Surviving Marriage with Brain Injury
Categories: Being a Caregiver
By Cynthia Lim
“Marriage is memory, marriage is time,” wrote Joan Didion in The Year of Magical Thinking. But what happens to a marriage when one partner loses those accumulated memories? In 2003, my husband suffered an anoxic brain injury due to cardiac arrest that deprived him of oxygen. At age 47, he lost the ability to initiate speech and had short-term memory loss. He needed help with all daily activities and could not be left alone.
Cynthia Lim and her husband
My husband and I were college sweethearts and had been together for 28 years. After his brain injury, he wasn’t the same person and was never able to resume his career as an attorney. His thoughts were jumbled and at times incoherent. He couldn’t remember what happened to him that day or the week before. But his long-term memories remained. He never forgot his love for me or our two sons. His eyes lit up at the sight of me, as if he was seeing me anew each time.
Along with his capacity for love, this is what sustained me through the years of disability: I acknowledged that caregiving was stressful and that it was normal to feel angry at times. I wasn’t a saint and didn’t have to act like everything was under control. I reached out to others for help when I felt overwhelmed. I took breaks and carved out time for myself.
Caregiving filled me with exasperation and hopelessness at times, but it was my ultimate expression of love.
This article originally appeared in Volume 16, Issue 3 of THE Challenge! published in 2022.