by Roy Exum
posted May 7, 2008
 Roy Exum |
You may remember it. Her two-year-old son was seriously injured, but it seemed as though the whole world prayed the most for Susan herself. She was so critically mauled in the attack she had to be cocooned in a drug-induced coma for nine days once she was airlifted to Chattanooga’s Erlanger Hospital and, once she awakened, she was told her daughter Elora was dead.
This isn’t about what happened two years ago. Instead, it is about what happened just several weeks ago when Susan Cenkus, with her son Luke, who is now four, again returned to Benton Falls. The waterfall is one of nature’s masterpieces in this region and, back in the early '80s when Susan was a student at nearby Lee College, she would go there to revel in its peacefulness.
Last Saturday there was a huge story in the Cleveland (Ohio) Plain Dealer that told how Susan relied on her great faith for the strength to return to what she now calls a hallowed place. “Benton Falls is sacred to us because that is where Elora went to heaven,” she told the newspaper’s Molly Kavanaugh.
So on a sunny day last month, accompanied by her father and some of the rescue workers to whom she will be forever thankful, she took what she considers was perhaps the major step in her healing process as she watched Luke scamper on the rocks below, looking for fish, before she and her family quietly prayed anew.
Before the incident occurred there had never been a known bear attack in the Cherokee Forest. Susan didn’t see the bear until it was about 100 yards away and, when the 200-pound animal grabbed her son, the registered nurse yanked the boy away and turned to run.
The bear attacked her from behind, sinking its teeth in the back of her neck and then, with claws tearing her arms and legs, she felt bones begin to break and fell unconscious. When she awakened nine days later, the pain of being told Elora was dead was even worse.
So it was in Erlanger, during a rash of consequent surgeries, that Susan Cenkus came up with a remarkable way to handle her tragedy; she would honor her daughter and all those who helped her by living a life of gratitude.
Her injuries were massive. Blood vessels that had been torn in her neck that affected her speech. One arm hung lifeless. Her legs and back had extensive damage but slowly, prayerfully, she began to heal, and, not long after she got home, her dad – a pastor at the Clyde Church of God in Ohio - shocked her when he asked her to come forward during a service and sing.
Susan has played the piano and sang all her life, but she was mortified at the invitation. So, as though she was lifted by angels, she stepped forward and, in a voice hardly audible, started singing “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” As she did, her voice got stronger and, while the entire congregation wept, she stood as a testament to “morning by morning great mercies I see.”
Well, her arm also got better with extensive therapy, and Susan, her medical knowledge heightened by her nursing degree, began to fight through the haze of healing in such a spectacular way that she found the key to handling her grief was to help others with theirs.
Richard Taylor, the area coordinator of the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, has become a close friend of the family and told the Plain Dealer reporter, “Everybody she comes in contact with, they are just amazed by her faith. She inspires you to do better.”
Get this – her faith is so strong that she’s finally overcome the terrible guilt that she felt because she was unable to help her daughter when she was unconscious. “It is time to put that in the past,” she said quietly.
But the prayer is not yet over. Those closest to Susan know that on the day of the attack, she carried a camera and that on that day, she had taken pictures of Elora and Luke as they gleefully went with their mother on the picnic.
The rescue people found that camera, and in an attempt to identify the marauding bear, they developed the pictures. While there were none of the animal, they say those of the children, most especially of Elora herself, are almost magical, the delight of the picnic so vivid and so clear in that little girl’s eyes.
Susan Cenkus has not been able to summon the courage to see these last pictures of her daughter. The trip back to Tennessee, to Cherokee Forest, to Benton Falls was huge in the healing process, but, for a mother, the last look at a child is so very hard to take.
She now says that day is growing close. I hope it is this Sunday. Great is thy faithfulness.
royexum@aol.com
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