Live Like We're Dying: How Kris Allen’s music changed my life

Article and pictures by Amber Pruitt
(Special thanks to Lisa C for editing)

   Okay, I think Simon Cowell would call me extremely indulgent with what I'm about to say, but that never  stopped the best American Idol contestants. Tonight, that's not going to stop me from sharing my thoughts on why I have come to admire and respect season 8 winner Kris Allen.

For my closest friends, you've probably already heard this story. I don't know if I'm the biggest Kris fan out there. I can say that I probably know the biggest Kris fans personally, though, because I consider them among my best friends. That's what I want to share tonight. The story of how Kris Allen's journey has changed my life in the best possible way.

When Idol Season 8 started, I had recently moved myself and my daughter, Brianna, back to Little Rock from another state after a rather unpleasant divorce. I was heartbroken and miserable and getting home to Arkansas seemed like the best choice for me. Almost a year prior to my divorce and the move back, I had a really strong urge to get back home. I didn't know why, but the pull was there. I felt I was needed home more than ever but there was a paralyzing fear of changing, even though I knew I was in a bad situation.

  

Anyway, back to approximately February 2009. I had been randomly blogging on another site about the show because of my love for all things Idol. Early in the season, I was a rooting for both Matt Giraud and Kris Allen. They were the ones I wanted for the final two. I voted hard and often, even though I wasn't an AT&T user (yes, there are some of us that voted hundreds of times by calling for him, not power texting). The season had been much better than the past few and having an Arkansan in the mix made it even more exciting.

In the middle of February, I got a call from my middle sister saying that my mom had stopped talking mid-sentence during a phone conversation. It wasn't that she was unhappy or had lost connection, it was that she physically was unable to speak. After several phone calls, my oldest sister talked my parents into going to the hospital. Early tests made the doctors think my mother, who was 72, had a mild stroke. But he regained her ability to speak and seemed to be doing better. I remember thinking back weeks prior at the many times she had talked about her blood pressure spiking up so high. I was way more concerned about it than she ever seemed. She would say, "Oh, yeah, I need to have the doctor check on that." Well, eventually, news came that it was not a stroke.

 I  will never forget the word, what I was doing, and how I felt when I heard it. I was sitting at work in my rather spacious cubicle that I had at the time, when my oldest sister called. She said she had bad news. "Contusion" is the word she described to me. I didn't truly understand. I repeated it and asked what would happen next. The words that came flowing out next broke me. She said they had to do some more tests. It could be cancer. I got off the phone, stunned and confused. My co-worker came up to me with a wet rag and started patting my head. I looked at her puzzled. "I worked for a neurologist once," she told me. "I know what this means." Come to find out, she worked for the neurologist that my mom ended up using at the University of Arkansas at Medical Sciences when they removed the Grade 4 Glioblastoma that was attacking her brain. The surgery went on without a hitch, and I knew that God had given my mom a little more time, no matter how much that would be.

I'll never forget the first meeting with the oncologist. I took Mom to it. Dad's health was suddenly declining, and we didn't know why. He had went from driving to shuffling his feet. My oldest sister was keeping us all together, so I wanted to go with Mom to help her out. The oncologist told us, "Best case scenario, with the recommended course of chemo treatments, the tumor would grow back after a year. If you don't do chemo, it will grow back in six months." I remember Momma looking at me after the doctor walked out, saying "This is going to come back even after the chemo?" I felt so helpless. I looked at her and said "yeah, that's what he said." At the time she was still clear headed. But the chemo treatments changed all that.

  

I remember the 6 weeks of chemo after the surgery. Mom ate a lot of "her fruit", which is what she called the fruit salad that my sister would make her. It had grapes, strawberries, and blueberries in it, and maybe bananas. I can't remember. Before the surgery I would tell her about all the music I listened to and TV shows I watched, even though she normally never really watched the same things I did. She never listened to the type of music I did, but she always listened. I had told her about Kris Allen being from Conway and being on Idol. She had thought it was neat. She kept forgetting it, of course, and we would have to repeat the conversations, but she'd forget my name a lot of times, so it wasn't a big deal in comparison.

