My sister, Laura’s Account. Laura’s my immediate older sister, 2yrs older than me. We’re pretty dang close. This is all written from her perspective. Reading and editing this made me cry more times than I’d like to share. Thank you Laura for sharing.
First reactions / where were you?
“Like, Where were you? When you first found out about the accident?” – Joe
“Well, I had the day off work. I was working at Yardbird and I was running errands. I was on Hall Road.” – Laura
I’ll never forget it, I was driving, heading back to Mom and Dad’s and Jess called me and she was like, “What are you doing?”
I said, “On my way home”
Jess said, “Ok, just get home”
I’m like “Ok, why?”
Jess goes, in a concerned tone, “I’ll tell you when you get here”
I’m like, Ok, I’m thinking like if it was something bad, I was thinking maybe something happened to Gram or something.
Family’s first steps
Then I got home and Jess is at the house and I walked in the door, Dad and Jess were standing at the door, I didn’t even step into the house.
Dad was like “It’s Joe”
I’m like “What?”
He goes on to say, in his stern but concerned look, “it’s Joe he was in a motorcycle accident and it’s not good.”
We had very few details at that point, all we knew is that you were in the emergency room. Then, we went in the house, and maybe 10 minutes after I got to the house the hospital called, so we huddled around to talk to the doctor when they called. Yeah, Mom and Dad were shaken up.
I was taking notes and Mom and Dad were listening, and they said that they were about to go into surgery. They wanted to let us know that they were going to do surgery on your lung, and then they couldn’t do much else because of your back. They didn’t know the severity of the injury, and then,
Mom and Dad were like, “Ok, we’re leaving.”
“So Jess and I packed up a bunch of snacks, we packed them a cooler for the road, and they threw a bag together and they left. John and Paul and I were at the home at this point, and also Jess was still there, but she left shortly after. John and Paul hung out with me for a little bit and then we…..”
“Because you needed to get Eloise?“ – Joe
“Jess had already picked up Eloise. She picked her up from daycare for me and just had her in the living room watching TV and tried to distract her so that we could talk. And she had noodles, and yeah, Mom and Dad left, and we all just kind of were trying to figure out what we needed to do.”
We were are all kind of like, “we don’t know what to do until we find out more about what was happening.” So John and Paul hung out with me for dinner. I put together a little makeshift dinner ‘cause you know, I was at Mom and Dad’s then.
“Right – got it.” – Joe
We tried to keep our mind off of it, but we were all just kind of quiet, it was weird. Tried to act normal with Eloise, but it was hard, and then they left and we were all like, “what do we do?”
First visit in Milwaukee
Ok, The next morning, we weren’t sure really what to do but I was like, “I feel like we have to go” and so so we kind of put a plan together last minute. John and I rode together. Jess and Paul rode together, and then shortly after Jake left.
John and I got there we had quite the road trip. You know, John and I have not spent one-on-one time together in many years so that was…..
“I was I was gonna ask how did the ride with John go?” – Joe
“Interesting, you know it was really nice because I was very anxious and John was very cool, calm, and collected about it all. I think that was good for me to have because otherwise I don’t know what I would have done.
I was telling about the car ride with John, and the dichotomy of me and John, and I would call Jess and Paul, and they would be scream rapping sometimes. lol.
And then, meanwhile, Julian was flying back to England. He was in Texas and he was getting on an airplane. And sorry hold on……
“Ok – sounds good” – Joe
He got to England and then booked a flight immediately and came straight back so I didn’t have to be alone…
“Geez. Dang..” – Joe
Alone. Yeah, so he stayed with me and Eloise for like two weeks. It was really nice. and then, the ride was was Ok. I mean we obviously wanted answers so we kept bugging mom and we kept calling each other to hear what was going on and….
“Yeah, Geez that would be hard.” – Joe
Then we got there and John & I, and Paul & Jess just got there like around the same time. Like within 10 minutes of each other. I don’t remember how, but the ICU nurse was able to get all of us up there. John and I got there first, and You recognized us, which was surprising, and I just remember seeing the blood being drained out of your lungs and the tube then All that kind of stuff.
When Paul, Jess, when they walked in. He has the best looking family I’ve ever seen! And look at him!
We broke rules to be able to get everyone up there at the same time! We broke all the rules!
I just remember John looking at your vitals and being like, “His vitals are good.”
We just held your hand, you tried talking to us, but we tried telling you, “you know, you don’t have to talk Joe. It’s Ok.” And you asked about Max and I…..
