TRAUMA

It has been a wonderful summer of family time at the beach and kids time at the pool to quench the sweltering North Carolina heat. Our most recent adventure was to our home state of Pennsylvania to visit both Kate’s mom and brother in Pittsburgh, and for me to visit my mom near Philadelphia and play in the 29th annual Doylestown Brothers golf classic with my brother, Bruce.

My oldest son, Shawn, started fall football camp at Vanderbilt University, where after 2 knee injuries in the past 4 seasons, he hoped to finally get a chance to play quarterback in the SEC.  He called me Thursday night to check in and to tell me how well the first practice went.  I could hear the excitement in his voice.  So Friday night when my cell phone vibrated to wake me at 10:10, I couldn’t wait to hear about today’s practice.  

“Hello." 

“Dad, its Shawn."

“Whats up dude?  How did it go today?”

“Well, I was 3-3 in pass skelly and feeling pretty good.  The first rep I got in team drill was a pass, but everyone was covered, so I took off and ran for a 17 yard gain.”

I pumped my fist in the darkness of my bedroom thinking to myself ‘that a boy.  That’s exactly the kind of play that will get you on the field this season.’

“But, dad,” Shawn continued, “At the end of the run, I made a juke and cut back and my right knee buckled, they carried me off the field and they think I tore my other ACL.”

Even as I just typed that sentence, I am speechless, trying to catch my breath, trying to make sense of what he just said.  Shawn had torn his left ACL in a high school game without even being hit, and rehabbed and fought back to earn a scholarship in the SEC. Last spring, during a weight workout, he re-tore the same ACL in a freak twist during a drill. Again, he overcame to get back in the competition for this season.  And now, I am hearing that his right ACL gave out?  I felt like I might vomit.

To be honest, I don’t even know how my son and I got through that phone conversation. We prayed and we left the outcome up to the Lord: whatever the MRI would show in the morning we would live with and make a plan together.

The next morning was the Brothers golf tournament.  As I was standing on the first tee box, my cell phone buzzed, and it was shawn. 

“Hello”  I answered.

“Dad, they just read the MRI.  It’s a torn ACL.”  I could hear my sons tears.  They broke my heart.

I had spent the night trying to sleep, but that was impossible.  I tried to convince myself that it was all just a bad dream and that I would eventually wake up and feel relieved that it wasn’t real.  I also wanted to wake up Bruce to tell him so I didn’t have to spend the entire night with this information alone, hoping that in the sharing of this information, he could help carry the weight of its burden.  I didn’t wake him up, it would have ruined his sleep as well.

Back on the phone, all I could do was tell Shawn I loved him, that we would handle this together, again.  I reminded him that football was only part of his life and that he was much bigger than just a football player.  It sounded trite, but it was all I had.  And it was true.

Bruce yelled at me from the tee box ‘C’mon, we’re up.’  It was time to begin the round of golf to defend our Brothers Tournament title from a year ago.

The round of golf took six hours, we played poorly and texted my mom not to even come to the course.  She texted back ‘I am coming, like I always do, not because you are winning or losing.  I am coming because you are my boys.’  

Saturday was surreal, like a fog or a dream.  I continued to ask the Lord for some help to find explanation, peace and potentially offer it to my son and our family.  We were all devastated.  

Struggling with how to process what had happened, I clicked on Facebook.  It was there that I got perspective.

I read about an attorney friend and colleague who had been hospitalized for two weeks with an undetermined illness; he had died overnight.  I read about a friend whose 13 year old son had his leukemia return requiring a week of hospitalization to undergo the most horrific cytotoxic chemo his body could withstand, and his parents were reaching out for prayer.   Later in the day, my sister shared that the son of one of our high school classmates had committed suicide as a way out of a severe drug addiction. Finally, after talking to my wife, Kate, she shared that the brain tumor in one of her friends that had been shrinking had begun to grow again.

I therapeutically rambled the musings of my heart to my brother Bruce, who has a master’s degree in counseling and works with athletes on understanding how all people shape their experience via their thinking and mind-set, and he was so helpful.  I recounted all the stories of trauma I had gathered in the past 24 hours and that in comparison, perhaps Shawn’s story wasn’t that bad.  He replied instantly and emphatically, ‘Scott, trauma is trauma and it isn’t meant to be graded.  It is all significant and scary. We are meant to measure trauma in comparison to Eden, our original destination and not toward other people.’

I understood, but I continued trying to gain perspective and a way to quantify the news of Shawn’s potential career ending knee injury.  My mind wandered back to the recent event of lying next to my six-year-old son, Leo, in his bed. He was holding a fever of 103 and I remembered how I cried for what the dad of the boy with leukemia must feel like lying next to his son this week.  I imagined the phone ringing and me answering to hear someone say ‘ mr stankavage, this is officer smith.  I am here at the hospital and we have some bad news.’  I won’t go on with the different worse case scenarios I thought up, but none of them were pretty.

My son shawn is 20 years old.  His athletic talent has earned him a free education, and possibly a master’s degree at one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the country.  Although he dreams of playing more football in his life, he may not be afforded that opportunity, either because of injury or ability.  Coach Steve Wilson, who I wrote about in my recent book THE QB MENTOR, has emphasized to all of his football students that the only thing guaranteed by the game of football is that one day you will be an ex-player.  Maybe that day came sooner than Shawn expected.  There are worse realities to face in life.

I looked at Bruce and said, “What I seem to have stumbled on is that I think there are two types of trauma.  One with a capital T and one with a small T. I believe that it is important to maintain a proper perspective, and as hard as the traumas of our life can be, the real tough times are when a “capital T” trauma occurs.”

Perhaps living with an un-curable terminal blood cancer for the past three years myself accelerates perspective on things somewhat.  I am truly thankful for each day I am here, sharing and living and loving my family and friends as best I can. If you would have told me back in June of 2013, that in august of 2016 I would be writing a blog, I would have told you that the odds of that would be a pretty slim probability. But God has made some huge things happen, things I did not expect, and He has been good to me and my family, as have the oncologists and palliative care doctors at Duke.

No doubt the “small T” traumas can be devastating, but the “capital T” Traumas are life’s greatest challenges.  So, tonight and going forward, I will cover in prayer not only my son and our family but also all the families of all those facing their own unique and personal traumas every day and hope that the Lord will bless all of us with a peace and perspective that surpasses all understanding especially when facing the traumas (little T and capital T) of our lives. 

Amen and amen.