My Life, Deleted (25 page)

Maggie seemed to be the only one in the room who remembered that I'd lost my memory. My parents were still starting sentences with, “Remember when . . . ,” but Maggie always said, “I know you don't remember, but let me tell you about . . .” I immediately liked her and thought she was a wonderful, funny, and warm person. Paul was much quieter, but I could tell they'd been very close to my parents for a long time.

My father shared some photos of his parents and two brothers that I hadn't seen before and also told some stories of growing up in a boys' school in Pennsylvania after his mother had died and his alcoholic father beat him and the younger of his two brothers—one time so hard with a metal pipe that he put my father in a body cast. After that episode they were made wards of the state. It was hard for me to hear these stories because I felt no child should have had to go through such pain, especially not my father.

Every time I got together with my dad I could see that I was a lot like him. He was a family man who wanted the best for his children and was truly in love with his wife and enjoyed the time he spent with her. I could tell that he was a gentle giant—someone happy with who he was and what he had done in life. It was always good to spend time with my parents and Candi to share new memories with them, but after such a long day, we were happy to hit the hay at the Westin in Lombard.

On Monday we took the one-hour drive to DeKalb to spend the day tooling around the NIU campus, search for the tree where I'd carved my marriage proposal to Joan, and meet up with Phil and Linda Herra. Phil had played on the offensive line next to me and was Grant's godfather, and other than Brendan and Jerry, he had been my closest male friend over the years.

Driving around the geographically expansive grounds, we found our respective dorms and saw the brick buildings where we'd attended classes, then parked the car at the lagoon where we used to picnic and feed the geese. The campus, which now has an enrollment of more than twenty-four thousand students, seemed much bigger than I'd imagined and was swarming with kids walking to and from class.

We strolled among the stand of white birch trees lining the grassy area around the lake until Joan stopped at one with a V-shaped trunk she thought was
the
one. She said she'd identified the tree years earlier, and although this one no longer had any visible marks, she figured either the carved bark had peeled off or it was too high above our heads now to know for sure.

Joan had told me the story early in my recovery, and as we stood there, the story came back to me: early that morning I'd told Joan I needed to run an errand. When I came back, Joan saw a screwdriver in my hand and wondered what I'd been doing.

“Let's go to the lagoon and feed the geese,” I told her.

After gathering up some cereal and old bread, we headed over to the lake, where Joan saw me walking around, inspecting the tree trunks.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“These trees are cool,” I said. “Have you ever looked at them?”

Of course, she had no idea what I was doing, which was trying to guide her to the message I'd carved into the bark.

“Not really,” she said.

When Joan still didn't find it on her own, I had to help her out. “How about this tree?” I said, pointing directly at the message:
Will you marry me?

Joan smiled broadly and asked, “Are you going to get on one knee?”

“Of course,” I replied, doing so. “Joan, will you marry me?”

“Yes,” she said, tearing up with joy.

By standing in the very same spot where I had carved and said those important words, I was again able to visualize and re-create one of the most seminal moments of our life together. It almost felt like I was there doing it again.

From there, we met Phil and Linda at a greasy gyro place we used to frequent in the eighties. With all this unhealthy food I'd consumed, I was starting to see how I'd gotten into the bad eating habits that led to the gastric band surgery.

The four of us then went to Huskie Stadium, where Phil took me on a tour of the new facility that housed the football team and workout areas and also down to the field, where we'd played our games. Even though the scoreboard was new and they'd installed some different seats on the stadium's east side, I really got a sense of what it must have been like to play there. I smelled the mildewy scent of the artificial turf, looked up at the aging stands—red seats below and gray metal benches up in the cheap seats—and imagined a crowd of fans cheering us on, even in the icy winter months.

Phil also showed me the coaches' offices, the wall featuring the names of former Huskies like me who had gone on to play in the NFL, and the infamous forty-degree switchback ramps that curled around inside the stadium walls and also outside, where we had to do what I was told was my least favorite drill: running wind sprints during our off-season workouts. It really meant a lot to me that Phil had taken the time to bring me closer to him and my college football experiences.

After that Joan and I stocked up on NIU fan goodies at the bookstore, buying shirts, jackets, coffee mugs, and lapel pins, then we stopped for a taste of DeKalb's famous beer nuggets. Joan said we used to eat bagfuls of these deep-fried pizza dough chunks dipped in hot marinara sauce, which most girls blamed for their “freshman fifteen.”

