A New World
July 22, 2018
The problems started pretty soon after the accident, but it took some time to piece it all together, unfortunately after most of the damage had been done. Shortly after the accident, Sam started to see classic signs of traumatic brain injury for the first time, without realizing what they were – memory loss, disorientation, inability to handle stress, roller coaster emotions, complete lack of filter, and fear-induced sudden and abrupt inability to process or communicate. Having just experienced the meltdown beyond all meltdowns, Sam didn’t know what to do other than what he thought would be best for his son. He had no idea what was going on in his head, but he knew he was not the same as he was before the accident and it filled him with a terror he had never known. So, Sam asked his mother to keep Brady for a short time, believing that was best for the time being.
As helpful and as close as she had been to Sam and Brady throughout Brady’s life, Sam’s mother Catherine had already grown weary of helping Sam by the end of week 2 after his release from the hospital. The way she put it was that she couldn’t help Sam both with his business and keep Brady. Her solution was to send Brady to stay with Sam’s estranged father during the week and keep Brady on the weekends. This was despite the fact that the old man had never been in Sam and Brady’s life consistently, and despite the fact that when Sam was hit by the car he had not spoken to the old man for nearly a year. Nope, Catherine was tired, so she leaned on her ex-husband from 30 years ago for help. Sounds strange, I know.
Soon enough, whether he was at his grandfather’s or his grandmother’s, video games and movies became the boy’s primary guardian. Once an A-student, his grades began to plummet as he was left completely unsupervised in matters of schoolwork. A talented violinist and guitarist who used to have his father encouraging him and maintaining a structured environment with practice as part of the daily routine, Brady was now in the care of his grandparents who knew little about parental-provided structure or accountability. Creating an environment where the boy was encouraged to behave as though on vacation all the time began to have its consequences, not only on the boy’s behavior, but also on his view of his father upon his return home. And, in some ways, looking back, it was to be expected from Sam’s father, who was straight out of central casting for the stereotypical “Disneyland” divorcee when his own children were growing up.
Within weeks, Catherine and the old man had each grown weary and were ready for things to “go back to normal.” Within 6 weeks of the accident, Catherine had convinced Sam to start driving again, because she felt she was overburdened with helping him with the business. But she didn’t want other people to know he was driving because she knew they would think it was dangerous (because it was), so she insisted he only drive at night. In a neck brace with a broken neck, and his right and dominant hand in a splint with a broken right thumb, Sam started driving at night to appease the worn out Catherine. By month 3, Catherine had convinced Sam to go back to work full-time. Even though he was clearly not himself, she had had enough and was ready to be done with it all. Examples of uncharacteristic behavior were abundant. For example, upon returning to work, Sam fired his favorite two employees. Before the accident, Sam never would have fired them—he cared for his few employees as though they were part of extended family. After all this was a family business Sam started from scratch and on his own. Employees were not just employees to Sam. Sam also started making mistakes he never made before, occasioned by new challenges he was facing with his brain’s new limited ability to plan and schedule. He also began experiencing frequent emotional breakdowns, unable to deal with tasks he had previously had no problem handling, such as simple social interactions with customers. With every passing day, Sam was becoming increasingly terrified by the limitations he was discovering in the way his brain was now working. But none of this seemed to bother Sam’s parents. They had decided they were done, and within no time, it was time for Brady to return home. Apparently sitting the boy in front of the television and a computer for hours on end every day had become too much to bear for these grandparents. They had their own unfettered lives to get back to.
And, there was another reason the old man and Catherine felt justified in dropping Brady back off as quickly as possible—Sam had met someone. One of the thoughts that found its way into Sam’s mind after the accident, literally, as he was lying on the concrete after being hit by the car, was that if he died his son would have no one to care for him. In the weeks following the accident, Sam had a lot of time on his hands to reflect on his life, on why he hadn’t died, and on the fact that he had spent the nearly 8 years after his divorce from Brady’s mother not dating or forming any kind of partnership with a woman. Sam hadn’t wanted to expose Brady to just any woman. It was important to Sam that he protect Brady in a way his old man had never thought to protect he and his brother growing up. And Sam also did not really believe he would be able to find a woman out there who was close to his age, with similar interests, and who was not already saddled with her own children. So, Sam had avoided dating and just focused on raising his son, running his business, and riding his bike. The irony, Sam realized as he sat in his recliner with a broken neck and a broken brain, was that in all his efforts to raise his son without introducing any unnecessary negative elements into their lives, he had also not introduced what could have been a very positive element for both of them—a good woman who could be the partner Sam had never had and the mother figure Brady had never had.
So, as these things sometimes go, as soon as Sam opened his heart and mind to the possibility of forming that kind of relationship, the right person appeared in his life; someone who, believe it or not, had experienced her own head injury years before, and who, therefore, understood in a more intimate way how difficult being on the inside of a brain injury could be. They were inseparable from the start and as though they had worked out some sort of cosmic arrangement in an alternate plane of existence, from the beginning they both knew she was there to help him in a way that no one had even tried.
