I Forgot to Remember: A Memoir of Amnesia

by Su Meck

  My dad remembers something else peculiar about that visit. I wouldn’t even enter the backyard, because of the pool. I was absolutely petrified of that pool. He and my mom found that surprising, since I had always been a strong swimmer and loved the water. I had even been a lifeguard as a teenager. Once again, they seemed not to understand the extent of my impairment. Nobody could comprehend that I was a different person, a new person, just observing and learning stuff as I went along. I seriously doubt I even understood my own fear of my parents’ pool.

  Because I was so deathly afraid of the pool out back, and wouldn’t go near it, we usually spent the hottest part of the day with the boys in the second-floor family game room playing with toys that had belonged to us Miller kids years before. One afternoon I walked over to the piano and sat down. It was the same piano that I had learned to play on as a child. I placed my fingers on the keyboard and began playing Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer.” Mom says I played it nearly flawlessly from start to finish. From memory.

  When I was through, I turned to Mom and asked, “What was that? Where did that come from?” Mom told me that “The Entertainer” was a song that I had learned for a recital as a child. I was not able to ever repeat that performance. It was just gone. A kind of doorway had been opened momentarily, and then just as quickly, it was ruthlessly closed.

  My brain was not in the habit of bestowing such gifts. Instead it was more often inclined to take away. During that same visit to Houston, Mom remembers coming upon me lying on the floor in the family room behind the wet bar. She thought it was an odd place for me to take a nap, but when she saw my eyes were open, she became alarmed. My parents weren’t used to my lightning, but Benjamin, who was just two at the time, said something like, “Oh, it’s all right, Grandma. She’ll wake up in a few minutes.” It happened again later in the week. My dad arrived home from work one evening, walked into the kitchen, and found me curled up in the corner of the large walk-in pantry. He looked at Mom and said, “What’s going on?” Mom replied, “She did this earlier. Just leave her alone and in a little while she’ll get up and come out of it.”

  Me at my parents’ piano. Later, after my accident, I would play “The Entertainer” by heart on it.

  All that week, I kept asking for Jim several times a day. But when he finally did arrive the following Saturday afternoon, my mom says I had no idea who he was; in fact, I was afraid of him. Jim says he saw in my eyes instantly that I had once again forgotten him. Of course he was upset by that realization, but what could he do? Apparently, I made my younger brother, Mark, come with us on a walk that evening, because I did not want to be alone with this tall, curly-headed stranger.

  A few days after returning home to Fort Worth, Jim sat down with me and taught me how to shave my legs. In fact, he taught me (and retaught me again and again and again) most of what I know about personal grooming. Come to think of it, Jim taught me pretty much everything I know about almost everything. Several weeks (or maybe it was months) later, there was even an awkward conversation about sex. I didn’t exactly understand when he tried to explain what it meant to be a “mother” to Benjamin and Patrick. And being a “wife” to Jim was even more beyond my comprehension.

  I suppose once upon a time, three years before, Jim and I had fallen in love. After the accident, I had no concept of “love.” I knew Jim was there, and I quickly became dependent on him, and later became dependent on the boys, but I didn’t really know him very well. I didn’t know the most basic things about him, like what he enjoyed doing in his spare time, what his favorite foods were, what genre of books he liked to read, what music he liked to listen to, and hundreds of other little details. I can’t be certain, but I don’t think I even really cared so much about any of that stuff, either. I wasn’t aware that I was supposed to care. However, Jim somehow still loved me. He still knew me, or at least the “me” I had been, which still looked like me. He knew everything about me; what I liked to do, eat, read, listen to, as well as every other trivial detail. But was I still that same Su? Hell no! Not by a long shot!

  Jim loves telling me the following story:

  I knew something was terribly wrong between you and me, but I could never put my finger on it. And then one day it hit me. It was less than a year after the accident. We had just kissed, and I felt you pull away with a look in your eyes that I had seen before but had never comprehended. You no longer had a husband, a lover, or an equal partner in an adult relationship. You didn’t get what any of those things meant. Instead, I was someone you could lean on. I was someone who could explain and teach things to you. Our relationship was no longer marital—instead it was familial. And the look on your face after that kiss was a look of discomfort, awkwardness, and even a little disgust. I was no longer your husband. I was more like a big brother. And it felt wrong somehow for you to kiss your big brother that way.

