The thing I felt that day is something I will never be able to forget. My hands resembled a shivering dog and my legs were frozen, unable to move, my whole body was taken over by fear. My father was on the ground and i could do nothing but stand there in fear; if I have ever regretted something in my life it would have been the fact that i was incapable of helping with anything that day.

The day began peaceful and wonderful, I was living the life a normal 10 year old would; standing in the way, petting the dogs, and always complaining about how hungry I was. Me and my brother sat and watched on as my dad and his friend Marty worked to build the front facing wall for the second story of my garage. My dad was a successful home builder, and refused to let anyone else build our garage. There was not a worry in the world except for one simple thing, the blue line. The entire day was just a continuous nag of seven words, “don’t step over the blue line,” my father would always say to any soul dumb enough to even get close to it. The line had little significance at all except to mark where the wall stopped and the lip of the wall began(the lip being a small piece of wood that hangs off the edge to give stability to the wall). Beyond that point there was nothing to step on except pure air and a 20 foot drop onto concrete. The entire morning was filled with those words and it was ironic the way that they twisted their way back to stab my dad right in the back. Yes, my father stepped over that blue line that he feared so much. He stepped over the blue line, the board easily fell under his weight, snapped and sent my dad into a free fall. The fall took a mere three seconds, but to me it was like watching my whole world that my father had molded for me, shatter into a million peices. I stood there in disbelief that anything bad had happened to my dad, my loving father, who had taken care of me my whole life; there was no way in my mind that i would allow myself to fear for my fathers life because there was no way that he could leave me.

From there on, I can only remember glimpses of the pain I felt. One thing i can remember clear as day, was the minute my uncle arrived he picked me up and held me, we stood there together crying and worrying. But then my uncle had to leave with the ambulance, the tears stopped, and everything was still, I stood alone in the driveway watching the ambulance ride away with my father. It was for a still second I thought to myself, “ why wasn’t it me?”

My mother, and sisters were in Colorado Springs for a volleyball tournament when this all happened. My brother decided it was a good idea to call her before calling the paramedics, my dad on the other hand could not disagree more. Halfway through telling my mom what had happened, Marty took the phone out of his hands and called 911. After the storm had passed and everything was calm, I called my mother who was frantically trying to get home and told her what had happened, well I tried to tell her in between the gasps for air because i was sobbing so hard. I was surprised that my mom didn’t get a speeding ticket that day because she was driving like a maniac. Five minutes after everyone had left, Greg Moore (our long time neighbor) had come over and taken me back to his house; we sat and played Wii for awhile until Sue Moore had arrived. She was taking me to Red Rocks where we were meeting some other mothers and their daughters, whom I was friends with at the time. The only thing I remember after going to Red Rocks was seeing my father in a hospital bed with IV’s everywhere and nurses scrambling. My father was to be put into immediate surgery, he broke his pelvis in 2 places and shattered his right heel; he needed a new hip and a titanium plate put into his foot to act as a heel. Sitting in that hospital was unlike any other wait I have ever had to do in my life, I swear if there wasn’t a real limbo, that waiting room was the closest thing to it. When my dad came out of that surgery alive, with all of his limbs still attached, it was like lifting a great weight that my whole family had been holding up. At least that is what we thought.

A few weeks after my dad returned home from the hospital, he was able to walk again and take care of himself. Everything was going great until the pain started to hit my dads hipp, we had no idea what was going on and so once again he had to return to that hospital. After close examination by a different doctor than the one that performed the surgery, they found that the artificial hip was not put in correctly and that they needed to redo the surgery immediately. In the end the doctor who performed the original surgery was fired and my dad got the hip that was supposed to be there in the first place. After a stressed, yelling, hard, year had passed my family prevailed and saw the light on the other side of the tunnel. One of the clearest things i can remember about that year is the home cooked meals that everyone brought us; most people would think that we would love the free food, but come on, if you had to eat frozen lasagna for a year,you would hate it too. But when I put myself past the frozen pasta, I realized that me and my family were truly grateful to everyone who took time to do that for us.

To this day my dad is recovering, the doctor says the physical pain will never go away, but I know that the mental pain of thinking that part of our family was going to be lost, is now long gone. Personally, sometimes the memories of that day come back in nightmares or flashbacks, but I knew from the second that my father came out of that operating, alive and breathing, I would never again take any of my family’s lives for granite. The fact that at any time we could lose a family member, has been seared into my brain forever and will be the most vivid thing I will ever remember.