I slept well that night after such a memorable day. For the rest of my life I will cherish the new memories I made, walking the same footsteps that I had thirty years earlier, and I hope to return to watch some football games there in the future.

Tuesday was our final sightseeing day, and our first stop was in Glendale Heights, where Joan and I bought our townhouse and where we were living when we brought Grant home from the hospital. Like Grant, the trees that were babies back then had since grown up, although the townhome still looked like it did in the pictures I'd seen.

Next we visited the first house that we actually designed and built ourselves in 1990 in an upscale development at Aurora's Stonebridge Country Club, the site of many a high-profile golf tour. The house was surrounded with gorgeous oak trees and flowers, including tulips just like the ones we'd planted. Joan told me we'd held quite a few functions at the huge clubhouse nearby, including Taylor's christening party and the Easter Day celebration when Taylor decided she no longer needed her pacifier and gave it to the Easter Bunny.

Although I still didn't really know who I was, our trip to Chicago gave me a stronger sense of identity. The impressions I gathered by walking the streets, the playing fields, and the halls where I'd roamed all those years ago seemed to fit with what everyone had been telling me about my past. After I saw the neighborhoods where I grew up, where everyone worked hard and yet no one was rich, my consistently strong work ethic and the innate toughness I'd heard so much about now made more sense. Nothing had been given to me; I'd had to earn it all, and that was what had driven me to win and succeed, both on and off the playing field. I could also see how growing up in the Midwest, where family was so important, had instilled such a solid commitment to family in me.

Oddly enough, the pride I felt about my parents and where I came from seemed to belong more to the new Scott than the old one. Based on what Joan had told me, I'd never been a fan of Illinois, nor had I felt the need to live near my parents. I'd wanted to get away from there and make my own mark on life somewhere else, somewhere new. But going back there had made me realize how important it was to know where I came from; it had made me who I was—and could still become—even if I was living in a different state. I was a product of my parents, a working man and his loving wife, a mother of three. Why wouldn't I be proud?

Chapter 25

F
OR MONTHS
before our Chicago trip, I'd been feeling hurt and confused by Jerry's failure to return my calls, so I sought a second opinion from my friend Mark. Mark had met Jerry on one of the half-dozen trips to Las Vegas that Mark and I took in one of my company's private planes, when the three of us played blackjack and drank all weekend.

“You know Jerry, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, I know him, not as well as you, but—”

“Well, tell me what you think of this,” I said, describing my efforts to rebuild our friendship.

“That doesn't make sense,” Mark said. “Maybe something's wrong—with the family, business is horrible, or maybe he just feels you don't know him anymore and he's uncomfortable.”

“Why are you different?” I asked.

“To me, when a friend is needed, that's when you can best be a friend,” he said.

I'd continued to leave dozens of phone messages for Jerry and also sent numerous emails saying I needed to talk to him. While we were planning our Chicago trip, I left messages saying we wanted to hook up with him. Still nothing.

From what I'd seen with Joan and Mark, not to mention on TV, friendships weren't supposed to work like this. Jerry and I had talked often for twenty years and told each other our secrets. So why, I wondered, this nagging silence?

Jerry's disappearance remained a regular topic of conversation for me and Mark. Neither of us could get over it. “You ever hear from Jerry?” Mark always asked, to which I replied, “Nope.”

During our lunches and on a trip we took together to the boat, Mark and I often just sat and talked. He seemed to enjoy teaching me things and telling me stories about the old Scott. But Mark also seemed to enjoy the new Scott, the one who came to Mark's son's baseball games and exchanged stories about his personal life.

Given the disappointment with Jerry, it was nice that Mark still wanted to be my friend because that's what I wanted too—a friend who stuck with me, not out of a sense of obligation or guilt, but out of a desire to spend time with the new Scott.

Mark said our friendship had grown stronger and deeper than ever before, so, if anything, my accident had brought us closer. If he ever needed me, I would be there for him too.

Later in March, which was Brain Injury Awareness Month, I finally was set to meet Taylor Ward, the local teenager with amnesia, and her family, who had organized a “fun fair” to educate kids and parents about how to reduce sports injuries. There were about two hundred people at the carnival-like event, held on the athletic field at Walker Butte K–8 Elementary School, where her mother worked as a nurse.

