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When Part of You is Gone During our journey through the brain injury experience, all of us come face to face with our losses. Sometimes, slowly we become used to dealing with the myriad of them. We lose our independence, our mobility, continuity and meaning in our lives. We lose our past and many times, the future we dreamed of. We lose self-esteem and self-control. We lose faith in ourselves and in a system that is supposed to serve us but many times doesn't. We lose our memories and with them, the joys of what was. We lose jobs, the trust of our colleagues and most of our friends. Welcome to the world of Acquired Brain Injury! Once we come to accept these losses, we can begin to bounce back and recover. I guess that's why it's called "recovery." I went through the process of struggling to regain losses, remembering my past and rebuilding friendships. I thought my large losses were in the past. I was busily enjoying my gains when, in 1993, I traveled to Oxford, England to the International Brain Injury Forum. I had a wonderful time while there but I learned my most important lesson on the way home. As I stood at the ticket counter at Heathrow Airport, I laid my carry-on attaché bag on the floor, so that I could use both hands to deal with ticketing. When I reached for it again, it was gone. I was used to losses, so I naturally began to wonder if I had really laid it down only seconds before. I checked my cart, my hands and anywhere else I thought it might have fallen. Within minutes, my loss involved the lost and found, the airport security, the Metropolitan Police and the Bomb Squad. Every organization wanted to know exactly what items were in my bag. I struggled to explain that I had memory problems but I managed to "reel off" that it contained all of my money, my jewelry, my credit cards, souvenirs and information from the conference. The questions didn't stop there. How much money? What kind of jewelry? How many and what credit cards? I didn't know the answers and as people began to wonder what was the matter with me, I began to panic. I was dealing with people who had absolutely no understanding of brain injury and just thought I was weird. I was just grateful that my passport and tickets had been in my hand at the time. Hours later, as I recovered in the plane after departing Heathrow, minus my treasured belongings, I decided to write down what had just happened. I could calmly try to itemize some things I knew were in the bag and list them in my memory book. It was only then that I realized how great my loss really was. My memory book, journal, day-timer (however you refer to it) was gone. I use a 3- month-at-a-time recording system and it was now the beginning of April. My carry-on contained not only the past 3 months of January, February and March but also the commitments for my next three months of April, May and June. Since I deal with severe memory loss, a very important part of me was gone. The memories of the last two weeks were obliterated in one careless moment. All of my diligent note-taking and conscientiously recording of my experiences had disappeared. I found myself thrown into sudden and unexpected chaos. Oh! I found ways of replacing dates and commitments. What was the hardest to deal with was trying to remember to write anything down. By the time I remembered I didn't have my book, I forgot what it was intended to record. To many people it would have seemed an insignificant loss. Well, they were very wrong. It was as severe a loss to me as any I had encountered since my injury. I felt I had been assaulted and that my life was now in someone else's possession. I partially recovered the following week when Federal Express delivered my replacement day-timer. My husband was most concerned with the loss of the credit cards. My mother was more concerned with the jewelry that had been in the family for a long time. My friends were concerned about the money and my daughter about the L. L. Bean attaché itself. We each have our own perceptions of loss, I guess. I had pangs of guilt at the beginning to feel that my greatest loss was something material, rather than an intangible one. We are trained early not to put all our faith in material things. But my memory book contained all I was and did, all I am and all I planned to do and hoped to be. It contained my innermost feelings. It was me. As I said, I recovered from my loss after I dealt with the anger and grieving but it was a grieving for a part of myself. I tried not to look back to that time but to plan forward and leave that period at peace. I had a friend who travelled with me who reminded me of what I did and where I did it. But that is not the same as remembering what was such a beautiful trip and experience. It took longer than anyone would think you could spend, grieving over a book. Sometimes, material losses for persons with brain injury are the hardest to deal with. Our written and visual reminders are, many times, all we have. Whoever stole my bag in Heathrow that day, stole a part of me with it - a part that can not be restored or replaced in time. For some of us, any loss is significant and must be mourned |
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