A few weeks ago me and Tim decided that we wanted to move up the wedding. The boys had okay insurance, but it really didn't cover much. My insurance on the other hand is way better. So after talking for a while, we agreed that we would get married on Sun June 20th 2021. Also known as the summer solstice and fathers day.
We planned it so late that we knew, we knew, people would not be able to show up , and it was going to be a very small affair. But we love each other, and we wanted to make our being a family official, so we pressed on.
My mom, being who she is, dived into wedding planning head first and started purchasing things for us left and right. It was a little overwhelming, but the love and appreciation I felt for her was immeasurable. Soon, Tim and I went from throwing ideas at a wall and hoping they would stick, to having a fully catered, planned, and themed wedding.
We ended up with sunflowers and bees as our theme.
The set up was beautiful.
We were supposed to be married under the arch.
But it never happened.
We had a very small informal wedding on the 19th of June so my youngest sister could be there as a witness. It was small, just my mom, my two sisters, and my older sisters husband.
The big day would be Sunday.
Sunday was the wedding day.
But our wedding day never came.
As the rest of us bustled about getting things set up, hanging sunflowers, stringing garland, and nailing in stakes, the boys took to the trees.
They wanted to show their Aunt Aimee how high they could climb.
They were good climbers. Never had a serious fall.
I was standing in front of the arch, playing music for my mom, showing her what we would go up and down the aisle to when everything went wrong.
There was a sound of branches breaking, and then my older sister gasped.
And then, then came the sound I will never unhear, no matter how old I get.
It was the sound of my twelve year old son hitting the ground.
"HE'S DEAD!" My ten year old screamed from the high branch he was still trapped on. "HE'S DEAD!"
And for a moment, he looked it.
He was prone on the ground, not moving, not breathing, nothing.
My heart stopped.
Then he opened his eyes and began to scream.
A lot of things were happening very quickly then.
Tim and my step-brother Jay were over the fence and at Hayden's side, my mother was screaming for them not to move him, and I was calling my work. I was dialing 911.
I could just like to say that the people at Salt Lake Valley Emergency Communications Center are amazing and bloody well trained. I had to be a complete mess on the phone trying to explain what had just happened. But before too long, Murray Fire was pulling onto my street to take my poor broken boy to the hospital.
In the end, the only people who ever got to use my isle were the first responders. I never walked it, Tim never walked it, and we never would.
Hayden fractured his femur, a very difficult and painful bone to break, as well as fracture a rib, bruise his lungs, and take about a decade off my life.
Our wedding night was spent apart, Tim at Primary Children's Hospital, and me and home with the other boys.
The next three days were spent very much the same. With phone calls and video chats to see how my boy was doing.
These are the screws and plates they had to put into Hayden's leg. It's huge and requires him to be on crutches for six weeks.
Six weeks!
For an active boy in the middle of summer it was like a death sentence for him. I thought for sure he would slump into a depression that we would spend the rest of the summer fighting. And while he was in the hospital, he was pretty down. But once we got him home, he was his old self again. Trying to get around as quick as he could, talking about all the things he would do once he was healed, and enjoying all the attention his injury brought him.
The kid is tough, damn tough. And I'm so proud of him.
My poor baby resting in the hospital after a visit from Grandma and Grandpa Klink.
He hated being there, but Primary Children's Hospital was amazing. They gave him such excellent care. And I know he's healing so fast thanks in part to their care.
He did love showing off for the nurses though. And everyone praised him as being such a strong, tough boy.
At one point and nurse even told us that Hayden's 1-2 pain was like other kids 7-8 pain. (They would ask him to rate his pain on scale from 1-10, 10 being the worst pain he's ever felt.) She even stated that she wished some of the other kids were as tough as he was.
I know, I'm bragging about him, but I was just so damn proud of him. He's such a tough boy, tough than I am by far.
Here is right after he got home. Happy to be back with the animals and his brothers.
The day after the accident, the day we were supposed to have the bigger wedding, my mother and sister showed up early and together we took the wedding decorations down. They had stood for so short a time it didn't seem right to have have to removed them. But there was no way to do a wedding with one of our boys in the hospital. The family wouldn't be complete, and neither Tim, nor myself, was willing to leave Hay in the hospital while the rest of us partied.
So it all came down.
The picture at the top is the arch my mother made for us, just before we took the sunflowers down.
Hay got out of the hospital three days later, and we all had to adjust to his limited mobility and medical needs. Some one had to be with him every time he went up and down the stairs. His food and drinks would need to be brought to him since he can't carry much with crutches, for the first several days he was on medication around the clock, and his whole room had to be rearranged to better accommodate his bad leg.
But he's getting better, every day.
Now he moves faster on his crutches than I do on my feet!
Since we didn't know when we'd be able to do the wedding, we had to postpone it until Hay would be back to his normal self.
So we've pushed back out to the almost original date we'd been planning.
If the gods are kind, on June 18th 2021 Tim and I will have the wedding we've been dreaming of and planning for.
Assuming we can stop buying animals, that is.
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