Happy Halloween

I've made my kid promise to have my skull removed and preserved after I die. Why? I'll be the BEST Halloween decoration EVER. I mean my skull already has a candle holder.

It was the month of September in the year 2012. 2012 was the year that the Mayan calendar came to and end…so the end of the world was supposed to only be a couple of months away. I didn't really believe all that. Oddly enough I had a good friend who was an expert on the Mayans…wrote books and led tours in South America who said that I'd be drunk on January 1st like every other New Years Day. But Hey. The "End of the World" was as good an excuse as any to live it up. So I did. Like it was MY JOB. My "day" job for the previous 28 years had been on the railroad working in On Board Services for Amtrak. 28 years of railroading and I had perfected the "End of the World" lifestyle one mile marker, station stop and turn around city at a time.

But this particular September I was flying HIGH. Somewhere along the way I had gotten myself elected the local chairman of the On Board Services Union in Los Angeles. Local Lodge 2508 of the Transportation Communications Union. In LA we had the largest OBS lodge in the nation. I had ended up at the helm for almost two terms. It was not in any plan I'd ever had but there I was and I was GOOD at it. Really good. I rolled into the TCU-IAM International Convention of 2012 in Toronto Canada with the national record for most disciplinary cases won on the property in favor of the employee and the most lost on the property that were overturned in Federal arbitration in favor of the employee. Well to be perfectly honest we were the largest OBS lodge in the US so I probably had more opportunities to win or lose than most of the other Reps. And my members in 2508 were a VERY hardworking but rather feisty bunch. And LA had some ambitious managers eager to show off. They quit bringing charges after awhile. They didn't like me making them look bad. And they had made me look good. I had been tagged by my Union boss…I was on the short list for a promotion to a full time Union job…the kind of job that can REALLY make a difference. I was not only good at this Union stuff but I was a "WOMAN". And that was unusual. There still weren't that many of us…not in railroad Unions anyway. At my first convention a few years earlier when I was new another rep who was seated next to me would seriously send me upstairs to change if our outfits clashed. I finally said "Frank!!! What do you care?!!" He said, "Don't you see that photographer? He's been taking rolls of pictures of you every single day! I'm trying to get us into the National new letter! It's better if we match!" Later I got to know that photographer and asked him what was up. He WAS taking a lot of pictures of me. He said "well Christy…there just aren't that many of you in the room. Women. And it makes the union look good if we can show we've got a girl in leadership…who got elected by the membership." It wasn't because we weren't wanted I don't think but it was new territory for women, even in the 90's. I felt like I needed to prove I could keep up. Hard work. Hard talk. And harder drinking.

It was the 2nd big dinner of convention week and a dress up occasion. I had been off the road for the previous 6 weeks…knee trouble. So it was the first time I had worn high heels in months. Later my friend Lynda who was there with me said that she almost stopped me at the door of my hotel room when she picked me up and suggested that I change my shoes. She felt guilty later, wondering if the whole thing might have turned out differently if she had. I don't believe that. There was a brick wall waiting for me somewhere no matter what my choice of footwear.

It was a pretty typical dinner for a convention. Lot's of stories and loud talk…exchanging ideas and strategies on how to "beat the man" and the usual "You think YOUR membership is crazy wait til you hear this---" stories. I have to say that TCU does it right. The food was fabulous and the bar was OPEN. I took my fair share of ALL of that. The restrooms for the banquet hall were at the bottom of a long wide carpeted staircase. Wide enough that you couldn't reach the handrails on both sides. At least I couldn't anyway. The details of the fall are VERY sharp…I've wondered if that isn't because it was the last thing that ever happened to that woman. The one who started down those stairs.

