Member-only story
When facing family adversity, my son and I have a conversation
I hadn’t fully wrapped my head around my husband’s traumatic brain injury (TBI). It was March 2012 — over a year since he was struck while riding his scooter by a truck making an illegal turn — and no matter what I did, his erratic mood was growing worse.
But on this particular day, I wasn’t dealing with his hot-cold behavior, angry outbursts, or depression. Instead, I sat alone on my bedroom floor, surrounded by family photos, trying to select the best ones to send to our attorney. We were eleven months into our lawsuit against the driver’s insurance companies, and I needed to provide evidence of how my once sweet and gentle husband had morphed into the angry, hostile man my sons and I didn’t recognize and feared.
As I sorted the photos into piles, I didn’t hold back my tears. Every picture from before his accident showed a happy, loving family, and the only picture of us after his accident was taken the previous Thanksgiving. He stood behind me with his hands shoved into his pockets and a grimace etched on his lips.
The deterioration of our family was scattered around me, and it was my job to convince the attorneys that what I claimed had happened had actually happened.
I had already printed off damning pictures from James’s Facebook and Instagram accounts. Every day, he posted a scowling selfie, and every day our friends and family asked if he was okay. I studied those pictures and wondered if I had done enough to love him and fix him.
“Mom?” My middle son, Leo, stood in the bedroom doorway. He was eight and the most observant of my children. He was also, like me, the person who took the brunt of James’s anger. Leo and I believed that if we loved James more, showed him we loved him, and kept trying to engage him, James’s brain would heal and we’d be happy again. “What are you doing?” Leo asked. “Can I help?”
I dragged the back my hand across my checks and forced a smile. “Finding pictures for the attorney.”
Leo walked across the room and sat across from me, criss-cross applesauce. He picked up a picture of James and the boys at the Russian River the summer before his accident. “I kind of remember this,” Leo said. “We got a canoe?”
