In February 2017, Jamie Lynn, 30, and her daughter Maddie, now 13, were at her husband Jamie Watson’s parents’ house, where Maddie went for a ride on her ATV. Somehow, the ATV ended up submerged in a pond on the property, with Maddie strapped into it.
Miraculously, Maddie suffered no brain damage and survived.
The first responder got in the water just as the ATV was dragged from the pond. He lifted Maddie out and laid her down next to me. She was unconscious, her body distended, her face swollen and eerily blue.
The EMT started CPR. Nothing was working — not the compressions or the forced influx of air. No response. Wordlessly the EMT grabbed her lifeless body, flipped it over, and began pounding on her back. I knew what I had just witnessed. My daughter’s lifeless body.
It has taken Jamie Lynn nearly five years to open up about the distressing day and its aftermath. The country singer-songwriter began writing a book about the accident to process the experience — and that turned into Things I Should Have Said.