Not Without Hope (20 page)

As we got out of the car at the church, I noticed that people were staring at me, curious. It was the first time I had been in public. I was at the center of attention when it should have been all about Will. No one knows how to deal with that at their best friend’s funeral. We went into a chorus room and met Will’s aunts, uncles, cousins, and close friends who had grown up with him.

We stood there and shook people’s hands. Some thanked me for holding on, for being with Will to the end. I started getting the same nauseous feeling I had on the boat when I got seasick. I couldn’t believe I was going to my best friend’s funeral—my best friend who had died in my arms. I wasn’t able to save him. This could have been my funeral just as easily. I wasn’t more than a few hours from being in the same position he had been in, from having the same thing happen to me.

At the front of the church they had big pictures of Will, his baseball and football jerseys from high school, and his football jersey from USF. There were flowers and pictures of him at graduation. I lost it again. I can’t believe I’m at this frickin’ funeral, I thought to myself. I really did lose my friend.

Will had done everything he could to prolong my life. We had worked together. I was still alive and attending his funeral because of him. He helped keep me alive. There easily could have been four funerals instead of three. I owed my life partially to Will. I had sent his parents a bouquet of flowers. On the card, I wrote, “To the family of the angel that saved my life. He will never be forgotten.”

For most of the ceremony, I thought about Will and his last hours. Will’s brother said some nice things about him. One of his cousins sang a song by Sarah McLachlan, “Angel.” She had a beautiful voice. As soon as the piano started, I got hysterical. I don’t think I had ever cried that hard. I wanted to scream or hit some
thing. I felt sad, upset, frustrated, angry, and guilty. I started thinking, Could I have done something different? Could I have done a better job of giving Will CPR? Should I have given my jacket to him for a while? If I did that, would he have lived a little longer and I would have eventually died? Should I have helped him go underneath the boat?

Reverend David Lane, the football reverend at USF, was at the service. He had visited me in the hospital. When the funeral was over, the reverend was at the front of the church, at the altar, next to a picture of Will. I stopped and stared at Will. I could barely see. I hugged the reverend and squeezed as hard as I could. I cried on his shoulder. The three of us had prayed together before. Through him, I felt a spiritual connection to Will.

After the memorial, we went outside to a pavilion to have a meal. I had knots in my stomach. I was waddling along. The media was there. I could see TV cameras focused on me. I could hear the clicking of cameras. I was annoyed. Did they have to do that now?

We had a nice meal. People couldn’t have been nicer to me. A lot of friends and former teammates, even guys from Ohio who knew Will, came in for the memorial. I know everyone had questions, but they knew it wasn’t the right time. They were very respectful. But other than having three friends die in my arms, this was the worst day I had experienced. It reminded me of the accident. Every time I thought something couldn’t get worse, it did. I lost one friend, then two, then three. It always got worse. Then I heard Will’s cousin sing that song. I knew, okay, it can’t get any worse than right now. I’ll never forget that song and the way she sang it and the way I felt for those four minutes. I knew this was as bad as it was going to get.

T
he first few days home from the hospital, I got lots of rest. I was physically and mentally exhausted. Shell-shocked. Then I got restless. I’d toss and turn and look at the clock. It would be one o’clock in the morning, then two o’clock, then three. For a while, I got only a few hours of sleep. Night was always the worst. It still kind of happens now. I don’t have nightmares, but things go through my head: Why am I here? Why am I the only who got through this? Because I happened to get seasick and put on more clothes? That sucks. It’s not fair.

For a month, when I tried to sleep everything ran through my mind, particularly the last few moments with each guy. I pictured the water and the waves and the sound the wind made, the taste I had in my mouth, that bitter, dry taste.

I kept picturing their faces when I lost them. Marquis was gone and I held him tight to my body. He foamed at the mouth and I kept wiping the foam away. His eyes were shut, his body was deadweight, and I held him even though I knew he was gone.

I kept picturing Corey, that mean, growling face, those big eyes, the things he said. It hurts to this day, though I know Corey in his right mind would never say anything like that.

I kept picturing the sad look that Will had, the way he bear-hugged me from behind on the boat and the tone in his voice when he said he wouldn’t make it through another night, when he said he loved me, when he said how hungry and thirsty and cold he was, that sad, crying, dying voice.

I took three weeks off from work, then I kind of got sick of laying around. I felt better physically, so I went into the gym a few hours a day. I was down thirty pounds. I felt like garbage.

Before, I could bench-press 400 pounds. Now I could barely lift 135. I was so atrophied and weak. I had no muscular endurance. It took awhile to get it back. In my mind, I wanted to go for it, but I had to be patient. A few days, I did too much and got sore like I had never worked out before. My legs and groin were so weak, I couldn’t do a lunge. My flexibility was shot. I couldn’t touch my ankles, my lower back was so tight. I could barely reach below my knees. It would take me three months to put the weight back on. I’ve got my strength back, but eight months later, I’m still not in the same shape.

