Imagine everything you know and love being taken away from you in a blink of an eye. Whether it's your friends that you love so deeply, the house that you have grown up in since you were a baby or the everyday normalities that you have grown accustomed to. Well in my case it was the seemingly indestructible bond between family. I would say my family was and are very close to each other. We love to tease each other about the stupidest things on a daily basis, but what family doesn't? We all bond over certain aspects of our lives whether it's my dad coaching me in the sport we hold dear to both of our hearts, making shopping trips with my mom to Maurice's in our small little town, riding around our town in my brothers lifted truck blaring music, or the oldest brother taking a couple cheap shots at the "baby" of the family. If there was one thing we all bonded over as a family, it was was water skiing, the feeling of being on top of the water and shredding through the wake is incomparable to anything else.
That's why this was so hard to grasp that something we love and bond over would betray us in such a heart-wrenching way. It's strange to me how I can remember that day so vividly but I can't remember what I had for dinner last night. The day was a little different that any other one because I was waking up in a place I have never truly been before. I had a two-day college orientation at Minnesota State University located in Mankato, Minnesota, the night before was filled with information being thrown at me from all angles, countless laughs and a rock climbing endeavor. The day started with breakfast in the dining hall, then proceeding to the ballroom for more information that went in one ear out the other, finally what I actually came to orientation to do, register for my freshman fall classes. After about two hours of deliberating which classes to take, I finally decided on my schedule which would be changed countless times before becoming the perfect freshman schedule.
My father picked me up from the college to make the hour journey back home, I was welcomed home by my lovely dog, and my brother asking me about how the two-day exhausting orientation went. I replied back with attitude because the entire car ride with my father was filled with arguments about classes and some tears flying around. There was nothing more I wanted to do then leave the house to escape my dad, I took the chance to go to work for an hour to clear my mind. I pull into my driveway like I do almost every single day and walk into the house to find my mother on the couch petting my dog and my dad who also went to work to escape. I collapsed on the couch exhausted from the stress of the last two days, the three of us start talking about irrelevant conversation when my father gets a call from a number he does not recognize. I will always remember this moment for as long as I live. He looked at both of us calm but with disbelief and said, "That was the sheriff, Jordan was in a skiing accident."
My mind started to run with thoughts; how bad was the accident? What exactly happened? and the thought I hope nobody will ever have to think, Will he make it out alive? In the moment we found out my dad rushed to the emergency room of our hospital, to wait for my brother to arrive and assess the situation at hand. While this was all going on my mother and I ventured down to our dock to get our Mastercraft boat and my brother's best friend who we later found out saved his life. We put the boat on the lift and go straight to the best friend to get information about what all went down. I immediately knew that my brother's accident was serious by the way he explained everything.
My brother was water skiing with one ski known as slalom, he wiped out like any other time but it wasn't similar to any other time. He was leaning too far over when the ski hit him in the head, causing him to become unconscious and float in a lake with his blood. The best friend acted fast and drove over to where my brother was floating and jumped in the water to get him in the boat. He saw that my brother wasn't breathing, so he gave him CPR to the song staying alive by the Bee Gee's which he learned in high school for a health class. He did that for about two minutes when he saw out of the corner of his eye, my brother twitch. The best friend placed Jordan on the platform of the boat and went to drive it slowly while screaming for help. He didn't make it far when he noticed that my brother wasn't on the platform anymore, he fell back into the water. The best friend turned around and repeated the whole process again. He was making it closer to shore when he looked back and noticed my brother was sitting up on the platform.
There was an ambulance waiting for the two boys to arrive by boat to assess the situation. Once they arrived at the dock my brother proceeded to walk down the dock toward the ambulance and he even unlocked his phone for the sheriff to get contact information. After the accident happened, my brother was rushed to the hospital in my hometown where they took amazing care of him. The doctors at the hospital made the executive decision to send him in the helicopter to Rochester, Minnesota, where he can get the best care around. My brother was then flown to Saint Mary's mayo clinic hospital to have emergency surgery. The time we got everything packed up, and arrived in Rochester it was around 12 a.m. We saw him in the emergency room on a table with about 10 tubes hooked up to him. I have never seen anyone so vulnerable than my big brother at that moment.
He was taken for the emergency room to be prepped for surgery. After about three hours of waiting he was out of surgery, the neurosurgeon came in and told us how the surgery went. My brother had a piece of skull that punctured his brain and was one centimeter away from a major artery where he could have stroked out and died. The entire floor of the hospital gave my brother the nickname of "miracle boy" because they were in shock that he is alive. After about a month, my family and I are in the same waiting room waiting til he is done with his second surgery. This entire experience has opened my eyes and made me cherish life a little more each and every day. My biggest advice to people who are struggling with life, have had a traumatic event happen or just can't make sense of why bad things happen to good people remember God gave you this beautiful life not to be down on yourself. He gave you this amazing gift to fill it with amazing memories, countless laughs and never ending love. Many things can be taken away from you in a blink of an eye so go seize the day because you never know when your last day is.
