I Forgot to Remember: A Memoir of Amnesia (11 page)

Jim remembered our love from before the accident, and he missed it. He tells me that when we were back at Ohio Wesleyan, we “went from being friends to being friends-with-benefits and eventually to a committed and exclusive relationship.” He talks
about how he and I “would finish each other’s sentences.” He says we were inseparable and “when we were together, we were simply more.” And now that particular Su that Jim had known was gone. I was utterly naive not only sexually, but emotionally as well. I just wasn’t ready for such adult feelings, and wouldn’t be for a few years.

—James Taylor

M
ichele Hargett had been my college roommate at Ohio Wesleyan my sophomore year, and my maid of honor at my wedding. She is still one of my best friends. Michele wanted me to return the favor and come to South Carolina and be a bridesmaid at her wedding to Lynn Abbott in the fall of 1988. She knew of my injury and hospitalization. But even so, Jim tried to explain to her just how much I had lost, and how different I was. With the exception of driving from Fort Worth to my parents’ house in Houston, I hadn’t gone on any trips since my injury. I certainly had never been on an airplane. But it was decided that we would all drive to Jim’s parents’ house in Cedartown, Georgia, and then fly me up to Charleston, where the wedding was to be held. Jim would spend the
week in Cedartown, and then drive up the following weekend for the ceremony, leaving the boys with his parents. Michele mentioned to me much later that she recalls asking Jim if I was going to be able to handle coming, and Jim reassuring her, “We’re good.”

Jim tried to prepare me for a plane flight from Atlanta to Charleston. He carefully explained the concept of a numbered seat, and where my luggage would go when the airline people took it. Who knows for sure what exactly happened on that flight. Maybe I blacked out and people just thought I was sleeping. Maybe I was totally obnoxious, asking my poor seat mate or the flight attendant a million questions. Maybe I cried because I didn’t know what was happening or where I was going. Maybe I was totally silent, sitting there gripping the arms of my seat hoping for somebody familiar to show up and tell me what to do. Fortunately, Michele was waiting right there at the gate at the Charleston airport. Jim had warned her that I most likely would not know who she was, but surprisingly, I seemed to recognize her. Michele thinks that Jim must have prompted me with pictures, or maybe I just saw someone coming toward me with outstretched arms. Michele says, “We shared a big hug!”

She had been playing tennis one day in May of 1988 when a mutual friend told her about my injury: “She had the funniest accident. A ceiling fan fell on her head.” Michele recalls feeling sick. “I think I sent a care package,” she recalls. But she didn’t realize the extent of the damage until she received my first letter. “It was a thank-you letter, thanking me for the package I had sent,” she remembers. “What shocked me wasn’t the content of the letter, it was how basic it was. The level was just so low, and you were just always so brilliant, so intelligent. And that was the first time it jarred me as to how serious this was.”

At her parents’
house in Charleston, Michele and I slept together in a queen-size bed in one of the guest bedrooms.

“I’d get up and start moving around each morning,” Michele recalls. “And every single day, the whole week before the wedding, the first words out of your mouth were, ‘Where’s Jim?’ And I would say, ‘Jim’s back home with the kids.’ And then I’d ask, ‘Do you know who I am?’ And you’d say, ‘No.’ And then I’d say, ‘I’m Michele Hargett. I’m your college roommate from Ohio Wesleyan, and you are here for my wedding.’ And then, as you got up and going, it was like everything settled back into place, and you would lose your ‘glazed’ look. You would eventually know where you were, and why you were there, but only the most basic stuff.”

Michele made lists of things that had changed about me since the accident: Red was still my favorite color. I had the same quirky sense of humor. I still had “that likability factor.” But all of the history of our friendship was gone. “All the funny things that before would have had you on the floor laughing . . . now it was just a blank stare. You know how when the power goes out, you walk into a room and still turn on the light switch, and each time you’re surprised when it doesn’t come on? That’s what it was like. Each time, it was like a slap in the face. Oh, yeah, she doesn’t remember that.” Other things that Michele noticed: I had smoked sporadically, at parties mostly, in college. Now I thought it was the most disgusting habit. Before I had a horribly rocky relationship with my parents, and now I spoke of them with the greatest love and respect.

Michele noticed that when Jim arrived, I seemed “whole” again. She says, “It was almost as if the accident had never happened.” On Michele’s wedding day, she and I put on Rollerblades and Jim towed us behind his car.

I have no memories of that week, or of Michele and Lynn’s wedding.

When Christmas came that year, Jim, Benjamin, Patrick, and I drove to Houston. During my childhood, Christmas in the Miller household had been full of rituals and traditions. Now I seemed to be lost and totally baffled by nearly everything that was said and done. My mom told me, “It was obvious from your manner that you were confused by this whole holiday season.” I was confused by why so many members of the family who weren’t usually together were all together now. I didn’t understand why we were going to church at night, and why we were eating all of these special meals. And I was very confused as to why there were so many different kinds of cookies, why there was not one, but two trees inside my parents’ house, and why there were so many decorations everywhere. Jim must have done all our Christmas shopping and wrapping that year.