That was the first time I saw John cry. He checked your vitals, and he told me,” he’s gonna be okay Laura, his vitals are good”
We walked in the room, you said my name, you said, John’s name, you held our hands. You asked where Paul was, where your brothers were, and then where was Janel. I brought your book, what do you do with an idea? I was gonna read it to you, and I kept it in my car, ready to read it to you whenever.
“I love that dog so much” – Joe
I know.
And, I mean it’s gonna be tough going through all of this and having to recount so much and talk about it all. But, you know, this might be an important part of your healing journey.
First Night In Milwaukee
I just remember like I’ll never forget. When I was sleeping at Justin’s cousin’s house, maybe I already told you this, but I woke up in the middle of the night. It was like 2:22am when I looked at my phone. I had a nightmare that night and it felt so real like I can’t even make this up.
Have you heard of a “soul death”? So it’s like where your body is alive but your soul disconnects and thinks it needs to be somewhere else. I think you and I had a spiritual experience when you were in the hospital. Whether or not it was a soul death idk but it was like clairvoyant.
I was in your hospital room that exact ICU room. I was just watching you and holding your hand, and then all of a sudden your vitals like your oxygen went to zero and the nurse rushed in and they were like, “you have to get out” and I like floated out of the room like like I was a ghost? Like I floated out and then I woke up and I woke Jesse up because I was so shaken by it!
I had said to Jess I had a nightmare. She’s said, “It’s just a dream go back to sleep.” Then I woke up in the morning to a text from mom saying that you got put back on the ventilator, cause your oxygen went to zero over the night in the middle of the night. And I told Paul this, and Paul said, “I don’t know how to explain it, but we’re connected and it’s kinda weird.” I don’t know if different is the right word but, we are in tune to things that other people aren’t in tune to, and we have a connection. I remember talking to Paul a couple days later once we were back home and I would just be crying and really upset, and I would just start talking out loud to you, and and just say, “Joe I know you’re out there because you were on the ventilator you were unconscious, and I had said, I know you’re out there I said dig deep buddy, you got it. You gotta pull through. I know you can do this!” I would just talk to you and send you energy and strength and encouragement, and one day I was talking to Paul and I told him I do this and it helps makes me feel better.
Paul said, “yeah I do it too.” He can hear you.”
and I continue to say, “he can hear us, That’s what he needs.”
Also I told Paul that when you were unconscious/on the intubation i used to just talk out loud to you- kind of like a prayer. And he said he did the same thing. He thinks the three of us have a connection!
Yeah, it’s so wild. And then when John and I were in the hospital room with you right after we arrived, I had said, “John, what about the girl he’s been talking to? We gotta tell the girl that he’s dating?”
John said, “oh yeah, you’re right”
I go on to say Joe just told me about her. We gotta find her, and so John found Callie on Instagram and messaged her. We still didn’t even fully know what had happened, like everybody was still so confused, like we knew that something happened, but like it took a while to get the information about the ambulance. It took a while to get information it was tough. We didn’t know what was going on.
The next morning you were on the ventilator. It was weird. Julian dropped everything to be there for us. He was about to take off from Texas to England, and he changed all his plans to be back for my accident.
I felt like I would have done anything to give you some sort of relief, or did anything for you. It was such a mess in my head because we couldn’t do anything for you.
It was the biggest relief to be able to hear your voice for the first time after the surgery. I told Paul and he said me too.
Following Weeks
It was all REALLY hard to deal with it at this time. If I didn’t have Julian, I was in this new place, dad had his hernia, I was helping him, and no one had any answers! There was times I would just freak the fuck out!
The next time I visited you, you were saying some wild things, “you were saying the craziest stuff
You were talking about corn, anthropology and the way that people are, everything was corn 🌽 “that corn over there” “there’s corn in my throat” “there’s corn in my back” “everything was. Corn” “he was trying to rip his tubes out, and I just sat with you all day, and listened to talk this shit all day, I wa sled “wtf” and then you’d say “corn dogs” yeah so there you go, corn”
It was crazy thinking about the back bace days. How difficult some of the simplest tasks were for you.
Other Reflections
Eloise said, if she could wish for any one thing, she said,” I wish uncle Joe could walk again.”
None of us already all talked about the anxiety that we all had.
What really put things into perspective for me, and I talked to Julian, and the one thing that you have, that I never had, was hope. No one knew what it was like to loose a brother. We had something that they didn’t have, and that was hope. We didn’t know what was going to happen, but we had hope.
I think all of that matters. You had a lot of people behind you, it’s not over. I don’t want you to ever forget that. You have a lot of love, and a lot of support. We can’t do the work, but you have to do it. We’re here for you. Seriously Joe. I’m so proud of you!
The Astronaut on Earth 
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