The Housekeeper: Love, Death, and Prizefighting

by Josh Samman

  It was in that moment I realized I was the fool. I was the drunk bumbling idiot. I was the one claiming inspiration and not acting on it. I had been wallowing, feeling sorry for myself, and spilling my fair share of drinks.

  I realized that inspiration itself is meaningless, if not used for actions that by nature pay it forward to others. I knew that I’d never be the same after what happened, but I also realized that if I wanted to reclaim any of my past identity I’d worked so hard for, I had to get back to competition, back to fighting.

  I felt as if I were walking in the dark with my hand on the wall, searching for the switch, and had just found it. I needed something to fill the void. I did not just want to survive. I wanted to thrive. And deep down, I knew what I had to do.

  I was ready for the bright lights again.

  95.

  It’s a beautiful thing; sports, and the capacity it has to remove someone from the world around them. Even more enchanting is to be the thing that folks rally behind, that people cheer for. Athletes provide experiences for people, they share moments with them, most of whom they’ve never even met. The best way for me to pull myself out of my nightmare was to chase an old dream, to deliver those moments for people, for myself.

  One by one I watched my all my friends get wins and dedicate them to Isabel. I appreciated the sentiment but was jealous. I needed an ending to the story if I wanted any hope of moving forward.

  I was going to get the chance on April 19th, 2014. I was finally scheduled to fight, against a Brazilian, Caio Magalhaes, in my home state of Florida. The event was to be held at the Amway Center, in Orlando.

  I began putting the hours in, getting into the routine of fight life once more. It was a stark contrast to the lifestyle I’d been living. I came out of the haze and delegated my medicinal escapes to evenings only. The ringing in my ears had subsided, the shell shock dissipated. I had survived the blast and was taking steps to a better life again, a happier one. Coming to terms with Isabel’s death meant accepting a more ordinary existence, one without the depth and color I’d once felt. Still, I had a UFC contract. I’d built the largest MMA promotion in Florida. There was much to be grateful for, things to make my life not so ordinary.

  I began doing media again, opening up to the press about what had happened. In many interviews, I realized I was still using the term we, in the same way I was when standing over her coffin. I wondered how long that was going to last, speaking for both myself and the girl in my head.

  A powerful bond formed between Master Cesar and myself over that camp at MMA Masters. Months before Isabel died, Cesar had lost his 16 year-old son. Shortly before that, his sister passed away suddenly, in a case of hospital negligence.

  We had many emotional days. We grieved together. There were times when we would be hitting mits, and one of us would burst into tears. We didn’t stop. We hit harder, faster, and more intensely. We were both in a bad place, but we were in a bad place together, and it made it more bearable for us.

  I’d once been forced to pose the question; that of either Isabel or fighting. I thought I’d chosen the right one. I know I chose the one I wanted most. Fate doesn’t always see eye to eye with our plans. Life made the decision for me, and a life with neither love nor career was a desolate one, so fighting it was.

  There was a security that I found in going back to it. It was with a comfort that I knew the worst was over. No matter what happened, I’d walked through the fire and made it out alive. It couldn’t get worse. That’s what I thought.

  96.

  "When doubt seeps in you got two roads and you can take either one. You can go to the left, or you can go to the right, and believe me, they'll tell you failure is not an option. That is ridiculous. Failure is always an option. Failure is the most readily available option at all times, but it's a choice. You can choose to fail or you can choose to succeed.”

  -Chael Sonnen

  There was crying on the other end of the phone. It wasn’t a visceral, agonizing cry. It was a soft whimper, someone trying to fight it, sniffling and shaky.

  “I didn’t mean to.” It was Matt. Something had happened.

  “You didn’t mean to what?”

  “I didn’t see it. I don’t remember.”

  Someone else grabbed the phone. “Y’all gotta come to the hospital, man.” My heart dropped.

  “Shit’s real serious. He hit a line, man. It knocked him out real good and he fell out the tree. He done pissed himself and some of his fingers are gone.” Matt had been trying to make ends meet with a part-time job down south, and hit a power line with his saw. Brian and I rushed to the hospital.

  When we got there, Matt was in the emergency room. His eyes were bloodshot and wet, his hand above his head. Two of his fingers had been burnt to a crisp, as if they were hot dogs left in the microwave for an hour. He couldn’t string together a sentence, and he had monitors hooked up all over his body.

  The doctor said he was lucky to be alive. I’d always struggled with that concept, calling someone lucky in light of a terrible accident. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t have hit the power line. The point was moot. He was suffering, early signs of neuropathy already cramping parts of his body. More than anything, he was terrified at his brush with death, and it showed.

  After several nights of monitoring, he was able to come home. Brian and I helped him around the house, cooked for him and fetched things so he wouldn’t have to get up.

  Matt and I had been going through a training camp together, and when he got in the accident, it motivated me more. It was one more person to fight for, one who wanted to fight but wouldn’t be able to for a long time. I was full steam ahead, and it was just when I was feeling optimistic again that the planes circled around to drop more bombs.

  I was optimistic, but I was still angry with everything, including myself. I found solace in daily self-punishment at the gym. I pushed the limits, as I always had, and in the end, the same destructive behavior that I was trying to rid myself of came back to cripple me once more.