It was a bittersweet feeling going back to work. I got back in the swing of things, but I was a little overwhelmed. The media knocked on my door, contacted my friends, followed me to lunch. At the gym, people were so nice. Everyone was coming up and hugging me and saying, “Thanks for holding on, you’re such an inspiration.” People sent food and flowers and hundreds of cards—anonymous people, friends from Tampa, and parents of people I had grown up with in Ohio. It felt good. I’ll never forget it.

I got a big envelope from third-graders in Utah. They were learning a new word every week about values. The word for the week they wrote to me was “determined.” They probably sent thirty
letters and drawings, in the blunt, cute, innocent way that kids have: “I’m so sorry that your friends drowned. I love fish. What’s your favorite color?” It was sweet. I broke down and cried.

I appreciated everything, but it was a bit much. It felt good—and it didn’t feel good. I wasn’t able to save anybody. If only at least one more of us could have made it. I wished we had never gone fishing that day or that we had gone in the summer when the water wouldn’t have been cold or that there wouldn’t have been a storm that night. So many ifs, ifs, ifs.

Paula Oliveira:
When Nick got back from hospital, he told me the story again, with more details. For the first few weeks, I thought, Wow, he’s doing well. Then it just hit him one day. Nick is usually the life of the party, always ready with a good comeback. We laugh a lot. He went from that to totally withdrawn, silent, mute. He didn’t want to talk about anything. That was scary to me.

There was complete silence in the house. We went a long time with no laughter. I could be sitting in the same room, and I felt alone. He’d come home sometimes and he’d sit in his truck for a few minutes and he would come in and his eyes were bloodshot. He’d sit on the couch and just sob.

I had lost my best friend, too, in Will. I felt like I couldn’t mourn in my own house. If Nick wasn’t thinking about it, I didn’t want to bring it up.

Our conversations would be surface. How was your day? What do you want for dinner? How are the dogs? If the conversation got too deep or related to the accident, he would completely shut down.

For a while, I stopped making the attempt.

He would sit there and say, “Why me?” Over and over, I don’t know how many times.

He never showed me any signs that he might hurt himself. But he really got to a dark place. There were no warning signs. The person he was and the person he became changed so quickly. It was terrifying. It broke me. I felt that nothing I said was right. I’m a teacher. I was home for the summer. It was the summer of hell. He wasn’t angry, he was sad. He’d have to be up early for work, and I would make him an awesome breakfast, thinking this might start his day on the right foot. I tried anything to lighten the mood. I would do anything for him. And he would just say, “Thanks, babe.” I never got thanks-babed so much. I knew he was grateful, but he didn’t have it in him at the time.

I didn’t want to take it personally, but it was a hard time.

I asked him if he felt guilty, and he said that was the one thing he didn’t feel. He knew he did everything he could have done at the time. But he was distraught. Out of the blue, he would say, “I just don’t get why I’m still here.” Nothing would trigger it. He’d just say something like, “I think about it all the time.”

The forty-three hours that he was in the water and the aftermath were both hell for me, but to be honest, I think the aftermath was worse. Six months after the accident, his mood finally brightened. Slowly, he came back to himself. He had more to say to me. He could laugh again. He’s good with comebacks, and the sarcastic smartass part of him came back. I think all this changed me. If I can get through this, I feel I can do anything.

I knew right away, even in the hospital, that I was going to get a tattoo. I knew it would have the guys’ names or initials, something that tied the four of us together. I knew this would stay with me as long as I lived. And I knew they would stay with me. The four of us had worked together, and because of that I was still alive.

I looked through some quotes in a book that someone sent me. I found one from a Persian proverb that said, “In the hour of adversity, be not without hope.” I thought, Okay, that’s it, that’s the one. Nothing more needs to be said. There was no giving up, no quitting. We worked together. Never once did we say, “We’re done.”

An artist friend came up with the design, a Celtic cross with their initials on each point of the cross. Victor Marquis Cooper, William Ward Bleakley, Corey Dominic Smith. It’s on my right triceps, with the quote in the background and a date at the bottom, 3/1/2009, the day they died. There is a rope intertwined with the cross and an anchor at the bottom. Funny how 31 was my basketball number in high school. And how I meant the cross to be a symbol for the will to survive, and Will was the name of my best friend. Go figure.

My arm was so atrophied that I had to wait three months to build it up before I got the tattoo. Paula had a small anchor tattooed on her ribs, to honor Will. When I got the tattoo, the artist said, “Are you ready?” and I thought, I could do this all day. I had a different level of pain tolerance now. I almost dozed off. I’d rather go through the pain of a tattoo a million times than go through what I did in the water, losing my friends.

I made my tattoo into my profile photo on Facebook. I started getting criticized because I still hadn’t spoken to the media. Some people wrote nice tributes. Others said, “Isn’t it time to talk?” Everyone was giving me advice. I knew I could never please everybody, no matter what I did. The only thing that mattered to me was the guys’ families. Everyone had their own way of dealing with it. Some
bloggers were just brutal: I can’t believe he got a tattoo. He probably killed those three guys. This shows how weak “niggers” are; they can’t even hold on to a boat. Just the lowest, most absurd and vile things. I knew better. I shouldn’t have read the blogs. I didn’t think it was important to set the record straight publicly. I was annoyed with the media. I wasn’t ready to talk yet. I just wanted to get back to my regular lifestyle and move forward.