  Jim remembered our love from before the accident, and he missed it. He tells me that when we were back at Ohio Wesleyan, we “went from being friends to being friends-with-benefits and eventually to a committed and exclusive relationship.” He talks about how he and I “would finish each other’s sentences.” He says we were inseparable and “when we were together, we were simply more.” And now that particular Su that Jim had known was gone. I was utterly naive not only sexually, but emotionally as well. I just wasn’t ready for such adult feelings, and wouldn’t be for a few years.

  5

  You’ve Got A Friend

  —James Taylor

  Michele Hargett had been my college roommate at Ohio Wesleyan my sophomore year, and my maid of honor at my wedding. She is still one of my best friends. Michele wanted me to return the favor and come to South Carolina and be a bridesmaid at her wedding to Lynn Abbott in the fall of 1988. She knew of my injury and hospitalization. But even so, Jim tried to explain to her just how much I had lost, and how different I was. With the exception of driving from Fort Worth to my parents’ house in Houston, I hadn’t gone on any trips since my injury. I certainly had never been on an airplane. But it was decided that we would all drive to Jim’s parents’ house in Cedartown, Georgia, and then fly me up to Charleston, where the wedding was to be held. Jim would spend the week in Cedartown, and then drive up the following weekend for the ceremony, leaving the boys with his parents. Michele mentioned to me much later that she recalls asking Jim if I was going to be able to handle coming, and Jim reassuring her, “We’re good.”

  Jim tried to prepare me for a plane flight from Atlanta to Charleston. He carefully explained the concept of a numbered seat, and where my luggage would go when the airline people took it. Who knows for sure what exactly happened on that flight. Maybe I blacked out and people just thought I was sleeping. Maybe I was totally obnoxious, asking my poor seat mate or the flight attendant a million questions. Maybe I cried because I didn’t know what was happening or where I was going. Maybe I was totally silent, sitting there gripping the arms of my seat hoping for somebody familiar to show up and tell me what to do. Fortunately, Michele was waiting right there at the gate at the Charleston airport. Jim had warned her that I most likely would not know who she was, but surprisingly, I seemed to recognize her. Michele thinks that Jim must have prompted me with pictures, or maybe I just saw someone coming toward me with outstretched arms. Michele says, “We shared a big hug!”

  She had been playing tennis one day in May of 1988 when a mutual friend told her about my injury: “She had the funniest accident. A ceiling fan fell on her head.” Michele recalls feeling sick. “I think I sent a care package,” she recalls. But she didn’t realize the extent of the damage until she received my first letter. “It was a thank-you letter, thanking me for the package I had sent,” she remembers. “What shocked me wasn’t the content of the letter, it was how basic it was. The level was just so low, and you were just always so brilliant, so intelligent. And that was the first time it jarred me as to how serious this was.”

  At her parents’ hou
se in Charleston, Michele and I slept together in a queen-size bed in one of the guest bedrooms.

  “I’d get up and start moving around each morning,” Michele recalls. “And every single day, the whole week before the wedding, the first words out of your mouth were, ‘Where’s Jim?’ And I would say, ‘Jim’s back home with the kids.’ And then I’d ask, ‘Do you know who I am?’ And you’d say, ‘No.’ And then I’d say, ‘I’m Michele Hargett. I’m your college roommate from Ohio Wesleyan, and you are here for my wedding.’ And then, as you got up and going, it was like everything settled back into place, and you would lose your ‘glazed’ look. You would eventually know where you were, and why you were there, but only the most basic stuff.”

  Michele made lists of things that had changed about me since the accident: Red was still my favorite color. I had the same quirky sense of humor. I still had “that likability factor.” But all of the history of our friendship was gone. “All the funny things that before would have had you on the floor laughing . . . now it was just a blank stare. You know how when the power goes out, you walk into a room and still turn on the light switch, and each time you’re surprised when it doesn’t come on? That’s what it was like. Each time, it was like a slap in the face. Oh, yeah, she doesn’t remember that.” Other things that Michele noticed: I had smoked sporadically, at parties mostly, in college. Now I thought it was the most disgusting habit. Before I had a horribly rocky relationship with my parents, and now I spoke of them with the greatest love and respect.

  Michele noticed that when Jim arrived, I seemed “whole” again. She says, “It was almost as if the accident had never happened.” On Michele’s wedding day, she and I put on Rollerblades and Jim towed us behind his car.

  I have no memories of that week, or of Michele and Lynn’s wedding.

