 |
| Devin Bagley is the founder of Kalos Foundation Sept. 6, 2013 |
I always heard people say that life is fragile- that life can change in an instance. But as a teenage girl, I thought nothing of those words. Life to me was still something new, still exciting; it was something that I had not yet even began to understand. I was invincible; nothing could hurt me. So how was life fragile? I was living in an unrealistic world but that world ended very abruptly and I was no longer told about how fragile life is, but shown.
It was a beautiful day in March of 2004, my friend and I were at my house with my sister, her boyfriend, and our friend which lived down the road. We treated the day just like all other days before: joking with one another, riding four wheelers, and trying to decide what shenanigans we were going to get into that night. My friend, Tina, and I decided to take another “quick ride” on the four-wheeler down the road before we left for the day. We never would have guessed that the ride before us was about to change our lives forever. I remember riding down past the small bridge that was just a mile from our house. We drove on for a few minutes and then decided to turn around so our friends and family would not worry. Right before we got back to the bridge, I remember that there were two people walking in the road so we slowed down a little and went around them. That was the last thing I remember of that beautiful sunny day in March…
The next thing I remember is slowly opening my eyes and looking around me. I had no clue where I was. I tried to get up but my body wouldn’t move. I sat there for a moment and tried to piece together the events that placed me in this unfamiliar room, but I couldn’t. As I gained consciousness, I looked down and all I could see was blood, stitches, staples, wounds, tubes, and machines covering my entire body. I felt as if I was in a terrible dream and I kept telling myself to wake up- just get up, get out of this bed, and walk home where you belong. And that is when the unbearable truth hit me: I couldn’t get up, I could barely see, and I couldn’t feel any inch of my own body. I don’t know what happened right after this and the next few weeks are represented by a few vague events that found a way to remain in my mind forever. The next thing I remember is the nurses and a family member (I can’t remember which one) carrying me into the bathroom. That is when I saw my face for the first time and that is when I realized that I was permanently blind in one eye. The memory of what my mutilated, torn, pale, beaten face looked like will always be burnt inside my mind. I had already seen the rest of my body and I knew that it was beaten to pieces, literally, but seeing my face, seeing the pain in my eyes, seeing the leftovers of the accident still mangled in my hair- made me realize that this wasn’t a bad dream and I wouldn’t wake up from it; that my life was barely grasping on to the little pieces of mangled flesh I had left hanging on my battered body.
At this moment, I told my family that I wanted to die, and with my whole heart at this point- I did. I wanted to die. I have never felt a pain more excruciating. It wasn’t the pain from my fractured skull, it wasn’t the pain from my broken bones, and it wasn’t the pain from my wounds- it was the pain from inside. The type of pain that makes you question your own existence, the type of pain that very few people understand, it was the type of pain that will haunt someone for the rest of their life. As I’m placed back in my bed and connected to the various machines surrounding me, I realized that I now understood how fragile life is. What I assume to be a few days later, I vaguely remember Doug Stone singing “In a Different Light” to me. He was in town and heard about the accident and voluntarily came in to sing to me. While he was singing, all I could think about is that the only way someone would ever see me as being beautiful again was if they “saw me in a different light”. I, again, felt as if I wanted to die. But how could I die so young? I hadn’t experienced high school, I had never experienced my “first love”, I had never experienced the birth of my first child. There was so much more out there that I had not done yet. This day was the day that I made a decision for myself and the decision was this: I’m given another chance at life, so this life is going to be one that I am proud of.
Up until this point, I didn't really care about what happened to me and didn’t care to know what it would take for me to recover from this. But now, I was asking questions. Apparently, the four-wheeler was catapulted off of the bridge and the force that met us when we hit the ground caused my whimpering body to be ejected back up into the trees. The ambulance arrived shortly after my sister was notified, followed by the Life Flight helicopter. I was transported to the hospital where they said my brain was swelling at a pace that my skull could not maintain and my family was notified to expect the worse and that no one expected me to make it through the night. I had a fractured skull, torn carotid artery, severed optic nerve, broken cheek bones, dislocated shoulder, broken arm, a hole in my leg too deep for stitches, and scrapes and wounds covering my lifeless body. But the fact of the matter was, I was alive for them to tell me what had happened, and that’s all that mattered to me anymore.
The weeks following this were marked by very few memories, but all good memories surprisingly. I had a sling on and pins coming out of my arm but I remember playing Mario Kart in the hospital with my father- and I won. I knew he let me win but the triumph I felt from winning a silly Nintendo game was exhilarating. I remember my mother buying me new underwear from the mall- I had never been so excited to see underwear. I remember learning to walk again, I remember learning to write again, I remember learning how to complete everyday tasks again. However, out of all of the memories from the hospital that I had- one stays with me every day. I was being pushed outside in my wheelchair and I stared at the busy streets and hectic mall which surrounded the hospital. I thought about my life and where it was headed as a tear ran down my cheek. I looked down as the tear fell and all I saw was a small, pink flower that managed to push its way through the sidewalk crack. A feeling of comfort and peace automatically overwhelmed me. I never told anyone about the significance of that small flower but I thought, if a flower can grow through concrete, then I can learn and grow from this accident as well. And the day after, I was told that I could go home. I remember the excitement that I felt, even if there was a lot of pain to be endured in front of me. I remember walking out of the hospital’s sliding glass doors and I looked up at the sky- not a cloud in sight. I immediately tore my hospital bracelet off and realized that my life was beginning right there- at that moment. The road to recovery was marked by ups and downs, triumphs and setbacks, tears of happiness and pain, and various different emotions but I didn’t care- because I was alive.
When I tell people about the loss of sight in my eye and about my accident, the response is always the same, “I would have never guessed. I’m so sorry that happened to you.” But I’m not sorry it did. The character of your life isn’t built by the “good times” and the things that are handed to you; the character of life is built by the times that you were at the end of your rope, the times that would have been so much easier if you would have just given up- but you didn’t. I was given a second chance, and now I know the true blessing that each day brings me.
So what does the Kalos Foundation mean to me? It means finding my purpose in life, and helping others find theirs. - Devin Bagley, October 22, 2012
 |
Devin Bagley by photographer Steven Sonego Jan. 23, 2013 |
No comments:
Post a Comment