My sisters and I took turns taking my parents home each weekend to their home about an hour away. During the week, they stayed at my sister's house and would go to chemo treatments. In all the chaos, I remember American Idol being the only escape. I felt some kind of hope as I rooted for Kris. Some weekends were worse than others. My mom was getting more and more confused with chemo-head symptoms. My dad's strange behavior kept getting worse. I remember having to physically remove a pill bottle from my mom's hand one day b/c it was something she wasn't supposed to take. Another time, she yelled at us for not being able to find a roll of film. It's moments my sisters and I can look back on now and sort of laugh at, well, sort of. :)

  

At one point - I believe it was mid-April - my dad felt that he needed to be placed in a nursing home. It was just horrifying to see his decline. He went from walking and driving to barely being able to get up and down in a chair. This was all in just a little over two months. It was just another blow to my family. My mom couldn't understand why he would holler at night for help to get things. She didn't understand the full extent of what was going on with him. At the time it seemed like Mom was actually doing better than Dad. When he left the house to go to the nursing home it was the last time he saw my mom. I believe this was the week that Matt Giraud was meant to go home but was saved by the judges. I remember it because it was the only good thing that happened around that time. Tuesdays and Wednesdays watching Idol had become the only bright spot in my life.

Shortly after putting Dad in a nursing home, Mom had to go to a nursing and rehab center in Little Rock. We would go see her and then go see Dad in the nursing home in Carlisle. Brianna and I went to see one of the famous watch parties in Conway at the Farris Center that last weekend in April. It was the first taste of being around fellow Kris Allen fans. It was too loud to hear the actual performances, but it was fun nonetheless.

  

  Then Kris' song "Live Like We're Dying" came out, and I held on to the music as my life fell apart.

Brianna and Kris at the Heifer Barefoot show. Photo courtesy of Fourteen Plums

I was with the thousands of true Arkansas superfans on May 8th to see Kris come home to both Little Rock and Conway for his homecoming. The excitement of it all, sharing with the many thousands of people who came adoringly to share their support and congratulations for Kris and his lovely wife, Katy, and their entire family, was so much more exciting than seeing the previous performances of Kris for me. I knew he was talented, but his voice was so controlled, so emotional that everyone in the crowd was adamant that he was going to win it all. It was before I got a very good camera so I just did the best I could, but was happy at the time just to be there and share the experience with my daughter and what felt like the entire cities of Little Rock and Conway.

That Sunday was Mother's Day, and my sisters and I took turns going to visit my mom in the nursing home. Brianna and I went up there to visit Mom for a while and luckily she was having a good day. We talked a good while. I told her about going to see Kris perform and what it was like. We sat with her and listened to her as she talked about the things she had going on within her mind. It was hard for her to go from someone who could do anything and everything a perfectly normal person could do - read, write, remember your own birthday - to barely being able to remember your own name. She loved seeing Brianna and me that day. I remember as I said goodbye that she gave me an extra special big hug and told me she loved me. She did the same for Bri. It seemed like I didn't want to let go. As we left she asked if we could come back later. I said we would try, but we never got the chance.

In the early morning hours of May 11th, 2009, my sister called, "Amber, I need you to wake up." I rubbed my eyes and tried to figure out what was going on. "Are you awake?"

 "Yes, I am awake now."

"I got a call from the hospital this morning. Mom's passed away." She went on to say that they called about 2:30 that morning to tell her and that she went ahead to the hospital. She then got composed and called me and my other sister.

I felt like a part of my life died.

I remember more about seeing my mom at the hospital that morning, laying in that bed...her face, her mouth, her hands, everything. I won't ever forget. The funeral is more of a blur. I remember lots of beautiful flowers, seeing my dad cry as he sat in the nursing home's wheelchair, which seemed so alien to me because Dad had always been such a tall man, but that day he seemed so small, so frail. When we went to the graveside, the ground was too wet for him to get to the grave, so Dad stayed by the van, sitting outside quietly in reflection. That was the saddest view I've ever had in my life. So lonely, so heartbroken.

