Love carrying couple over hurdles injury presents

With her husband unresponsive from a cracked skull that caused him to seize and flat-line, Tara Widman pleaded with his medical team.

“I need this man in my life,” she said, gesturing toward her husband, Rex Widman.

Rex, normally exuberant, was comatose for a third consecutive day, hooked up to tubes with a traumatic brain injury.

Tara began to cry.

Rex stirred.

Armfuls of roses

Their romance began with roses.

The Widmans, now 54, met on Tanque Verde Loop Road, on Tucson’s far east side, in 1981. Tara, then Tara DeVries, was a surgeon’s daughter who rode horses in the area. Rex, a friendly pastor’s son, used to go running, and their paths would cross.

They eyed each other, and soon began dating. Rex used to bring Tara what she describes as armloads of beautiful stems from the 18 rosebushes he expertly grew.

They were 21 at the time, still building their adult lives. Tara was grieving the recent death of her mother. They went their separate ways — Rex married and had two children. Tara never married, instead focusing on a thriving career as a horsewoman, which included showing circuit champions and an Arizona Hunter of the Year.

She eventually built her own horse farm on property near Benson, about 50 miles southeast of Tucson.

Years passed. Rex created a successful excavation business, Rexcavating. From time to time, Tara would notice the signature old, red Massey Ferguson farming tractor he used sitting out on construction sites. She’d pass by and think of the man who brought her armfuls of roses and was always a gentleman.

By 2003, Rex was divorced, and he happened to be at the Pima County Fairgrounds when he noticed a horse show. He went in, asked for Tara, and grabbed a rake.

“There’s a cute guy cleaning your stalls,” a friend told her.

Tara balked, then looked up and saw Rex.

That same day, she invited him to Benson and showed him a giant, bright red Ingrid Bergman rose she’d grown. She pulled the petals, alternating ‘He loves me’ with ‘He loves me not.’ She swears she didn’t cheat. She pulled the last petal on ‘He loves me.’ She also swears she’s not making up what happened next.

“Do you want to get married?” Rex asked.

“I always did,” she replied.

They decided to build their life together at Tara’s farm in Benson, since both felt at home in the small city. It reminded them of Tucson during the 1970s. Rex became pastor at the San Pedro Cowboy Church, which meets weekly in Benson.

“It was meant to be,” Tara said. “He was my first love, and I ended up marrying him.”

Their property, Ever After, is a working farm that cares for retired show horses — some of them sick and elderly — as well as rescues.

The accident

At about 8:30 a.m. on Aug. 29, Rex was getting on a brown and white 14-year-old thoroughbred horse named Turn the Page, when a rattlesnake popped up from underneath the mounting block.

The snake rattled, spooking the horse. Tara, who had been tacking a horse in the barn, found him sitting on a piece of farm equipment with what appeared to be road rash on the left side of his head. Turn the Page, whom they call Turner, was bloodied on his left side and obviously upset.

They figure Rex was thrown from the horse, and that his head had slammed a slab of concrete.

“The horse was running loose, and Rex was dazed. He said his back hurt. I asked him what day it was. He talked and he answered correctly,” Tara recalled. “He helped me put the horses away, and then he took a shower and put his jams on.”

Rex got into bed and then began having a seizure. He screamed. Then he lifted up both his arms and screamed louder.

“Are you OK?” Tara asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“What is your name?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied.

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Tara called 911. Rex was flown to the University of Arizona Medical Center. He coded in the helicopter.

the challenge

Rex remembers seeing the rattlesnake and being airborne, but nothing else about the accident. His first memory was seeing Tara sobbing as she talked to one of his doctors. “I need this man in my life,” she repeated, pointing at Rex.

That’s when Rex stirred, and he soon asked whether he’d broken his back. He hadn’t. That same day, his tubes were removed and he shuffled down the hall, weakly attempting one of John Travolta’s dance moves from “Saturday Night Fever,” one arm in the air.

