![]() ![]() ![]() Writing is the way I ground myself, what keeps me sane. There are notebooks he wrote a few things in when he first got hurt, trying to figure things out, things that made no sense to him. Perhaps he wasn’t thinking perhaps he was absorbing. What was Rich carrying? He stared for a long time at a photograph of himself, his brother, and an old friend, taken maybe 65 years ago. It is basic, our need for story, perhaps because it is such a handy way to carry our experiences around-story as container, so to speak. With the help of family and friends, they write a story of the patient’s life-the events, names, and faces. She said the first thing they do to assist a person who has experienced a loss, not just of memory but of self, is to make a story. Recently I went to a conference given by the Brain Injury Association of New York State, and I sat in on a talk by the director of a traumatic-brain-injury rehab facility. Because who are we without five minutes ago? Who are we without our stories? You don’t even remember his name.” It’s terrifying. But right behind you is a man with a huge paint roller filled with white paint and he is painting over everywhere you’ve been, erasing everything. In a moment of perfect clarity, he once described his loss like this: “Pretend you are walking up the street with your friend. My husband, Rich, lost his memory after he was hit by a car and suffered traumatic brain injury. ![]()
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