I Tried Not To Cry. Michael Beattie
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a blur! I had just finished buying a home in the nearby town of Coventry that needed much renovation to make truly livable, yet, it was all I could afford and I was happy to find it. I was sort of all alone as my son is serving in the Navy for a four-year hitch. Thoughts of ending everything ran through my mind as I stopped to get some beer on my way home. I guess what saved me was talking to my son on the phone later that evening. My ex-wife ran the retail portion of our business, so I let her know of the situation. I told her I would not return Monday, and asked her to try and hold things down as best she could till I knew the outcome. I think she now felt bad for me, as she offered her couch for my recovery time. Nice of her, but somehow, I couldn’t see me doing that. The trouble was now it’s a weekend and I needed to find someone to handle my legal affairs. I worked so hard over the years to build my business from nothing to that of a thriving one, and now I feared it might all have been for naught. Over the years, I frequented a small coffee shop where I made small talk with an attorney that became a good friend. I called John and explained to him my situation. He said to come right over to his house and he would help me out. When I knocked at his door, he quickly escorted me to his kitchen table and expressed to me that he thought I looked like hell, as my shaking was out of my control. John quickly drew up all the legal paperwork needed and at a reasonable cost. I will always be in debt to Attorney John Ritchings. As I drove home, I was thinking nothing but the worst thoughts of how this could possibly be the beginning of the end. I was able to contact my son by phone that evening and told him of my situation as well as where to find my paperwork if need be. He felt helpless as I could tell by his voice, as we said our goodbyes to each other. “I love you, bud,” I said as he responded, “I love you, too, Dad. I wish I could be home with you, Dad.”
“Pick up the pace Shawn,” I yelled, as we were paddling quicker than we ever had before in all the training we did prior to this moment. He in the bow and me in the stern, we were in a fast-moving battle to keep ahead of our much older and experienced competition. Shawn was only twelve years old but had grown so quickly that year into a strong and mature paddler. Damn, he was strong and teachable. We trained so hard this year so that we could compete in our first ever National Championship Canoe Nationals being held on the Scioto River in Columbus, Ohio. It was the US Canoe Marathon and Sprint Championships in 1994. I had been racing canoes for many years since and before the time Shawn was born in 1982. He grew up in and around canoes and kayaks as I would take him in the boat with me whenever I trained, and he would usually fall asleep between my legs with his little life jacket on. I trained mostly on the Willimantic River in the Eagleville section of town where I grew up. I would paddle quietly around the corners so that he could see the deer drinking in the river as we tried to not startle them. There were beavers, mink, and muskrats swimming by and diving below the water surface as they approached our canoe. We always tried to be quiet, not knowing what lay around the next corner, a kind of game I played to keep his little mind from being bored as I got my workout in. Ducks, geese, white swans, ospreys, and birds of prey were our teammates. In the fall, the smell of wild grapes along the riverbank would often require a pit stop for harvesting. Although sweetly bitter to the taste buds, it was an adventure. My only child was growing up to love the outdoors, something he would carry on into his adulthood and bestow onto his own children.
The competition that day in Ohio included several past junior champions as we hoped to finish in the top ten of the sprint championship junior-senior division. My eyes fixated to my left where the majority of the canoes were lined up that morning as we were in a far-right position, where we hoped to avoid the major wash back of the other boats. Shawn looked so small compared to these other teens, big and muscular with a cocky look of experience about them. I’m not sure who was more nervous, Shawn or I, as we held the bow of the canoe steady on the starting line waiting for the horn to sound. Our canoe was a lightweight model, which was what everyone else used that day. Shawn and I had already talked about just trying to do our best and not being disappointed. I told him I was already proud of him, but deep down inside, I wanted a boost of confidence for him. Being a light team, as we were, was a plus in sprint racing. The horn blew, and it was a mad sprint for the finish line some five hundred meters away. We were a bit slower than the others off the line when I yelled to pick up the pace, and did he ever. The bow person sets the pace and is followed by the stern person who calls the “hut” for a switch from left to right or right to left at a pace so fast, it’s hard to see one’s paddle moving. Shawn was going so fast that I was having a hard time breathing to call the switch huts, yet, we were pulling away from the line of boats and pulling away fast! Holy moly, we were cranking faster than I ever knew possible, and I don’t think the competition could believe it. We crossed the finish line at least two boat lengths ahead of the nearest competition, which is a wide margin in sprint races. We did the “smack the paddles together” congratulations thing, knowing that we just smoked our way to a gold medal in our first ever national competition. The first ever gold medal, but not the last! It was hard to not show my happiness during the moments that followed, as we congratulated the next-in-line boats as they passed. I wanted to scream! I was a proud father!
Having no ride to the hospital that early morning, I was forced to ask another coffee shop friend named Albert Samuels if he would be able to take me to Hartford Hospital early before he went off to work. Thankfully, he was gracious enough to do that favor for me. It was a jarring ride to Hartford that morning in his older jacked-up pickup truck, as each bump sent daggers to my spine while I shook so, yet, I was so thankful for the ride. As I arrived at the huge hospital complex I was shaking like a lone steer waiting to be butchered. Lying on the bed, waiting in the prep-op room for my turn, a couple of different anesthesiologists kept asking me my name, date of birth, and what area was to be operated on. You mean, you don’t know? I thought, Oh dear God! This process continued over and over again by many other nurses and personnel to the point I wanted to just get a marker and make a sign that I could hold up to show my information to them. I surely prayed they would cut me open in the right area!
One nurse said, “You look nervous, honey,” to which I replied, “I didn’t really care what happens!” I just went through a divorce, which I didn’t want, then the same week, I was told I might have a cancerous tumor in a bad place on my spine and to get all my personal things lined up just in case. Not to mention I was struggling to keep my business going through all this mess. No, I really hoped I didn’t wake up at this point. Let someone else deal with it all. I felt bad for my son at this point. That’s about it.
After five hours of a very extensive surgery, all I remembered was the neurosurgeon leaning over me in recovery to say he has good news. “It was not a tumor.” That’s all I remember before I went out again! It was a long and awful night as the anesthesia they used during the surgery made me very nauseous. The next day the surgeon came to my room to try and explain what he thought had happened to me. He stated he’d never quite seen anything like this before and asked if I had been involved in an accident or some kind of blunt trauma, to which I replied none that I was aware of, although I did physically abuse my body by lifting and moving heavy safes and vault doors at my business all those years. It seems that my C-7 and parts of the surrounding vertebrae had shattered into many small pieces which had encapsulated basically into a sack formation, which was pushing against the spinal canal. He said I was lucky! I wasn’t so sure if I was lucky or not at that moment, but later on in my life I came to realize just how lucky I was, indeed.
Aside from the follow-up appointments, it was two years before I saw that neurosurgeon again. I was healed and was back to work sooner than I should have been, but being self-employed, I had no other option except work or go broke. I don’t think my neck ever healed properly as I always had a tough time keeping my head up straight after that. Life moved on for me as I worked hard long hours to keep my business operating by myself, as my now ex-wife took a job with the state of Connecticut. I was happy for her, but she was greatly missed, as she is half the driving force behind our success for those twenty-eight years of business, and she was missed by my customers. After all, I was the grumpy guy and she the pleasant, attractive personality. Finding good help was almost impossible as I went through one employee after another. Twelve-to-fourteen-hour days were a norm for me as I juggled operating my shop as well as doing the service work required on the road. After work and on my day off when not called out for service emergencies, I worked on that house I purchased which needed complete renovation. It turned into a nine-year project between my