The next day, he went home. He was told not to lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk. Medical officials warned that he might not be himself.

Traumatic brain injuries can cause patients to drop out of school, lose their jobs and even their marriages, said Peter Rhee, chief of trauma, critical care, burn and emergency surgery at UAMC.

“It is a severe injury that changes everything about their life,” he said. “Even mild traumatic brain injury can be devastating if it causes an athlete to no longer compete in their life passion, or if it affects personality or memory.”

The changes can be long-term and subtle, Rhee said.

“He got his bell rung pretty good,” said Rex’s longtime friend Mark Bybee, who was in the hospital room when Rex awakened from his coma. “It turned out much better than we anticipated.”

A slow recovery

At the Ever After farm, with its mountainous views, expansive fields and comforting silence, Rex began to heal — doing jigsaw puzzles, crosswords, and reading from the dictionary with Tara. He had a lot of trouble remembering words, and was quiet most of the time. Tara disconnected the batteries, shut off the fuel lines and pulled all the keys on his farm equipment, knowing he’d try to do too much too soon.

Neighbors in Benson helped out, too. One family gave Rex a big, happy Anatolian shepherd puppy named Sophie, who stays by him constantly and gently leads him by the hand if he needs help. She’s become fast friends with the couple’s older rescue dog, Audrey.

Another neighbor family with a pine forest that had succumbed to bark beetles offered Rex the wood if he wanted to cut it down. That’s what he began doing every day, going to work across the field from their farm. On mornings when cows and ducks were on his route, he’d joke with Tara, “Traffic is terrible today!”

There’s now a huge and growing pile of giant logs on the property — fruits of his labor. He’d like to build something with them.

The Cowboy Church meets in Robertson’s Horse Sales arena outdoors. While Rex went back to church after the accident, he didn’t preach.

“He sat in the bleachers, and Tara held his hand,” said Vail resident Mary Palmer, the church’s song leader. “He had an awful hard time remembering things, standing up.”

In October, six weeks after the accident, he decided he was going to try to lead the Cowboy Church again. He couldn’t read and speak at the same time, so he had to just speak what was in his heart.

He came back slowly. During one sermon, he almost passed out, telling worshippers that he thought he was in trouble, and sat down. Tara cried. The congregation sat with him and prayed.

“He has very much improved. He has his old spark, his joviality back,” Palmer said.

Rex says he always had hope. It was the fuel in his tank that drove his recovery — that and love, which he says is the essence of life. Two months after the accident, he started riding horses again.

“He still has issues and dizziness, but to know Rex behind the pulpit now and beforehand — you wouldn’t know the difference,” Bybee said. “The Bible says when two or more are gathered in praying together, God is with them. God has proven that to Rex.”

Turner has had repercussions from the accident, too. He startles easily, hates being alone and has become very attached to another horse, Rapunzel. Rex and Tara hope he will heal, also.

Gratitude

Strolling across Ever After last week, Rex was eager to show off the farm, his horses and his wife. He’s particularly proud of Tara’s 2010 U.S. Hunter and Jumper Association’s Amateur Sportsmanship Award.

He still struggles with some effects of his brain injury: He used to love to read, and now he feels like his head just spins. He gets tired. And sometimes he can’t find the right words. “Hummingbird” recently stumped him.

He recently was cleared to drive again and got a job upgrading Salpointe Catholic High School’s ball field.

On a break from that job, he went into the trauma center at UAMC and thanked the doctors and nurses who had cared for him. He was impressed by their kindness and how they worked as a team, he said.

Tara said her husband is like that. In restaurants, he always asks to see the manager and finds five nice things to say about the experience. The managers tend to look relieved, she said.

“The point I want to get across is gratitude,” Rex said.

For Valentine’s Day, Rex said, the couple were going to have a quiet dinner at the farm. And he planned to give Tara roses — a big armful of them.

“Growing roses is like love,” he said. “If it’s meant to be, it just grows.”