Mom thinks that my sister Diane and her husband, Paul, were there that year, because their daughter, Kaitlin, had been born the same September as Patrick, in 1987, so the two baby cousins, along with Benjamin, were all going to have Christmas at Grandma’s. I had not “met” Diane yet, since the injury. I’m told that every time I walked into a room where she was, I would walk up to her and say, “You must be Diane. You’re one of my sisters.”

The whole Miller family, whenever they get together, always laugh about and share the same stories about “growing up Miller.” Stories about neighbors and neighborhoods, stories about teachers we all had in school, stories about unfairly getting in trouble,
and who was really responsible for breaking that window. The anecdotes are never-ending, and I’m sure this Christmas was no exception. All of this bonding, all of the inside jokes and stories, used to drive me absolutely crazy! I didn’t feel as if I was a part of this family at all. I didn’t understand the stories and so couldn’t contribute to them. And when everyone laughed and joked, I felt like they were all laughing at me, even though I know now that they weren’t.

Over the years, both my parents began to notice that when the family was gathered for some big occasion and the conversation turned to the past, I would either get up and leave the room, or simply try to change the subject. For years I had no comprehension about what all I didn’t know. And until very recently, I wasn’t at all interested in looking at slides or photo albums. I wonder now if all of those old pictures were some kind of reminder to me about how much I was missing and in some way what a huge empty space there was in my life.

Very gradually, my ability to form new memories seemed to improve. Barb and her husband, Scott, visited us in Texas the following spring, a year after the accident. Barb remembers that I still was having a lot of really bad headaches. “You were swigging Diet Cokes constantly to try to keep the headaches away.” But she also noticed some positive changes. She said that I recognized her, and I seemed to know where I was. She remembers thinking that my tastes in both music and food had changed. I was always a picky eater, and Barb was surprised by some of the foods I was eating. But I question now, had my tastes really changed, or had I simply figured out after just a year how to get along and act the way people expected me to?

There are always more questions than there are answers.

—The Who

D
uring the spring of 1989, I still wasn’t doing too well. I may have started making new memories, or at least appearing to, but nothing that doctors had told Jim about me regaining my past memories was happening. Nothing was coming back. This made any social situations extremely awkward, especially with people who had known me before. Jim says we began to avoid doing anything with any other people because it was just too hard on everyone involved. Many of our friends told Jim it was as if I had died, and some kind of weird impostor, who looked exactly like me, had taken my place. At church, at the fitness center, and even in the neighborhood, the way that I now interacted with people made them feel nervous and uncomfortable. I didn’t always
notice, but if I did, I didn’t understand why they felt that way. I also didn’t get why people apparently pitied Jim, the boys, and me. I didn’t like to be touched and hugged by people who I wasn’t at all familiar with, which, sadly, was nearly everyone as far as I was concerned. With the exception of Jim, Benjamin, Patrick, my parents, my younger brother, and possibly one or two others, everyone was a stranger.

But really, I was the stranger. I didn’t know when I was acting peculiar. I didn’t realize that I constantly repeated myself, and often acted just like a child. It took me a long time to process information, so I had a hard time answering questions and keeping up with the normal rhythm of an ordinary conversation. It was also confusing and frightening when people would shout at me. If it took me too long to answer a question, for example, people would often repeat themselves using a much louder voice, as if they thought my hearing was somehow impaired. Jim was heartbroken to see me struggling so much. And he felt bad for our friends, who were just trying to understand and help out any way they could. I was obviously frustrated, often scared, and even sometimes rude to people. And there was still a certain vacant look in my eyes that never seemed to go away.

The previous January, Jim had taken the advice of one of my neurologists, who suggested I try going back to college at Texas Christian University. The doctor thought that the structure of school, as well as the classes themselves, might force my brain to “wake up.” Jim, willing to try anything, enrolled me in a few 100-level classes. He believes he may have even spoken to the professors, explaining the situation as best he could: Trying to go to school was going to be a challenge for me. In the mornings before
leaving for work, Jim would drive the boys to their Montessori preschool, and then drop me off at the campus.

I seriously have to question the rationale behind this little experiment. What exactly were these people thinking, sending me off to be a college student? I couldn’t even read. I could barely write. I was totally socially unaware and inept. What did I even do when I was in class? Did I understand what was going on? How did I act around other college-age students and professors? And how stupid was it that we paid full tuition for this craziness? Maybe it’s a good thing that I don’t remember! But even though I don’t remember it, I am angry when I hear that I was put through something like this. And that a
doctor
suggested such a thing. This charade came to a grinding halt some weeks later. Jim remembers that someone found me sitting on a bench on campus, sobbing. I didn’t know where I was. That person was somehow able to get in contact with Jim at work. He came and picked me up and took me home. That was the end of my education at TCU.