December 29, 2020

Three years ago, on December 26, the darkest, most tragic and painful night of my entire life happened at 7:29 PM. My husband, Gary Canter, had gone upstairs an hour prior to take a nap. But when I entered the room, I found him flat on the floor. I immediately called 911, and the operator talked me through CPR. When the paramedics came, I tried to reassure myself that all I needed was to get to the hospital. But then, it dawned on me — the paramedics hadn’t moved. As I sobbed, a responder tapped me on the shoulder at exactly 7:29 PM and said, “ma’am, he didn’t make it.”

Based on that Christmas, it probably goes without saying that for the last two years, I thought I would never be able to celebrate Christmas ever again. No hanging twinkle lights. No buying or exchanging gifts. Just me, alone, forever trapped in the darkest hours of December 26, 2017.

But all that changed on December 25, 2020, when my family drove to Nashville for a three-day holiday getaway. My sister, Tyra, was in the passenger seat. Her longtime boyfriend, Tim, was in the driver’s seat and my 16-year-old niece, Madeleine, was in the back seat with me.

I had been living with them since mid-July of this year, when I sent out a distress phone call to my sister, lamenting the ever-changing landscape that had ravaged Los Angeles and the entire country, which has been in a constant state of rage and unrest since the first protests on May 28.

My sister could sense the fear and panic in my voice, so she said, “Come to Evansville.”

A week later, I took off on a road trip across the country — a road trip that carved out a much better and stronger version of me. On that trip, I let go of the fears that had always held me back and the strictest of boundaries that my marriage had designed for my husband and me. My husband Gary, after all, was a safety commissioner who was fiercely overprotective.

I didn’t know it at the time, but life was about to teach me how to survive any emergency — including the one on December 25 in Nashville. 

Being woken up at 6:28 AM by a loudspeaker on Christmas Day was not actually unfamiliar territory for me. I have suffered from debilitating night terrors for the last three years. It’s always the same dream — I’m fleeing for my life.

What was unfamiliar territory for me, however, was waking up to a human voice. From beneath my blanket, I looked all around the room and thought that this must be another one of my night terrors. But the more I told myself to go back to sleep, the more the looping message broadcasting from the room’s intercom — “THIS IS AN ORDER FROM THE NASHVILLE METROPOLITAN POLICE. EVACUATE NOW TO THE THIRD AVENUE EXIT” — began to feel real.

I eventually got out of bed, thinking that any minute now, I would wake up from this nightmare. Yet, every time I heard the “Evacuate” message, it slowly dawned on me that this night terror was real.

Thoughts of 9/11 began whirling in my head. “No way could anything compare to that,” I thought to myself. “I mean, Nashville isn’t a terrorism target. This can’t be that big of a deal,” I reasoned. I threw on my clothes from the night before and even took the time to brush my teeth. “I mean, this can’t really be anything urgent. This isn’t an emergency.”

When I walked out of the bathroom, the dire reality of this emergency became real. I was stopped in my footsteps by a massive thrust that jolted the hotel into the air, accompanied by the sound of an explosion. For the first minute, as I stood frozen in time, I thought there was a 50-50 chance that the floors beneath me would soon give out.

As I looked around, I thought to myself, “I still have a chance. GET OUT NOW.” I grabbed my jacket, my purse and my electronics bag and began to flee. As I raced down the five flights of stairs, I kept telling myself, “You’ve got his. Just keep going… One foot in front of the other. Don’t panic.”

By the time I reached the second to last staircase, I could hear my sister yelling in a panic, trying to locate her daughter. A calm feeling of “you are not alone” swept over me. For the first time in three years, I had my family with me for a life emergency. My heart was overcome with such joy as I spotted the three of them on the ground floor.

By this time, a small group of us had made our way down the staircase and were now congregated in the back of the hotel’s entrance. But we then heard a voice yell down the stairwell that all of the doors were locked. This was a real-life emergency.

Then, almost in unison, the hotel guests all shouted, “break it down.” While I turned around and reached for a steel chair, a man to my right began kicking in the glass door with his boot. By his fourth kick, we all heard the glass shatter. We all made our escape from the hotel by climbing through the shattered glass door. We took a collective sigh as we entered the street — our safety zone.

