April 23, 2008:
Concert Band Festival day. I got to school early, got on a bus, drove to Burly. After a successful performance in which I had several solos, we got back on the bus and returned to school. I sat impatiently through the last half hour of seminary and then rushed home. My brother was going to be there with his new fiance and him being home was always a special treat. We got home and he, my little brother, and I went to the school and played some tennis. It was a lot of fun. Then we had to hurry home so I could get ready for rehearsal. It was for the spring musical, Annie Get your Gun, and I was in the pit orchestra, playing first chair trumpet.
Turns out, in little Jerome, there isn't a pit in the auditorium, so the orchestra sat on the wing of the stage. I had been sitting second chair in for a while and that day my band director thought he'd try having me sit on the outside. I switched chairs and looked at the zero space I had between the edge of the stage and my chair. My friend was sitting in the audience and I said I was nervous and she said, "Don't worry Callie, if you fall, I'll be here to catch you." We laughed about it. And ten minutes later, she left to go somewhere else.
I remember it often. The moment where I shifted my chair a bit, bent over to pick up my mute, my chair shifted again while I was sitting up straight. I looked over the edge and saw the leg of my chair in midair. I opened my mouth to scream.
Then there was the screaming. I couldn't figure out why or who, but everything hurt. I was on my back. And I soon realized. I was the one screaming. There were two people around me who I didn't know. They were parents. They kept telling me not to close my eyes and I couldn't figure out why, didn't these people understand that my eyes hurt and they felt better closed. I instantly asked where my brother was, not because I needed his comfort, but because I thought he'd need me to comfort him. He was freaking out. I told him to call mom. So he left and did so. The next question was "Where is my trumpet?" They looked at me like I was delusional and then promptly told me that my trumpet was "over there". I said that I wanted to see it, I wanted to know if it was okay. They wouldn't let me look at it. I was so upset, they kept telling me that it was fine. But I did not believe them (and rightfully so, my trumpet had to be completely re-piped after that).
My brother said that no one was home. So I told him to call our older brother, who's phone number I had memorized the day before. My mom eventually came, my screaming was not as constant, but it happened more than I'm proud to say. I was carried to the car by two good friends. I remember the look of terror on their faces as they loaded me into the car.
After that was countless hours in the emergency room. Most of which were on a backboard, which give me panic attacks. There were lots of CT scans, MRIs, blood tests and X-rays. I was in a lot of pain. My head hurt, the parents said that it looked like the chair could have landed on my stomach, my leg felt like there was a knife in it. It was a pretty traumatic experience.
Falling off the stage became a large part of who I am. But I have never understood why. It's not like that's what people remember about me. Most people have probably forgotten. For which I am grateful.
But something changed that day. There is part of me that feels like my life has been divided into the person I was before the fall, and the person I've become since. The past four years have been filled with four more concussions, countless amounts of days in pain due to limbs or post-concussion syndrome. But I don't notice it as much any more. If there's anything I learned from my fall is that when you are hurt, the world does not stop for you. You may not want to do anything or even get out of bed, but life is going on. I figured out that I can't stop living because I'm in pain. If I took a day off every time something hurt, I would have missed out on so much fun. I try to never look at a situation and say "I can't do that because of the limits of my body." I say, "I will try my best."
I guess I have kind of a strange relationship with pain. It has become a friend, that I can do anything with, there are no limits. I have learned to manage my life with pain and even not feel it's negative effects. I almost thrive off of pain. My pain has increased and strengthened my relationship with my Heavenly Father and Christ.
I am usually careful about who I tell about this story and what parts I tell them. It was a strange personal event for me. Yet I feel like if there is not some mention of it, people will never truly understand who I am and how I came to be.
Several times in the past four years, I have described this event as the time I almost died. I don't know if that is exactly true. But I know that for the past four years, I have been trying to make the most of the life I've been given. Because you never know when your chair will slip.