  "One more round. One more. Just one more." I was sparring with Clint, my teammate from TUF. That time in my life seemed like forever ago.

  I was so close to the finish line. It was two weeks before the fight. Master Cesar urged me to stop. “You’ve done enough today, brother.”

  “Last one.” Last day of sparring. Last round. I should have listened.

  I was tired. I don’t recall the sequence of events well. I remember the end, and the noise it made when my hamstring tore off my hip bone. I remember the feeling of not being able to stand, and the muscle coiling up on the opposite side of my knee. I remember the alarm and dread my mind went through as I realized what had happened.

  I fell to the mat, and Master Cesar rushed in. I stayed on the cage floor for 30 minutes, the back of my leg in shreds. I couldn’t support my own body weight. I fell back down and stared at the ceiling.

  I finally got up, and let Clint and Cesar carry me to my car. Clint drove to the hospital. I got an MRI, and they told me they’d send the results to the doctor immediately. He called shortly thereafter. A tear at my left ischial tuberosity. The light at the end of the tunnel had been pushed back. Another surgery. More darkness. I’d made it several days, weeks perhaps, with dry cheeks. Immediately, it all changed. I was back to dejection, back to despair.

  They slit my leg open and pulled my hamstring back to my hip. They reattached it with bone screws, and sewed me shut. The doctor tried to show me pictures of the surgery as I came to. I waved him off and asked the nurse to call in my prescription so I could leave.

  The rattle of the pill bottle made me cringe as I left the pharmacy. I’d spent so much time at the end of bottles in the last eight months. There were all kinds of bottles, but none so vile as one filled with opiates. I didn’t mind sedation, I just loathed that particular kind. I’d been conditioned to believe they were the worst, and they were. They reminded me of a different her, my least favorite her.

  I
relied on other drugs to take me out of that world. I left the pharmacy and went to a liquor store. I stopped at a dealer’s house. I swan dived head first back into the rabbit hole. The binge began.

  I ate codeine because my ass hurt. I drank because the taste comforted me. I snorted cocaine because I wanted dopamine, and because the opiates made me lethargic. And I ate Xanax, because Xanax was my most trusted and reliable escape.

  I was miserable. I couldn’t sit. I couldn’t lay on my back. I couldn’t take a shit without having to shower because the incision was so close to my ass. It was impossible to have good body language, impossible to try to have grace or posture as I clinked and clanked around the house, refusing to let anyone help me. Worst of all, Juice was scared of me because of my crutches.

  We were both cooped up in the same house, Matt and I, pitiful, wondering what we’d done to deserve this. The pain and grief compounded, and we fed off each other’s misery. She wasn’t there when I went into surgery, or waiting with a Gatorade when I got out. No nurse, no housekeeper, no lover, none of any roles I needed her so badly for. It was an overwhelming contrast between this surgery and the last, and her absence was glaring. It crept its way back into my thoughts, all day.

  I made the mistake of still going to the UFC event in Orlando, seething with jealousy at all the athletes that had made it to their bouts that night. “No excuses next time,” Caio remarked when he saw me after his win. I felt pathetic, crutching around the arena, having to readjust my seat every few seconds on account of the stitches in my ass.

  I watched fights on TV and battled feelings of deflation as I saw the sport passing me by. I was in a much different kind of pain than before. Still, I had no doubt about competing again. It kept me alive. It was something concrete on the bucket list.

  Get back in there. I had to, at least one last time.

  97.

  I shouldn’t have been climbing. It was only four months after a career-threatening injury, and I was on the side of a mountain in Colorado. Maroon Bells was the name, and the summit was nearly three miles in the air.

  It was a trip Wyatt and I planned before I’d gotten hurt, and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity. I’d learned that my gratitude for her family was best shown from afar, so when I got to spend time with them it was cherished.

  He was in Colorado doing an internship before opening his chiropractic office in Tallahassee. Over the course of Isabel’s death, funeral, and whirlwind after, Wyatt had been driving back and forth between Atlanta and Tallahassee, and managed to graduate at the top of his class. He earned the title of valedictorian, and it was the most awe-inspiring feat I’d ever seen.

  His graduation was beyond moving. He spoke about his sister and the things she’d taught him about living life to the fullest. He used a line from something I’d written about her, and I got goosebumps. When he was done, a pianist played Ray Charles’ “Georgia.” It was a gripping moment, and one I’d never forget.

  Wyatt filled in the cracks of family history I’d never heard. Sometimes I’d ask him the same questions I’d asked her, to hear the stories again. He gave me the deepest insight into how the family saw Isabel, and all the ways she’d changed them. He was the most socially intelligent person I’d ever met, always observing, never saying as much as he knew.

  He’d been more patient than any of them with my grieving. He spoke with me at length about subjects I suspected he never wanted to talk about. He acknowledged gestures that others didn’t, and thanked me for the things I did for Isabel.

  The trip was all I’d had to look forward to in a while. I’d paid for tons of physical therapy to try to prepare my leg for it. It would not be an easy climb. In fact, when we arrived, there was an Apache helicopter rescue mission taking place. Wyatt gave me a look. While the ascent was difficult, there was more than just that. There was elevation, and gear, and camping on the side of a mountain. I hadn’t been in the wilderness in 15 years.