The couple weeks following my mom's funeral, I felt a strong peace, and it was the only thing that kept me alive. I couldn't blog anymore, but I was still watching Idol and cried like a baby when Kris won. I jumped and screamed and cried some more. I thought things were getting better, but in reality that was not true. Dad had not only gotten worse, but had lost his will to live. It was truly a case of the spouse who can't live without the other one. When he did get much worse, it got scary for him. I think he did not realize that death is scary and it is real. It hurts. I saw him one Sunday, and he was in really bad shape. He wasn't happy I had to see him like that, and he just wanted to die. I didn't know what to do or how to feel. When my sister and I left that afternoon, I snuck out of the room. He was having slight dementia, but mostly we didn't want to make him feel any worse. I didn't even get the chance to say goodbye or I loved him. That week at work was extremely hectic. I thought I would have more time when I got a call that I should go see him on Friday. I had planned to go the next day. He died about 8 am that morning.

My dad passed away May 30th from a disease called Parkinson's Plus. The disease basically has many of the symptoms of Parkinson's but with an accelerated rate of degeneration. I will never forget riding in the car with my sister and my daughter to Des Arc, which was my parents' hometown. We were just passing the Crystal Hill exit in Little Rock, and I received a Facebook message I will always cherish. I won't go into detail about it, but I'll just say that Kris' mom, Kim, sent me a very sweet message of condolence for my parents. It was the only good moment of that day.

We had a different approach to my dad's funeral. I remember it so much better because it wasn't supposed to be so sad. It was more of a commemorative funeral. My oldest sister got up and spoke on behalf of all of us, telling those in attendance the things that we learned from our parents: everything from being able to skin a rabbit (that was her), understanding the pyramids (that's me) and knowing the love of God (that's my other sister). We had a friend of our family sing "You are My Sunshine" which was a song that our dad taught to each of us when we were very little. I have a tape of me singing it when I was about 3. I'll cherish that song for the rest of my life and will probably not be able to hear it without crying.

My sisters, Brianna and I went to Dauphin Island, Alabama in June as a way to celebrate my parents’ 50th anniversary. We placed an anniversary card with the story and a picture of my parents in a bottle, along with a note telling the person who might find it to contact us and tell us their story. About two weeks later, we got an email from a newlywed couple who was honored to share in our story. They added their names and their story to the bottle and tossed it back in the Gulf. To this day we haven't received another email.

 In August and September, I started getting severe migraines, which I still suffer from today. I think the stress from the events of the year triggered them. I saw the American Idol concert and realized that I had to find a way to see my faves perform as often as I could.  Then Kris' song "Live Like We're Dying" came out, and I held on to the music as my life fell apart. I listened to that song several times a day, most of the times crying my eyes out. Then one day I decided that I was no longer going to live in fear of what might happen in my life. I had seen the worst of the worse happen in a matter of six months: the death of my marriage and of both of my parents.  Before long I had found a new lease on life. The song had literally awakened me. Brianna and I went on our first big vacation on our own since I had divorced. We went out to Phoenix and toured Sedona and Flagstaff. The last night we were there we ate dinner with my first friend I had made online that was a Kris fan, and the three of us went to see "New Moon" together. It was a fun adventure.

  

Following that trip, I began to make connections with local Kris Allen fans, who I affectionately call the KAfangirls(and guys). We are all concert junkies. We went to see Kris at his Heifer International event this spring, which was his first home show since the Idol tour show. Following that were the headlining shows at the Benton concert, the Fayetteville show and then him opening for Maroon 5 at Mud Island in Memphis. We laugh together, cry together and get each other through the good times and bad. It is amazing that I ever went through all I did without them, but I'm so glad that I have them now. There are three more shows coming up in Springfield, Memphis and a charity event in Conway where I believe almost all of us will be together again. You can go to krisallen.com or krisallenaddicts.com to get all the info on the shows.

I guess I had never imagined when Idol started in Season 8 that I would be a part of Kris' journey. I watched him grow from this guy from Conway to the winner of the most popular show on TV in the best season that we had ever seen. I never realized that the music that he created would affect my life in so many ways. That the words "live like we're dying" would mean to make every moment count and to say what you mean and mean what you say. Make life mean something. Don't be content with the ordinary. If that were the case, Kris would still be playing Razorback Pizza. Instead he rocks out with artists like Keith Urban, Maroon 5 and Lifehouse. We have to take every day as it comes, treat every person as if it is the last time we will see them, and do the things we love to do. That's what Kris Allen would do, and it's alright with me.

Courtesy of Julie Ivy