ATV dishes out a hard lesson in motherhood

A lot of mothers were undoubtedly clucking their tongues when they saw on TV Carlene Girouard’s passionate plea for the return of her crippled son’s stolen four-wheeler.

The same four-wheeler that nearly killed Eric Girouard a dozen times over and left him blind and severely disabled.

But there’s a lot more to the story.

“It was his physical therapist’s idea,” says Carlene. “I said he ain’t fixin’ to ever get back on a four-wheeler. I never wanted to see the thing again. But his physical therapist said he needed something to live for, and maybe that would be it.”

The story goes back many years, back when Eric was just a little kid. The family had bought a small go-kart, and all the kids were lining up for their first ride.

“I told them, go slow and just go around once and come back,” she says. “The first one came right back, then it was Eric’s turn. I told him, go slow ... Yeah, yeah, he says. And he takes off. Bam! We run around the house and there he is, run smack into a tree. It was his first wreck but not his last. He was always my kamikaze kid.”

With a daredevil for a son, Carlene developed a special attribute. When Eric was a teenager, she and her husband, Kenneth, left for a Caribbean cruise. The night before they boarded the ship, she had a premonition.

“I told my husband, Eric’s hurt. We’ve got to go back home. Of course, he wouldn’t let me leave on just a feeling like that. It wasn’t until we were already on the ship that we found out, sure enough, Eric had gotten in a wreck and broke his arm.”

Eric was a grown man, 27 years old, riding a four-wheeler he bought himself, when he was thrown back in January 2009, suffering horrific head injuries.

“The first time they came to me and said, it’s all over, he’s shutting down and there’s nothing we can do, I freaked out. But then I thought, wait a minute, if Eric was dying, I would know it. I would not let them pull the plug.”

In the past five years, Eric has been in ICU a staggering 80 times. He has been pronounced on his death bed no fewer than a dozen times. The Girouards have spent a lot of time in hospital rooms and waiting rooms. At one time they were literally living in a small camper on a hospital parking lot. Carlene, particularly, has become very conversant with medical jargon and practices.

“Sometimes I bump heads with the nurses,” she says with a sly grin.

And yet what the physical therapist was telling her, as appalling as it would’ve sounded to any mother, rang true.

“Eric could stand on his own in the middle of the room. They could load him down with weight and he could hold it. But he wouldn’t do anything. He wouldn’t move. The therapist said he needs something to motivate him. He needs something he likes to do.”

His friends chipped in and rebuilt his ATV, and then modified it so Carlene could drive it with Eric sitting behind her. They live out on the Catahoula Highway with fields all around and relatives living within an easy ride. The breeze in his hair, the buck of the machine, the grass brushing his legs – it all put a big smile on his face.

“The therapist was right,” she says. “He wasn’t even supposed to live and look at him. He keeps getting stronger. He has bad days and we could be back in ICU at the drop of a pin, but he is fighting.

“It’s like I told the doctor the last time they said it was all over. When you can’t do nothing and I can’t do nothing, then God’s gonna take him. But until then, let him do what he enjoys.”

Then somebody stole Eric’s four-wheeler. Wheeled it out of the car port in the dead of night, probably bound for a black market out of state somewhere.

It wasn’t the only one they stole along Catahoula Highway that night, just by far the most important one.

If you know where it is, please call the St. Martin Sheriff’s Office at (337) 394-3071.