But we weren’t safe quite yet.

6:33 AM

I began to snap photos so that I could eventually make sense of the morning. I took a photo of the alley across the way.

6:34/6:35 AM

Police cars raced down the former empty holiday streets — an indication that we were not alone and that we could even begin to let our guard down.

Huddled together, we began to question what had just happened. This must have been a mistake. Or a gas leak. I wasn’t buying either. Then we heard there was a shooting — no, a bomb exploded — no, it was just a gas leak. Nothing was adding up.

6:35 AM

Just when we had reached an almost calm state, a panicked voice screamed: “It’s NOT safe. Get back inside. Get back inside NOW.”

As adrenaline rushed through us, we scrambled to get back inside the hotel.

6:36 – 6:38 AM  

While we were all still trying to make sense of the little information we had been given, we heard over the loudspeaker, “Attention all guests. Head down to the lower level immediately. Head down to the lower level immediately.”

My family repositioned our bodies to move down the staircase and rushed in an orderly fashion past metal beams in a narrow, industrial hallway. As we entered the lower levels of a museum, which was in the basement of the hotel, I had a flashback to the day before, when I calmly walked past the museum entrance, never imagining it would be my very own escape room.

Immediately upon entering the museum, a man explained what he just had observed on Second Street. “There was a big explosion, and there is glass everywhere… we are better off down here.”

6:41 AM

We now met the person who was the voice behind the loudspeaker in the hotel. The hotel staff person was passing out bottles of water. He said that there was an explosion and to remain calm and stay in place until he learned more.

7:11 AM

He then took a roll call of the small group of hotel guests. Because of COVID-19 and the holidays, the hotel had a very small number of guests, only about five or seven rooms.

7:25 AM 

Then came the next burst of adrenaline as the hotel staff person instructed us to flee the building. We made it safely up to the library courthouse and waited patiently while all of the armed forces and ambulances cascaded down Second Street and began roping off the neighborhood.

7:44 AM

The man that kicked down the glass door with his boot and his girlfriend were seated across from me. My niece was sitting next to me on a bench. My sister and Tim were still watching the masses of police and state troopers but came over to tell us that the national guard had been called in.

8:13 AM 

With no one around to give us directions, Tim had an idea. He led us toward shelter — the Fairlane Hotel. After almost two hours of panic and fleeing, we finally arrived to safety, the tall Christmas tree a reminder of what day it was.

We took a seat in the hotel’s lobby, which had a comfortable feel. We were offered coffee and water by the staff, and within minutes, we had made ourselves at home, sipping on our caffeine, taking off our jackets and plugging in our chargers.

I looked around and was perplexed that we were the only ones from our former group to have journeyed this way.

9:46 AM

The Metro Police cased the streets and placed yellow tape on the vehicles that had been sniffed down by bomb-sniffing dogs.

10:23 AM

We remained settled inside the hotel, which began to feel like our own living room, from which we were watching a high-speed car chase on TV. As I looked out the window, the song “Christmas is here to stay” began to play. I was mesmerized by a police car’s flashing blue lights.

11:23 AM 

My family arrived at the Capital Grill. Nothing would deter us from enjoying our preplanned holiday meal.

After five hours of what felt like being cast into a feature-length movie, I finally exhaled. Even though the morning was chaotic, terrifying and surreal, it was the best Christmas I had ever experienced. 

Two years ago, I would have still been in my home preparing for the saddest January and February to come, staring at the eviction notice that my former in-laws began almost immediately following my husband’s tragic passing. One year ago, I was still in such a state of distress that a therapist diagnosed me with multiple levels of PTSD. But throughout it all, I heard my husband Gary’s voice, telling me to never give up until I found my own protection, my own happiness, my own path. 

And I did. Even in the midst of a tragic, traumatizing explosion, I found joy, exuberance and happiness. I protected myself in a moment of tragedy. Now, I know that my husband can finally rest in peace. I have my troops. I’ve built my fort. I have an abundance of emergency contacts. And I am, once again, protected.

So on a day known for giving, I was reminded on Christmas that each and every day is a gift and a treasure. My once very somber Christmas holiday narrative is no longer a dark chapter to be relived every holiday season. It is a time to celebrate this magical gift called life.