Looking back, this development probably shocked Sam’s family more than Sam being hit by a car. But you never would have known it from the way they acted. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see differently now, but at the time, it seemed as though they were just incredibly welcoming. But really it was that they saw their ticket out of having to be burdened with responsibilities they really did not want to have. Now that Sam had someone in his life, they would not have to worry about helping Sam anymore.
Before Sam knew it, Brady was dropped back off at home, and the help from Sam’s mother dropped down to as little as possible. Now, of course, as one could expect, the presence of a woman in the house was also a shock to Brady, who had only lived with his father and did not have many memories of times before his mother left. Against all odds, Brady hit it off with this woman and they connected from the start. It seemed all was going to be okay, and before not too long, the couple decided they would marry.
However, something no one really understood or could appreciate at the time was what was going on with Sam’s brain. Sam was doing his absolute best to operate the way he always had—running on the adrenaline of having survived the accident, and having the hope of love and family in his heart, Sam wanted to believe that the things he was experiencing in his mind would just pass if he could hold it together long enough for them to run their course. But he found he interacted with people differently and that he felt like such a stranger to himself in his own body that he developed an increasing paralyzing fear of social situations (which his business required of him). Meanwhile, Sam was ever cognizant of not wanting anyone to know there was anything wrong with his brain. Why? Because he feared it would be used against him and, most importantly, as it related to his son.
Around month 4 after being released from the hospital, on top of trying to run his business full time again, parenting, and having a new relationship, Sam had to also face ongoing litigation with his ex-wife, who had sought to, once again, reduce child support. Having never tried to get custody of Brady, and having dropped out of Brady’s life about 9 months before, she was pushing to reduce child support and, secondarily, to have visitation again. By this point, Sam’s brain injury had taken his fear of stressful situations to a new level. He wasn’t able to go to the first hearing because he could not face the environment of being in a courtroom with people he knew were hostile towards him. This was completely different than before the accident. Sam had been the one to take Brady’s mother to court for failing to pay child support in the past. Sam had never backed down in this type of situation. Now, Sam couldn’t face it; his brain wouldn’t let him. It was as though all of the coping skills and self-soothing mechanisms that Sam had developed in life before his accident had been ripped out of his mind and replaced with a tangled mess of faulty wiring with raw and disconnected ends that would spark without warning and in no predictable pattern.
But Sam did eventually make it and with the seeming support of his old man, who attended the hearing ready to testify against Brady’s mother. Apparently, Brady had confided in Sam’s old man about a couple of incidents in the past in which his mother had flown off the handle at Brady in fits of rage. The last time he visited her, in an angry fit against Brady, she slammed his hand in a door so hard that he had to be taken to the emergency room, and then told him to lie to Sam about what had happened. In another incident she had become so angry with the boy while he was visiting that she locked herself in the bathroom, shaved her head, and then blamed him for what she had done. The history of the train wreck that was Brady’s mother was long established and nothing new. Sam’s father knew this; he had always known it. And because of it, he told Sam that if he could afford it, he would pay a high dollar attorney to represent Sam and terminate Brady’s mother’s parental rights. But Sam never wanted or tried to take Brady’s mother’s rights away from her. To Sam that crossed a line that should not be crossed.
Meanwhile, Sam finally had a partner for the first time in his life. She had pledged to do whatever she could to support and protect him through whatever may come, and he had pledged the same to her. Unfortunately for both of them, her family had its own issues and priorities, and, as a result, no one on her side had managed to make it to where they lived to meet Sam, and by the time the wedding approached, it was clear that it would be too much to try and make those introductions for the first time at their wedding. So, Sam and his partner took their vows with Brady as the best man, and Catherine and the old man (and his latest wife) as their witnesses.
Shortly after the wedding, the three of them, Sam, his bride, and his son, moved from the house Sam and Brady had lived in for Brady’s entire life, into a home in a neighborhood Sam had always dreamed of because of its school district. Now that they were building a life together, Sam and his wife were able to make opportunities for Brady that had not been available before, and they were thrilled to do so. And, at first, it seemed like it was all going to work out beautifully. Brady tried out for orchestra and made the most advanced level, and immediately started making friends at the new school. Sam had never seen him so well-adjusted.
Then, within less than a month of the move, Sam had to attend court-ordered mediation with Brady’s mother to try and reach agreement on her demand to reduce child support. At mediation, where Sam did not have counsel because he had fired his attorney the night before, Sam was told he essentially had no choice but to agree to child support reduction and to agree to whatever visitation was mandated by state law. So, from that point on, Brady began visiting his mother on a regular basis. At the same time, Sam’s old man also established his own type of visitation, by offering to take Brady to weekly martial arts classes and occasionally taking him for a Sunday afternoon meal. Sam’s health was declining at this point and he and his wife were happy to have the help. It was at this point that things began to change. Brady, who had started off the school year a happy, well-adjusted kid, was coming home from weekends at his mother’s moody and unsettled. That was fully expected. What was out of left field, however, was that Brady was coming home from time with Sam’s old man emboldened with a new disrespect towards Sam and Sam’s wife that had not been there before.
Again, looking back, we can see it all so much more clearly now. But at the time, Sam needed to believe that his old man was being helpful. After all, he said he was there to help and isn’t that what family does?