| Dustin's Story |
| Dustin (Dusty) was due on April 23, 1982, but he decided he couldn't wait that long to see his family. On Tuesday, Apirl 13, 1982, I went into labor during my last Lamaze class. I was in labor for five hours, which was longer than my labor with either of our daughters so I suspected it had to be a boy. My husband, Marvin, and I were so happy to have a boy after having two daughters. Dusty was born at 12:05 a.m. on April 14, 1982, weighing in at 5lbs, 14oz and he was 19 inches long. He had blond hair and the prettiest blue eyes you ever saw. Being the youngest of three children and the only boy, he was more than a little spoiled, but he had the cutest grin that could usually get him out of whatever trouble he was in at the moment. Dusty's only real bad trait was his temper....he had a terrible tember, but as he grew older, he learned to control his temper most of the time. When Dusty was 16, he wanted a dog of his own....a big dog. We had told him that when he brought his grades up we would get him one. That decision was taken out of our hands though, when his Aunt Pam (my twin sister) brought him a puppy that had been rescued from the middle of one the busiest streets in Roswell. We let him keep the puppy and he named him Cash. Dusty and Cash were inseparable from day one. Cash would play football, basketball and have snowball fights with Dusty (at least Dusty claimed that Cash threw snowballs at him, but we never saw it). Cash did grow up to be a very large dog...he weighs about 90 lbs now....but he is also a great watchdog and companion. In January of 1999, Marvin and I decided to move to North Texas so he could go to work with a cousin of mine. Marvin had been working in the oil fields for over 20 years, but work was getting really hard to find at this time. Marvin left for Texas on the 12th of January while I stayed here in New Mexico and worked. I joined Marvin in Texas on February 28th, but Dusty was in driver's ed and wanted to stay and finish it before moving to Texas. So we let him stay with his best friend Josh and his parents until April 3rd (Easter Sunday) when we came back and got him. Dusty really began to like it in North Texas except for missing his sisters and his neice, Anissa, who adored her Uncle Dusty and he adored her also. Dusty turned 17 years old on April 14, 1999, just a few days after joining his father and I in Texas. He had become very mature by this time....nothing like the spoiled little boy he had been when he was younger. Dusty went to work nearly every day with his Dad and the two of them had become very close....closer than they had ever been. And the older Dusty got, the more handsome he got. He was already 5'9" and weighed about 147 lbs and he was solid muscle. He still had the most beautiful blue eyes you ever saw. He was just starting to get interested in the opposite sex (before, he had been too wrapped up in basketball to care much about girls). On Sunday, June 13, 1999, Marvin, Dusty and I made a trip to Garland, Texas to see another cousin of mine. When we arrived at their house, they were just leaving to go to the lake. Dusty loved swimming so much and so did his Dad, so I gave in and we joined my cousin and his wife and kids on a trip to the lake. As soon as we arrived at the lake, the teenagers (four of them counting Dusty) immediately got into the lake to swim. They had gone out to the rope that roped off the swimming area from the rest of the lake. We four adults sat on the beach talking and trying to blow up floatation devices. After just a few minutes, I looked up at the kids and only saw three. Dusty was not with the others. I told Marvin to go find him but he told me Dusty was fine...the water was only four feet deep and Dusty was a good swimmer. I regret to this day that I didn't get up and go find him myself....I am afraid of water, especially lakes, because when I was ten years old my fourteen year old brother drowned while on a Boy Scout camping trip. Instead, I asked Marvin again to go find Dusty. Marvin told me to quit worrying about Dusty and let him have fun. I have always been very overprotective of my kids and Marvin was always telling me to untie the apron strings and let the kids have fun. After a few minutes of not seeing Dusty, my cousin's wife, Mary, and I went into the water to look for him. Seconds later Marvin joined us in our search but we didn't search for long. Mary tapped me on the shoulder and when I turned to look at her, she said "they found him." I looked over to see some other swimmers carrying my baby to the beach; he was unconscious and not breathing. A Sheriff's Deputy and an off-duty Paramedic immediately began giving Dusty CPR while another Deputy called for an ambulance. The Paramedics arrived and worked on him as they loaded him into the ambulance. They wouldn't let me ride with them because I was too upset and they were afraid I would get in the way. We followed the ambulance to the hospital, which was about 10 miles away. When we arrived at the hospital Dusty was already in the ER and on a respirator. He had a heart beat, but couldn't breath on his own. They let us go and see him for a few minutes (after we did all of the paper work!). They then took us to a private waiting room to wait for the doctor. The doctor came in some time later and said that he believed that Dusty was "braindead" and they would run an eeg on him the next morning to make sure. They put Dusty in ICU and put us in another private waiting room. There were several people with us, including my older brother and his wife. We spent the night visiting with Dusty, talking to him, and praying to God not to take him, but it was not to be. The next morning the eeg showed no brain activity and we had to make the decision to remove the machines and let him go. We were going to donate his organs, but they had been without oxygen for too long and couldn't be used. We had Dusty transported home to Roswell for a memorial and cremation (his wish). We returned to North Texas a couple of weeks later but I was so homesick and depressed that we moved back to Roswell in 2002 so we could live close to our daughters and my father. My twin sister had passed away in October 2001 and my mother had passed away in November of 2001, so my father was alone and needed me. I will always miss my son, but I am glad to be living around my daughters and grandchildren again. |
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| song: Who You'd Be Today, performed by Kenny Chesney |