my singular, most remarkable defining moment. Even now, all these years later, that exclusive event still delineates much of my existence from any other event. Every hour of every day, I must consider the consequences of anything I do or try to accomplish in my life since my biggest, most elaborate defining moment. It has determined much of my life ever since the event occurred such a long time ago, on January 29th, 1983. It will define my life well into my future. Once I die, it may well be forgotten forever. Until I die, it affects me always.

After working at the retail store that cold Saturday evening, I was happy to visit my girlfriend at her apartment nearby in the city. We essentially lived together, but my mothers' home was still my mailing address ever since I had ended my enlistment in the US Air Force. My four-year term ended soon after Christmas in 1981. I had enrolled at Kent State University and started my classes a few weeks later, at the beginning of the spring semester in mid-January of 1982. My part-time job was at a local retail store. That is where I met my girlfriend.

It was freezing cold that evening in late January of 1983. A friend from work met me at my girlfriends' apartment. He and I went to a local bar to listen to some friends play in their band. Luckily, my girlfriend did not go with us. She had turned 21 years old last spring, when we met. I was twenty-four.

After listening to the band play, my friend and I wanted to visit a recently-built geodesic-style home near the city park. Someone at the bar lounge had told us about it.

The midnight-blue sky was really dark, with a few stars twinkling valiantly on a chilly, early Sunday morning. The rural road twisted like a snake. The city park is on one side of the road. There are several nicer homes on the other side, stationed behind the trees, hedges, and fences. Doctors, lawyers, dentists live in the nicer homes. A drainage ditch carves a pathway between the darkened asphalt road and the grassy, snowy lawns. Since it was dark outside, we could not see the partially snow-covered well-manicured grounds. The geodesic home rested nearby.

That was my final trip during my old life. After my friend missed a turn on that back-road near the city park, we slammed into the drainage ditch alongside the road. A dentist lived near the crash-site. He provided some vital care that may have saved my life. That crash impact began the story of the rest of my life, my new life, the only life I can remember.

I did not walk away. A friend from high-school, Ken, worked for the local ambulance service. He was part of the crew that rescued me. I was transported to the local hospital. There, the priest read my last rites before I was taken to a larger metropolitan hospital in Canton.

My new life is so abundantly different than what I imagine my old life was. Memories from my old life may still exist in my mind somewhere. I find them on occasion, randomly, or after a long time of thinking, pondering and searching my mind. Sometimes the memories arrive spontaneously. Many times I don't even know for sure. It is hard for me to remember my past and not to know about my old life and my own history. Are my memories real? I don't know. So much has changed.

I became someone else; someone I did not know. A new person. Someone who spoke poorly. Someone with coordination difficulties and muscle problems. Someone who could no longer reason well at the college level, or at any level. Someone with a disarrayed and a confused memory. Someone who was unsure. What happened?

Everyone remembered who I used to be, my old lifestyle and habits. I did not. That person is forever gone to me and to those who knew me well.

After striking the embankment, the left side of my forehead smashed into the windshield at whatever speed we were going, paralyzing the right side of my entire body. I am right-handed, too. Then, being thrown from his little Ford Pinto as it rolled over, I slammed into a fence post with the back of my skull, right in the middle. Blood everywhere. I was in a coma right then. Police told my family that I was indeed saved by not wearing my seat-belt - a rare occasion.

Contrecoup is a newly learned word since the incident. When my head slammed into the windshield, my brain bounced around inside my skull. The initial impact caused severe brain damage at the first point of impact. As my brain bounced back and forth inside my skull, repeatedly, there was more contrecoup damage to the opposite side, again and again. That happened on two distinctly separate occasions.

The injuries paralyzed my right side. My brain injury inhibited and changed my natural, inherent ability to regulate my body temperature, my breathing, and my blood mixture levels of oxygen and carbon-dioxide. I needed to sleep on a temperature controlled mattress. There were and still are movement disorders, and levels of amnesia. I needed a puncture hole and a breathing tube inserted into my throat after being in a coma for so long.

Being a passenger in that single car crash lasted a few, brief moments. Surviving and existing afterwards will last for the rest of my life. My recovery and treatments are ongoing and forever. I have recovered much, but I lost so much more. There is no comparison. No one can ever measure what was lost and how much was recovered, not now, not ever. It is gone.

That is the defining moment of my life.