CHAPTER 29

Let It Be

Three words summed up my life before the accident: Let It Be. My dad used to sing to me when I was little. He didn’t sing lullabies; he sang songs by the Beatles. I knew “Hey Jude” and “Imagine” by the time I was five years old. One of the songs I loved most as a kid was “Let It Be.” The song had an early impact on my life, and the lyrics were words to live by for all of us—my family, friends, and me. When my friend Carly and I sang in the hospital, we sang that song often. Of course, when I was out of rehab, “Let It Be” lingered in my mind, well beyond the whiteboard it was written on that had made it our group mantra. It grew to be my mantra and our way of coping. It was a term that defined how we came to realize our bond without actually saying much about what had happened, and it was critically important to me and to the group. It gave us all strength.

I was being interviewed on the news about the accident, and I mentioned that I wanted to get a tattoo on my neck. Shortly after, I received a phone call from this really cool guy at the Blue Flame Tattoo shop. He’d seen the story and he said he wanted to give me a tattoo for free. I was excited but also a little bit afraid. But with such a nice offer, I couldn’t say no. I had to go through with it. I made the appointment.

I called my brother to share the news. He already had so many tattoos and he’d done so much to help me out that I wanted him there to share the experience with me. The day of, we grabbed my mother and headed out to the shop. I decided to have it done on the back of my neck. I’d thought about that area for a tattoo before the accident, but not for any reason as meaningful as this one.

Breaking your neck at the C6 level affects movement and feeling from the chest down, as well as triceps and finger function. The neck doesn’t actually experience paralysis until you reach the C1 or C2 level, which are the very first bones at the top of your spine. Many people think, “Oh, you broke your neck, so you are paralyzed from the neck down,” but that’s not the case. Quadriplegic just means impairment in four limbs, not necessarily full paralysis. So I felt pain in my neck, which I guess made the tattoo more significant and ironic at the same time.

Just saying pain doesn’t really describe it. It hurt. The tattoo was applied right where the bone was on the neck, so I think that was why it hurt as badly as it did. Still, hair pulled back, leaning forward with my neck exposed, we got down to business. It was excruciating. I don’t know how many words in, I yelled, “Stop! I can’t take the pain anymore.”

My brother said, “You’re barely halfway finished; you can’t stop now.”

I thought about it for a while, then took a deep breath and said, “Okay, let’s keep going.” In case I might forget just how horrifically painful it was, my brother snapped a ton of pictures of my miserable face wincing from the needling.

Another problem also slowed things down. Whenever my body experienced pain or infection, it often responded with muscle contractions or spasms. This was the case during the tattooing. We had to take a lot of little breaks to deal with my body’s reaction.

But at the end of it all, I was set to remember, for life, those three special words that have been my guiding light. I had Let It Be and a peace sign inked onto the back of my neck in the exact spot of my injury. Chris and I have talked a lot about getting a couple’s tattoo to ink our bond, but I wanted this one first. I wanted a permanent reminder that I had made peace with my situation, that it was what it was, and that, simply, the only way to get through life is to just let it all be. Having it in ink on my neck gave me secret strength. Knowing it was there powered me, and those words both literally and figuratively became a part of me.