There I Am - Ruthie Lindsey
Preface
Hello, my sweet brothers and sisters.
You should know, before you read anything else, that my memory is not perfect. Once, growing up, when my brother Tim was leaving the room, he and my daddy decided to figure out exactly how much they loved each other.
“I love you,” Tim said, leaving.
“I love you more,” my daddy said back to him.
“No, I love you more.” (This might be the most defiant thing Tim has ever said, by the way.)
They went back and forth for a while, and then finally my daddy asked, “How much?”
And Tim, who was born a wise and ancient soul, came up with the most expansive measurement he could for the most immeasurable love he’d known: “More than God can count.”
Somewhere along the way, after hearing this sweet story a hundred times and letting it settle into my heart, I absorbed it into my own history. I decided that the entire exchange occurred between my daddy and me, not Tim.
I started saying it all the time.
I retold the story as though it were my own.
I was so sure about it that after my daddy died, I had More than God Can Count tattooed on my forearm as a memorial to him.
Years later, after I’d shared this precious phrase with the world and my tattoo artist, Tim gently informed me that it was he who had originally said it, not me.
This book is my best remembrance of what happened, but my memories may not be perfect. To somebody else, this story might look a little different.
Speaking of somebody elses, the people and places in these pages have shaped me. They’ve showed up for me and they’ve failed me. They’ve covered me in love and filled me with doubt, delivered to me my greatest joys and most immense grief. I love all of them. I’m indebted to all of them. Because this is a book about healing, because the truth I set out to tell doesn’t care if somebody is called Mallory or Kate, I’ve chosen to give some of the beloved characters new names, and some of the details in my story have been changed. Don’t worry, none of the new names are too silly.
When you’ve read the final page of this book and turned off your light, or gotten off at your stop, or finished the last of your coffee, I want you to forget about me, my name, my face, my journey, and look inward toward yourself. This is a story about healing, not just mine, but ours. Healing is alive in all of us, it’s for all of us. I know this, feel it, in every perfect breath I take. I hope that when you’re through, you’ll know too.
Thank you for making space in your full, busy hearts for this story. Your time is so valued and I’m beyond grateful that you’re choosing to spend some of it with me. You are loved, you are love, and I believe that healing is for you.
Prologue
I don’t know why everyone’s crying.
They stand over me and look down on me like I’ll never get up, Coach Powell, my daddy, the big, barrel-chested boys from the basketball team. I want them to feel better, but I can’t make the words to tell them. I’m so confused.
The ambulance was going sixty-five when it hit me and now I’m bound to the bed at Baton Rouge General. My neck is broken, my spleen is gone, my lung is collapsed, and I’m not wearing any underwear. I don’t know how long I’ve been here, but long enough that time has begun to take a new shape. Beyond the slivers of sunrise and darkness that sneak through the hospital shades, beyond the protocols and shifts and dosages and routines, I’m removed from the passing of hours, divorced from what was ordinary—cheerleading and algebra and Sunday dinner at my grandparents’ house.
The doctors don’t let me feel the pain. They keep it at a safe distance with a tingly calming medicine that goes through a needle in my hand and makes me sleep. The medicine doesn’t let me feel anything at all. I notice the bumpy path of staples that leads up my belly from my pelvis to my sternum but I don’t feel fear about them. I cry only once, when I find out they shaved the bottom of my head as bald as my daddy’s. Everything my body is supposed to do is performed by someone or something else. A machine breathes for me; a long