I was really looking forward to meeting Taylor. Knowing what a difficult time I'd had finding answers and help for all my problems, I hoped to share some of what I'd learned. My motives weren't entirely selfless, however. Still struggling to find my own identity, I wondered if she could also help
me
learn some things about myself. We might be the only two people who had survived the same set of circumstances.

Mattie from the Brain Injury Association of Arizona had also asked me to represent the organization at the event, so I was wearing two hats. I took some deep breaths as I sat in the parking lot, wondering if Taylor's parents were going to accept me.

Are they going to want my help? Will they want me to paint a rosy picture for Taylor, or will they want me to be honest with her?

As I walked onto the school yard, I searched around for someone in charge and saw an athletic man in his forties who kept getting calls on his cell phone. I approached him, and sure enough, he was Taylor's father, Dave. After his wife, Kathy, hugged me, I began to relax, and we chatted, mostly about the abilities Taylor had lost, such as reading music, playing jazz, and riding horses.

“This is so important for Taylor for you to be here,” Dave said, who was probably unaware that it was just as important for me to feel wanted by someone outside my family.

I said I was sorry for what had happened to Taylor, and although she'd lost her entire long-term memory, I noted that she'd really only lost twelve years because no one remembers much before age five anyway. Dave pointed out that she'd still lost touch with her entire life. “It's been a devastating loss for her and our family,” he said.

Ironically, he said, her MRI and CT scans had both been normal, just like mine, so the doctors were wondering if her amnesia was psychologically based—the same thing they'd tried to tell me.

Being four months ahead of Taylor in my recovery, I thought that meeting her would be a good measuring stick for my progress. When she joined us, the first thing I did was to look into her eyes, the windows to her soul, to see if she looked the way I felt inside. Her blue eyes were framed by red hair and fair skin, and as I searched them I felt like I was looking into a mirror. She had the same blank expression that Joan said I had right after my accident. I sensed that she was putting up a front to hide her despair and hopelessness, and I hoped I could help her come out on the other side of that, as I was beginning to do myself.

Shaking her hand, I tried to convey my compassion and understanding. I noticed she stuck her hand way out to keep a good distance between us, but remembering how sensitive I'd initially felt about being touched, I empathized completely. At first she seemed distant emotionally as well, but I could tell that she was a sweet girl.

“What are you feeling?” I asked, repeating Mattie's helpful question to me. “Tell me what it's like for you.”

“Lost,” she said.

“You know, I couldn't pick a better word,” I said. “That's how I feel all the time.”

We didn't get a chance to talk much before it was time to do the raffle, with which Taylor asked me to help because she was feeling shy. When we got up on the bleachers to announce the winning ticket numbers, she turned to me and said, “Scott, you talk.”

But knowing she needed to build her own confidence, I encouraged her to do the job herself. “No,” I said, “it's your event.”

We worked out a compromise: I picked a winning ticket from a plastic bucket, and she called out the number.

A little while later Taylor and I sat and compared stories, and over the next forty-five minutes she gradually opened up. When I asked if she still had any friends from before her accident, she said that all but her best friend had deserted her. “Once they saw me after the accident, all of them looked at me like I was from a different country, pretty much. How 'bout you?”

I told her I didn't feel a real connection to most of my old friends. The effort required to rebuild those relationships seemed too overwhelming, so the idea of losing the friends bugged me more than the friendships themselves.

“How are you not angry?” she asked.

“I don't know,” I said. “You can't worry about other people. The people you need to focus on are your family and the people who have been there for you since this accident happened.”

“I still don't view them as family,” she said.

“Give yourself time; that may change,” I said, suggesting that she trust her feelings and gut instincts, because that's all damaged people like us have to go on. “Do you have any doubts that these are your parents or brother?”

“No, I just don't know how I felt about them before.”

“That's probably the one advantage I have,” I said. “I have forty-six years of stuff inside me, you have seventeen. Let yourself develop into the relationships.”

Instinctually, I believed that all my years of experience and thoughts were still in my brain somewhere, I just couldn't retrieve them, because Joan said I still reacted the same way in many situations, even using the same words. If we had an argument, for example, I shut down and got mad a day or two later, same as before. I figured it was similar for Taylor, only she was still a child inside.

It was rewarding when Taylor wanted to take a photo together, which she later posted on her Facebook page.

“This is one of my new best friends,” she told the one friend who had stuck by her.

I let her know that she wasn't alone and that she could contact me anytime. “If you ever need help, just message me,” I said.

Although I knew we both had a long way to go, I felt it had helped both of us to connect. From then on, I always tried to answer her occasional Facebook message within a couple of hours.

