The Boy Who Fell: A Father's Memoir of Love, Community, Healing (and a Fall from a Tree)

One Saturday in June, a young boy climbed too high in a tall tree. The branch and air were thin, and the boy fell, and nearly died on the hard ground. An inch this way or that, and ours would be different lives. That boy was my son. Together we ended up by slow ambulance in the Trauma Department of the University Hospital; from there we were transferred to live two weeks near death in the Intensive Care Unit. As people and community, we strived to overcome the traumatic brain injury meted out for his temerity, and sometimes we surrendered. I wrote to stay sane, and present. This is that story, as first shared over long hours from the hallway just outside the ICU.