  We were on the second day, halfway to the top. We’d been climbing for around 12 hours total, and gotten lost early in the day, before retracing our steps and getting back on track. We were headed for the peak when I peered up and something caught my eye. There, 30 feet above us, stood a pack of horned mountain goats, dead in our path. They did not stay for long, trekking down the steep cliffside, straight towards us.

  Wyatt had his risk aversion alarm turned on for the whole trip anyway, and became uncomfortable when they aimed their horns in our direction. They had the body language of a territorial animal threatened. I’m not sure if I was scared at him being frightened, or the other way around, but we both decided retreat was the best option, and our slow trek upwards became a quick descent downwards.

  We’d dedicated the whole trip to getting to the top of that mountain, and were now getting thwarted by a pack of wild goats. We were running out of daylight, and wouldn’t have enough hours left to make the trip back up by the time they’d cleared the way. We would not be reaching the summit.

  We laughed it off after the scare was over, but Wyatt said on the way down that he felt the goats were Isabel’s way of speaking to him. He said he’d never be doing anything like that again. I felt ashamed for even suggesting to take another member of this family on something remotely dangerous. I told him I’d come back next year and get to the top for both of us.

  We packed our tent and finally made it back to our car. His phone received signal before mine, and rang the noise of a dozen messages, as they came through all at once.

  “Hey Wyatt. Please have Josh call me as soon as he can.” He read it aloud as he looked at his phone. It was from a 941 area code, my grandmother. I didn’t know how she’d gotten his number. I didn’t have time to ask, or explain. There was only one reason why she’d ever call him, and I knew that. Someone else was gone.

  98.

  “...Be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be.”

  -Desiderata

  Jeff Grove was 62 years old when he died. He suffered a fatal heart attack in the middle of the night while my mother was lying next to him. She was crying violently when she answered the phone. Memories of crumbling under the weight of the news in Stephanie’s kitchen hit me with a fierceness.

  I told her I loved her. I told her I was sorry. I told her I loved her again, and that we knew he was sick. I tried to think of words that people said to me that comforted me and found none.

  I thought of my time by the gravesite, coming to the realization that someone had to die first. I told her we took the brunt of pain for our partners, to be grateful it was not them that had to endure. My mom taught me to love wildly and deeply, and now we were both feeling the calamity of having those that we loved taken from us.

  Jeff and my mom had been residing in Arizona, at Lake Powell, traveling the country seasonally as planned, living the life she’d dreamed of. Now she was on the other end of the phone, broken, wondering how she was going to continue. I was in Colorado, flying back to South Florida the next day, and would drive to Tallahassee to meet her as soon as she got there. Mom still had the RV that she and Jeff had bought, except he was the only one of them that knew how to drive it. My uncle flew to Arizona to be with his sister, and to bring her back with the mobile home that Jeff had died in.

  Feelings of helplessness revisited me. I felt I should’ve been stronger for her. I was there for her as much as I could be, but I wasn’t healed yet either. I wasn’t in a position to provide comfort, in part because I never felt much good at it anyway. Instead, we grieved together, from close and afar.

  Jeff was cremated, and his ashes buried in the plot that my mother owned. My grandmother had bought it for her when she was diagnosed with cancer. I’d never known about the plot, and realized I was probably sheltered as to how sick she’d really been. Mom had made it through that, and she’d make it through this, but it was heartbreaking, watching her go from wife to widow.

  She planned his memorial service, with the help of few friends and family members.
I didn’t want to see another burial. I dreaded it. Couples poured into the funeral home, hand in hand, showing displays of affection in front of a woman who’d just lost her husband. It wasn’t their fault. They didn’t know better. That didn’t make it any less painful to see.

  My mom asked me to say some things. I thought she’d might. I felt terrible for not offering, for making her ask in the first place. Unlike Isabel’s eulogy, I had just minutes to prepare for Jeff and what I thought represented him. I took to the table of his things that my mom had laid out, and scribbled notes on his memorial program as I tried to keep it together, fighting tears and memories of the last time I’d had to do this.

  I spoke about the first time I met Jeff, and how I grilled him on matters of religion and politics. I told how he took it in stride, gracefully telling me that what matters most is only how we treat people.

  Dallas and Cathy came to the funeral, making the moment all the more heavy. The four of us were all in one place, mourning the loss of another of our loved ones, and while they weren’t close with Jeff, their presence crystallized the loss of both Isabel and Jeff together.

  A slideshow played of Jeff, in all his youth and glory. It moved chronologically through his life, significant moments that his family and my mother had chosen to speak for him. My heart strings were yanked and tugged as The Beatles’ “Let it Be” played in the background. I realized it was the same one chosen for Isabel’s slideshow not even a year prior.

  The final stake through the heart was the very last picture shown; Isabel, Jeff, my mom, and myself, at our post weigh-in dinner in Las Vegas, before the Kevin Casey fight. We all had our arms draped around each other in love and bliss, ignorant to our future. It was as much as I could handle.