Our May 26 wedding anniversary was coming around again, so I posed the question to Joan once more about renewing our vows, and this time I suggested we go to Paris. I figured we could use the Starwood hotel points we'd accrued at our time-share in Hawaii to offset our lodging costs. I'd heard many times that Paris was the most romantic place on earth, and neither of us had been there. Joan not only agreed to the idea, she was ecstatic about it. But as we started planning the trip, we realized that the airline tickets we'd bought at an NFL alumni fund-raiser had restrictions that meant we'd have to go for an entire month or for less than a week, neither of which worked. Much to our disappointment, we had to call it off.

My next idea was to get remarried in San Francisco. Joan wasn't excited about going to the Bay Area, however, because we'd been there together a number of times before my accident, and she was hoping to go somewhere new for both of us, but she never revealed this to me.

Joan had stopped the Cymbalta in March, blaming it for her weight gain, and thinking that things were now less stressful. But she was wrong. As the date for our trip to San Francisco approached, I didn't notice how overwhelmed and upset she was getting or that she felt the trip was contrived, overplanned, and too expensive. With Grant's problems and all of this on her plate, Joan was heading into a downward spiral, which I discovered only by accident.

I went out the morning of June 21 to run some errands, but when I was a block away I realized that I'd forgotten something and had to go back for it. As I was heading toward my office, I heard Joan crying in Taylor's bedroom with the door open. Coming closer, I heard Joan complain that it was unpleasant to be around me because I was getting more upset about the little things, just like the old Scott.

“I love him, but I don't know if I'm
in
love with him right now,” she said.

Oh, my God. The only person that I trust and love may not love me.

“We've
been
to San Francisco,” Joan went on, “and I don't want to be a damn tour guide. He wants to hurry this, and I don't.”

Holy hell. What did I do?

I realized I shouldn't be hearing this, and I didn't want to hear any more. Part of me wanted to say something, and part of me wanted to flee without a word. I went with the latter, but not before audibly shutting the family room door to let them know I'd overheard their conversation.

Angry and deeply hurt, I left the house to cool off and drove toward Tempe, with no particular destination in mind. Joan called four times within the hour, and when I wouldn't pick up, she finally left a message.

“Let's not play these games. Call me back. Let's meet and talk.”

But I didn't want to talk about this. I couldn't understand how I'd left her in relatively good spirits that morning and it had escalated to this. She was so persistent, however, that I grudgingly agreed.

Over a confrontational lunch in Tempe, she expressed remorse at what she'd said, admitted she'd said things in anger, and tried to explain the reasons behind her outburst.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “A lot of it is I'm not happy with myself. I need some help.”

She tried to convince me that her words had just come out wrong, but I believed that people meant what they said. The tense debate didn't get us anywhere, so Joan tried again after we got home in our separate cars.

“I
do
love you,” she said. “It's just, with all this stress, it's hard to feel that romantic love.”

“I don't see the difference,” I said.

Still confused and feeling the sting of her words, I turned inward. I was still angry, and I didn't want to say anything more because I was trying to process the hurtful things she'd said about me and her feelings, or lack thereof, for me.

How can you love someone and not be “in love” with them? Will this be a regular thing with her, falling in and out of love with me? And how can I trust that there aren't other things she's been keeping from me?

She spent the next two days in bed before both of us went to see Dr. Lanier. I waited in the lobby while she talked with Joan, after which I went in myself. Dr. Lanier recommended that Joan switch to Wellbutrin and start seeing a therapist, and within a week things were already better between us.

But I was still having trust issues. The things I'd overheard Joan say had been playing over and over in my head like a cruel tape recording.

We were watching TV one night a few days later when Joan got up from the couch and settled on my lap on my chair, and after a week of keeping her at arm's length emotionally, I let her cuddle with me. “I think I'm falling back in love with you,” she said.

“Well, that's good,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“Do you still love me?”

“I was never out of love with you.”

Slowly, I felt the gaping wound in my heart begin to heal. I figured the meds were what she needed, and this was something I could understand. Nonetheless, she'd have to do a lot more than this to get my trust back.

Throughout this entire episode, I had learned another lesson: you can't help anyone else until you help yourself. When an aircraft is in trouble, you have to put on your own oxygen mask before you put one on the person next to you. Neither Joan nor I could help each other as long as one of us was unhealthy and lacked the proper coping tools.