What Would You Do If One Day You Forgot the Past Five Years?
A story of amnesia.
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Growing up, my mother continually warned my brother and me how quickly life can change: “It only takes a second, one second, and your world can be flipped upside-down.” As I aged, I saw the truth in this many times, but never more clearly than one spring day. I was pleasantly surprised to see my family had come to pick me up from work.
My brother had amnesia.
I laughed. I didn’t believe them. That is something that happens in books and movies, not real life. He held out his wrist so I could see the awful proof, his hospital bracelet.
I still couldn’t grasp what I was hearing. None of us knew the implications. My brother glanced at my left hand in surprise. It hit me; he didn’t know I was engaged. My wedding was in two months.
Panic. I felt a wide range of emotions stirring inside me. What happened? How much did he forget? Will it come back? Will he be okay?
We drove around in the car, while my family told me what I had missed that day. My parents were sitting in our living room when my brother came downstairs to join them. He missed a step, fell down the stairs and smashed his temple against the corner of the wooden railing. He sat on the stair and laughed.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, just embarrassed. My password isn’t working,” he replied holding his locked phone.
“You changed it last week. You told me the new password.”
“Thanks, I’m going to have a shower.”
He came downstairs again, a few minutes later, “Why is none of my stuff in the shower?”
“What are you talking about? You haven’t used that shower in two years; you always use the one in basement.”
“We have a shower in the basement?”
My parents rushed him to the hospital. In the waiting room they looked through pictures to see what he remembered. He stared blankly at photograph after photograph of his friends as if he had never seen them before.
The doctors couldn’t answer many of our questions.
Brain injuries are all different. They said it was likely his memory would come back. Right from that first day, I knew it never would.
Depending on the subject, he lost 2-5 years of his life. Usually, two years would be significant but would still leave a foundation. Our situation was unique; two years earlier, we had been living in Europe.
One of the most painful situations was visiting our friends to say he no longer remembered them. They never believed us.
My brother handled it better than any of us. He was an inspiration of keeping calm. He has always been a happy-go-lucky and easy-going person with a huge heart. He made friends with everyone. Our biggest worry was that he would change. I drowned myself in research and found in many cases, the person suffering from amnesia became angry and irritable after the accident. What if he wasn’t the same person? What if his life was ruined by something as insignificant as missing a stair?
It didn’t seem fair. It wasn’t a dangerous stunt. He hadn’t made a stupid decision. He wasn’t playing a sport. He wasn’t even running or jumping. He was just walking down the same flight of stairs we take ten times a day.
My mom causally asked about a goal he had been working towards. He didn’t remember and was no longer interested in pursuing it.
There are some oddities that were especially strange.
The day after the accident, my brother came into my room and asked for my guitar. Growing up, he had always played the drums and I learned the guitar. The guitar had never interested him. That day, however, he sat on our couch and taught himself to play a song. Two days later, he bought a ukulele. We were confused.
He forgot his favourites foods, even those he has been enjoying his entire life. It was exciting to introduce new meals, knowing he would love them.
In the previous two years, my brother had grown over a foot and had bulked up. He would stare in the mirror, unfamiliar with his own face and body. He was thrilled to be tall.
That year, my brother was graduating high school. He didn’t forget a single aspect of his schooling. He even remembered his teacher’s names. We are thankful.
My husband and I visited my family a few weeks ago for supper with some friends. There he was, the same brother that I had grown up with, big heart and a huge smile.
He laughed and enjoyed the night with the friends he had re-discovered, ukulele in hand.
His memory never came back
He re-made some of his old friends but did not become close again with everyone he forgot.
Some things are different, but he is still the happy and easy-going boy that I have always known and loved. For this, I will always be grateful.
Yes, life changes. But life also goes on.
