Injured Freeskier Begins 'Rebirth'

April 21st, 2006 at 03:17pm Vanessa Pierce 40

Freeskier Charlie Gaylord has touched thousands across the country, including me. I met him last year at Snowmass through his girlfriend Jamie Britt (a rad skier herself) and immediately liked him. He is a skier at heart, one of those guys with a permanent smile on his face. About a month ago, I saw him take a fall at the Jackson Hole Freeskiing Open. He was skiing down an area known as the Boxcar – a double cliff drop – when he lost control and crashed into a rock ridge. As he was rolling limp down the hill, the crowd went silent. He was air lifted to an Idaho Falls, Idaho, hospital were he spent about two weeks in a coma. He started "waking up" and doctors said he was stable enough to begin rehab at Craig Hospital in Denver. His wonderful family and amazing girlfriend have been by his side the entire time. The Web site set up to let people know about his progress has had more than 35,000 hits. He has been watching ski movies and giving his family "thumbs up" signs, but Jamie tells me he is still in a confused state. Spring is a time for renewal and rebirth as his dad wrote (in the excerpt below) on Easter day. Let's get it started, Charlie! Send love and prayers to Charlie at www.caringbridge.com, click on "visit" and type in "charliegaylord."

SUNDAY, APRIL 16, 2006 12:04 PM, CDT
... We were also celebrating Charlie’s best day yet (at least in the last 25). He was alert and responsive all day, working hard at gaining additional movement in all parts of his body. Most important for us is his ability to hold his head up while seated in the hospital chair and move it around to look about the room. It makes him seem much more like he is there with us. We look in his eyes and wonder what is going on in there. We stayed with him until it was time for dinner. After dinner we returned to find him deeply asleep with his heart rate and blood pressure at new lows. He had a very restful night’s sleep with Jamie at this side.
Easter is a time of hope, of renewal, of rebirth of transformation. With Charlie’s prognosis improving each day it is also a time of thanks but continued uncertainty. We have all talked about how much we want Charlie back, the old Charlie, the same Charlie. And yet we know that is not possible. Even if Charlie recovers 100% physiologically and mentally, he will be different, transformed. We all have been. We are different today than we were four weeks ago. We have all been, in a sense, reborn. Much of what Charlie is going through is almost a literal rebirth. He will have to relearn much of what he already knew; he has to reprogram his brain. Yet almost certainly there will be much of “Charlie” that will remain.
Buddhists talk about the illusion of self, about how humans are deceived into thinking that there is some permanent “I” that exist. The only permanent feature of existence, they maintain, the only constant, is change. We are each a constantly evolving self, never the exactly the same from one minute to the next. Our suffering, they teach, is caused by attachment to the illusion we are somehow more permanent than that.
And for Christians we have the great celebration of Easter. Easter for me is about the same message: we all have to experience the death of self in order to be reborn into a heaven free from suffering. And yet we keep suffering, we keep believing that we are somehow real, permanent, unchanging.
If the last four weeks has helped me to understand anything it is this. And yet I remain deceived, I still want Charlie back, I still grieve when I think we may not get him back. We are caught. Love for us all typically is about attachment, not detachment. I believe that the pure love that Paul describes in First Corinthians is a love sees through this illusion, it is a love that sees through the changeable self to the true Self, and is not attached to another’s changing manifestations (though it may love those too). This is the difficult line we must now walk with Charlie and with each other. And if it is done right it is done with joy, not sorrow, with compassion and clarity; it is not difficult at all.
We love YOU Charlie! ...
– Ritter

Entry Filed under: Skiing, Sports, Snowmass, Women