S
HORTLY AFTER
I got my tattoo, Rebekah Cooper had a memorial for Marquis. It was a Saturday in the summer. Corey’s and Will’s families attended. I went with Paula, my mom, my dad, and my sister. About seventy people showed up for the service at a church in Tampa. Some of his former teammates were there, and some of his local friends. I woke up that morning and I was nervous. In a way it was selfish. I hadn’t broken down in a while. I knew this was going to be hard. But it wasn’t going to be as hard on me as it would be for Rebekah and Delaney and Marquis’s mom. Even though Delaney understood that her dad was gone and was in heaven and was always watching, she would never have her father again. She would have to grow up without him. It saddened me.

Someone had written a song about Delaney and Marquis smiling down on her. During the service, the reverend asked people to raise their hands if they had learned anything from Marquis. Somebody said, “He gave me the okay to laugh.” Another person stood up and told a funny story about being on the team with him. Some said things that were more serious than others. I knew I had to say something or I’d regret it later. I was the last one. I raised my hand and, half-crying, I said, “Marquis taught me to never give up and never quit.”

Rebekah had a speech written. She talked about how they met and what a good husband and father Marquis had been. The three
of them had a motto: together they were one heartbeat. Rebekah was very emotional. It killed me to see her like that. She talked about how Marquis said she was his anchor. And that if he ever went out, this was the way he would have wanted, fishing on the water, and now he was in God’s hands and his spirit was with us today. I can’t imagine how she got through it. I had tears dripping on the floor.

A
FEW DAYS
after the service, I talked to Corey’s two sisters and his brother. It was gut-wrenching. Here was another family to which I had to explain what their brother went through in the last few hours of his life. It was hard. Part of me wanted to leave out the part about him being aggressive and losing it. It wasn’t him. He was suffering from hypothermia. But I didn’t leave it out. I felt honesty was the best thing. Coming from me, it would have meant a lot more to them than hearing it from somebody else.

I spoke about how we went into the water and fought for one another. Without Corey and Marquis and Will, I told them, I don’t think I’d be here today. It was extremely difficult to explain how Corey went out, getting away from me, and my losing grip of his life jacket and seeing the look in his eyes and the last few words he said to me—“I’m a kill you”—and taking off his jacket and diving to the ocean floor. As soon as I told them that part, the three of them said, “No, no, no,” like Corey wouldn’t have said that. They knew it wasn’t Corey. I told them that he was so easy to get along with, he was the nicest guy. He had never quit on anything. Fortunately, they understood what he had gone through. That wasn’t the Corey we knew. It was the elements that made him do what he did. It was sad. We were all crying. They were breaking down to hear how their brother had died.

I wasn’t able to save him. I’m the lone survivor. That’s a pretty
shitty, guilty feeling. I always pictured it the other way around, Will or Corey or Marquis surviving and having this conversation with my family. I felt so bad, so guilty, not for myself, but for the families. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t bring those guys back. I felt so sad for their families. I knew how I felt about my mother when I was on the boat, and now the other three families had to go through that.

O
NCE THINGS CALMED
down, I reached out and got Rebekah to hang out with Paula a bit. They went to a movie from time to time, or to dinner, just to get away. I knew she had been so busy, taking care of her family and Marquis’s family and her daughter, figuring out where to live.

I always felt there was going to be a natural connection with Rebekah and Delaney. I was always going to be tied to Marquis, the way he died in my arms and the final things he said about his family, how much he loved them, and how I kept yelling, “For your daughter, be strong for Goose and for Beck.”

I babysat for Delaney a couple times, or she and her mom and Paula and I just hung out. I loved hanging out with Delaney. I took her to Chuck E. Cheese’s to build a stuffed animal. She picked a pink unicorn. A sound chip came with it, and they put her in this closet so she could create her own message. She said, “I love you, Mommy, I love you, Daddy,” and we slipped the sound chip inside the unicorn. Every time you grabbed its foot, it would talk.

Paula and Rebekah had gone to a movie. When they got home, Delaney would press the foot and it would activate the sound and she would laugh hysterically at hearing her own voice. The first time Rebekah heard it, she choked up. Her eyes watered.

Eventually, we drifted apart. I told my story to HBO’s
Real Sports
in August. I got permission from all the other families be
forehand. Afterward, Rebekah said she needed time to herself and to mourn. Maybe the story was too graphic for her. Maybe she thought I was capitalizing on tragedy. I hope not. I just thought it was time for me to tell my story, to set the record straight. There were so many false rumors out there. The next day, I tried to contact some of the families. People had been texting me, thanking me for clearing up the record. I felt a little weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

Then I realized I hadn’t spoken to Rebekah for a couple of weeks. She decided she wanted to distance herself from any type of media. She wanted some space and time to mourn. I respected that. But it was also hard to hear. I knew I wouldn’t see her and Delaney as much as I had hoped.