Roots - The start of it all
I'm not an old man, I turned 51 on my last birthday, but I sure have felt old since I lost my wife 2 years ago to a head injury from a skiing accident. Yes, I feel old, and lost. I haven't been anything socially other than half of Mr. and Mrs. Jason Stroker, since we married when we were both 19 years old. I never learned to be anything other than the man married to Caroline, and the father to our 3 beautiful girls.
My 3 girls, they are what keep me connected to the here and now. There's Barbara, now 30, and a manager at the bank where she works and a certified legal advisor. She operates the safety deposit section at the bank. The second oldest is Alexandria, now 26, the youngest nursing supervisor in the hospital, head nurse of the orthopedic wing. And lastly, there's Sophia, almost 25, a doctoral candidate in Psychology at her college, and the house mother for her sorority.
Well, yes, I did have a career; I was a car salesman with the largest dealership in this half of the state. And it became the biggest because I sold cars better than anyone else around. My secret was to find out what people needed, and sell them the car that best matched with that need. I don't know why every salesman didn't do it that way. Anyway, by the time I was 29, I had been offered a partnership by the owner and so we didn't suffer for money.
By the time I turned 39, we had it all, a house with a 4 car garage, an in-ground pool, a hot tub, and a yard so big that we had a professional lawn care service. We had money set aside for college for all 3 girls, a bank account that was big enough that we could live on the interest if we had to, and I took over as the sales manager at the dealership, spending most of my work time training new salesmen to use my method for selling cars.
Caroline hadn't been idle during all that time either. She had her own thriving home interior decorating business and was in huge demand all around our home town. She even had clients calling from 3 counties away for a consultation whenever she was available.
On the Saturday after our 49th birthday, we officially retired to the status of occasional consultants, it was September 25th. The plan was that 1 year later, we would leave on our second honeymoon, an around the world vacation, before we got too old to enjoy ourselves. The accident happened on November 18th, and she was gone before Thanksgiving.
If not for my concern for the needs of our daughters, I would have withdrawn into our house and waited out my time until I could rejoin Caroline. But there are still things to be done for our daughters before I can leave them to return to Caroline's side.
The real start of the story I have to tell happened about 3 weeks ago.
I had just stepped into the shower so I could be finished and get dressed before Barb brought over some papers regarding some banking matters. Suddenly the phone rang and since I hadn't gotten wet except my feet, I decided I better answer in case she was calling to tell me she couldn't make it. But it was Lexie, asking if she could come over to talk about a plan she had for a project at her job. So I told her that Barb was coming and if she could get in touch with Sophie, we could all go out to dinner together tonight.
As I was stepping back into the shower, my foot slipped on the tile and I took a header, luckily landing mostly on my arm and ribs instead of my head. But I think I heard a crack just before everything went dark.
I woke up to someone screaming in my ear. It was me, and I woke with Sophie holding down my legs, and Barb holding my head and shoulders, while Lexie was realigning the bones in my arm so she could splint it until I could get to the hospital for x-rays and a proper cast. I noticed that Sophie was looking down instead of at my arm, and I wondered if she was squeamish, but then I thought that I hadn't seen any blood on my arm.
Let's see, I had been getting into the shower... I was bare-ass naked and she was staring at my groin. Oh my God, I needed to cover up. But I had to wait until Lexie had put the splint on my arm. She made a temporary splint using a newspaper and the plastic rod from the window blinds and wrapped the whole thing in stretchy bandages. Once she was finished, I asked Sophie to get me my robe before the ambulance came.
My ribs ached so bad that I just knew that one or more were at least cracked. I didn't try to get up but stayed sitting on the bathroom floor waiting for the paramedics to come to lift me. Lexie sent Sophie down to lead them up to the bathroom once we heard the siren.