By Katherine Kloepping
For nine whole minutes, the world held its breath as Hamlin laid on the ground not breathing. On Jan. 2 the lives of football players and those of the United States changed as a light was almost lost. When Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed after making a tackle, my perspective towards life shifted.
Although my family isn’t Buffalo Bills fans, we were still hopeful that they would beat the Bangles in their Jan. 2 game. As my father and I waited for my mom to return from getting her tea, he turned on the game to see how both teams were playing. Instead of the game being on, the cameras were focused on the announcers in a newsroom. But, it couldn’t have been half time due to the game having just started.
One of the announcers had tears in his eyes as he said the following,
I have never seen anything like this happen before and neither has the game of football.
My father speculated that someone must have been badly injured, but we still didn’t have answers. Despite the unknown, my father and I said a prayer that whoever was hurt would be okay.
Naturally, after praying, I looked up what was causing the delay of game. When I saw what had happened, I was confused. Damar Hamlin had made a tackle against Tee Higgins, stood up, and then collapsed. However, he wasn’t hit in a way that could have inflicted this type of reaction. Yet his heart had completely stopped.
In football, the players are seen as strong men that go out on the field and tackle each other. It was heart wrenching to see the fear and sorrow etched on every player’s face that night. As I watched this, my heart broke for all of them. I couldn’t help but think of my own team and my cousin who participates in sports. What if this was one of them? I stayed up until 12 a.m. and spent the moments that I was awake praying for Hamlin to be okay. I had the fear that I would wake up to a notification that he didn’t make it through the night. However, as we all know, he did make it through the night. It was a miracle that wouldn’t have been made possible without an amazing medical team in Cincinnati and the thousands of prayers from around the country. Countless individuals united together to pray for Hamlin, wore shirts, and even posted on their instagrams “Pray for Damar.”
I am the type of person who likes to know what will happen, when it will happen, and what the effects it will have on me and those around me. I am a constant overthinker and am always thinking about what has happened in the past. So, what has Damar Hamlin’s emergency taught me? It has taught me to live in the moment, to not fear for the future, and to not be upset about the past. A future isn’t always a guarantee to everyone, it almost wasn’t for Damar Hamlin; we should learn to appreciate the time we have right now.
Opinion: Damar Hamlin’s Impact On Me was originally published in The Herald on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
