90 Minutes in Heaven_ A True Story of Death & Life - Don Piper [49]
Although she said little during that period, she later allowed me to read what she wrote in her diary. One entry reads: “Don is critical of everything I do. He must be getting better.”
That’s both sad and funny to me. She knew I was getting better because I started to make decisions again. The desire to get active in doing things was her yardstick for my recovery. I seemed to want to get more involved in life and to question what was going on.
I just wish I had been a better patient and made it easier for her.
The worst part of my convalescence for the family was that we farmed out our three kids. They weren’t orphans, but they lived with other people for about six months. Our twin sons stayed with Eva’s parents in Louisiana. I know they weren’t happy about having to move so far away. The distance made the boys feel detached and separated, but they handled it quite well. They were still in elementary school and, at that age, it probably wasn’t too difficult relocating. Nicole, who was five years older and thirteen at the time, moved in with her girlfriend’s family and was able to stay in her middle school. It would have been much more traumatic for her to move away.
The accident happened in January, and the kids didn’t come home permanently until June. I felt terrible that we couldn’t provide for our children.
The kids came to see me on weekends during my hospital stays, which was tough on them. When they made their first visit to the hospital, a staff psychologist did a kind thing for them. He took all three kids into a room and showed them a life-size dummy with devices attached to it, similar to what was on my body. This way he could explain what they would see when they entered my room.
I’m glad he did that for them, because even many adults, not having that kind of preparation, showed obvious shock when they first saw me. In my condition, I interpreted their reactions as horror.
When the children came into my room the first time, all three of them stepped as close as they could to hug me. They loved me and wanted to see for themselves that I was okay. Of course, I was barely alive, but it still did me a lot of good just to see them. The staff didn’t let them stay long. As awful as I looked, the children believed me when I said I would get well.
After they left, Eva came back into ICU. I don’t remember this—I don’t remember much from those days. She said I looked at her through my oxygen mask and said, “We have the best kids in the world.”
I’ve never gotten the impression that our children felt as if they had missed anything, but I sometimes felt they were cheated out of experiences with their father.
When I finally was out and could walk, I remember trying to play pitch with the boys, even though I knew I couldn’t take more than a step or two. If one of them hit a ball that went out of my immediate range, I couldn’t chase it. They felt terrible about that.
I sensed my limitation kept them from enjoying the game, so we stopped doing it. Although they didn’t say so, I knew they didn’t want to see me try to run or risk falling down—though many times I did fall.
Also, both boys like to surf, and before the accident, I went surfing with them. After I was able to walk and drive, on several occasions I loaded them and their boards in the van and drove them to the Gulf, but I couldn’t do anything with them. I could only watch. They seemed to understand, but it was still hard on me.
I have no doubt that there are things my sons probably wanted to do, but they never mentioned them for fear of putting me in a situation where I’d have to decide whether I might hurt myself. So I do feel that my boys were cheated out of normal boy things in their growing up years.
Nicole, being a girl, had that “Daddy thing.” She was our oldest child. She expressed her feelings very differently from Joe, who is a very emotional kid. Chris is the cool one, although deeply sensitive, and doesn’t show his feelings