She was drunk. That's for sure. But we will never know how much or how little that contributed to what happened. Was it the booze? Was it the long skirt? Or was it the high heels worn for the first time in months? Halfway down she caught one of those heels on the carpet of the staircase and it pitched her forward. Her left hand on the left side rail held at first but that spun her around. She grabbed for that left handrail with her right hand and missed turning her back towards the bottom. She fell backwards, hands pinwheeling until she managed to tuck up into a ball probably saving her life as the back of her head is what hit the wall and not her forehead or her temple. That bachelors degree in theatre might have paid off in an unexpected way. All that rehearsing of comedic pratfalls over and over again. Did I mention that this happened on 9/11? Every year when the "We remember" meme's show up online I think "Well…I remember the first part".

This is where the story gets dark…for me anyway. Because for a long time after that "Time" ceased to exist and much of what happened that have become MY memories are the things that I've been told. My husband wasn't with me in Toronto. Union conventions can be really boring for the Plus One's. The University of Toronto hospital called him in California. They said, "Your wife has suffered a traumatic brain injury. She has a subdural hematoma. We would like to do a craniotomy. If we do the craniotomy there is only a 45% chance she will die. If we don't it's unlikely she will survive." He told them to drill. Some years later a friend remarked on how lucky I was. "Wow. He really blew that chance.". That will certainly make a person think. Before he left to come to Toronto he sat down with our 11 year old kid. I guess he was trying to prepare Cal for the possibility that he would be coming back alone. Cal said, "Dad…this is MOM we are talking about right? She's not going to die." That has turned into a decade plus long "I told you so".

I'm told I woke up PISSED OFF. I didn't want to rest…kept trying to get up and leave…and most disturbingly and why they eventually put me in restraints was my constant attempts to remove the tubes that were draining the fluid out of my skull.

Then I'm told they had to quit letting me watch television. Because I turned everything into a conspiracy theory. My husband and my friend Angela showed up to the hospital one morning and I explained to them that I had been a guest on a reality TV show. The other contestants didn't like me so they had pushed me down the stairs to get me off. Another day they showed up and I was in tears and apologizing profusely. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to activate Stonehenge. I swear it was an accident." Because I was being restrained there was the whole diaper thing. My husband was the only one who I would let touch me. My husband asked my neurologist "So is this it? I mean is this what I get for the rest of my life?" The doctor answered "Sir, we have absolutely no way of knowing." He took me home anyway.

This began YEARS of physical therapy. I had to learn how to walk again and walk with the daily bouts of vertigo that lasted all day long most days. It's a little like recovering from a stroke. I had left side weakness and a crooked smile. The damage was all occipital lobe which meant I still had all my memories. It's just my brain had forgotten how to talk to itself. And amongst all the really weird quirks was the mix ups in my tastebuds. Nothing tasted like I "thought" it was supposed to taste…like my memory told me it would taste…except for two things. Dill Pickles and Milk Duds. They were the only things that tasted "right". I asked at one point how long a person could live on a diet of Milk Duds and Dill Pickles. My husband said "I have no idea. But I think we might be about to find out." And guess what? Taste or no taste I was still drinking.

I started down that staircase a woman at the top of her craft just months away from turning 51 with the doors of opportunity flying open in front of her. The world as THAT woman knew it ended in 2012 a few weeks before the Winter Solstice. The woman at the bottom of that staircase felt like an 80 year old with senile dementia who was ready for a nursing home. So why not have a drink? One of the first known surgeries in recorded history is a craniotomy. The drilling of a hole into the skull. Medieval surgeons called it "trepanning". The reason they did it was to release the "demons" from the head of the patient. I've been trepanned. And I'm here to tell you that all my demons were still very much at home in my head.

Amtrak "medically disqualified" me from my position on the train. I couldn't work for the Union without holding an active railroad job. My Union boss and friend had held my bleeding head in his lap at the bottom of that staircase. It cost him a shirt I'm told. I offered to sign it and frame it for him but he told me no. He made arrangements for me to receive some of my pension. I might yet make it back to work to get my 30 years. That was 10 years ago last September. A lot has happened. Turns out that I'm exceedingly hard to kill. I'm not either of those women anymore…the one at the top of the stairs or the one lying at the bottom. On good days I like to think I'm the better version of them both. At any rate today I'm the SOBER version. But hell if I'm still not going to make an AWESOME Halloween decoration. Just not today.