  When Christmas came that year, Jim, Benjamin, Patrick, and I drove to Houston. During my childhood, Christmas in the Miller household had been full of rituals and traditions. Now I seemed to be lost and totally baffled by nearly everything that was said and done. My mom told me, “It was obvious from your manner that you were confused by this whole holiday season.” I was confused by why so many members of the family who weren’t usually together were all together now. I didn’t understand why we were going to church at night, and why we were eating all of these special meals. And I was very confused as to why there were so many different kinds of cookies, why there was not one, but two trees inside my parents’ house, and why there were so many decorations everywhere. Jim must have done all our Christmas shopping and wrapping that year.

  Mom thinks that my sister Diane and her husband, Paul, were there that year, because their daughter, Kaitlin, had been born the same September as Patrick, in 1987, so the two baby cousins, along with Benjamin, were all going to have Christmas at Grandma’s. I had not “met” Diane yet, since the injury. I’m told that every time I walked into a room where she was, I would walk up to her and say, “You must be Diane. You’re one of my sisters.”

  The whole Miller family, whenever they get together, always laugh about and share the same stories about “growing up Miller.” Stories about neighbors and neighborhoods, stories about teachers we all had in school, stories about unfairly getting in trouble, and who was really responsible for breaking that window. The anecdotes are never-ending, and I’m sure this Christmas was no exception. All of this bonding, all of the inside jokes and stories, used to drive me absolutely crazy! I didn’t feel as if I was a part of this family at all. I didn’t understand the stories and so couldn’t contribute to them. And when everyone laughed and joked, I felt like they were all laughing at me, even though I know now that they weren’t.

  Over the years, both my parents began to notice that when the family was gathered for some big occasion and the conversation turned to the past, I would either get up and leave the room, or simply try to change the subject. For years I had no comprehension about what all I didn’t know. And until very recently, I wasn’t at all interested in looking at slides or photo albums. I wonder now if all of those old pictures were some kind of reminder to me about how much I was missing and in some way what a huge empty space there was in my life.

  Very gradually, my ability to form new memories seemed to improve. Barb and her husband, Scott, visited us in Texas the following spring, a year after the accident. Barb remembers that I still was having a lot of really bad headaches. “You were swigging Diet Cokes constantly to try to keep the headaches away.” But she also noticed some positive changes. She said that I recognized her, and I seemed to know where I was. She remembers thinking that my tastes in both music and food had changed. I was always a picky eater, and Barb was surprised by some of the foods I was eating. But I question now, had my tastes really changed, or had I simply figured out after just a year how to get along and act the way people expected me to?

  There are always more questions than there are answers.

  6

  Eminence Front

  —The Who

  During the spring of 1989, I still wasn’t doing too well. I may have started making new memories, or at least appearing to, but nothing that doctors had told Jim about me regaining my past memories was happening. Nothing was coming back. This made any social situations extremely awkward, especially with people who had known me before. Jim says we began to avoid doing anything with any other people because it was just too hard on everyone involved. Many of our friends told Jim it was as if I had died, and some kind of weird impostor, who looked exactly like me, had taken my place. At church, at the fitness center, and even in the neighborhood, the way that I now interacted with people made them feel nervous and uncomfortable. I didn’t always notice, but if I did, I didn’t understand why they felt that way. I also didn’t get why people apparently pitied Jim, the boys, and me. I didn’t like to be touched and hugged by people who I wasn’t at all familiar with, which, sadly, was nearly everyone as far as I was concerned. With the exception of Jim, Benjamin, Patrick, my parents, my younger brother, and possibly one or two others, everyone was a stranger.

  But really, I was the stranger. I didn’t know when I was acting peculiar. I didn’t realize that I constantly repeated myself, and often acted just like a child. It took me a long time to process information, so I had a hard time answering questions and keeping up with the normal rhythm of an ordinary conversation. It was also confusing and frightening when people would shout at me. If it took me too long to answer a question, for example, people would often repeat themselves using a much louder voice, as if they thought my hearing was somehow impaired. Jim was heartbroken to see me struggling so much. And he felt bad for our friends, who were just trying to understand and help out any way they could. I was obviously frustrated, often scared, and even sometimes rude to people. And there was still a certain vacant look in my eyes that never seemed to go away.

  The previous January, Jim had taken the advice of one of my neurologists, who suggested I try going back to college at Texas Christian University. The doctor thought that the structure of school, as well as the classes themselves, might force my brain to “wake up.” Jim, willing to try anything, enrolled me in a few 100-level classes. He believes he may have even spoken to the professors, explaining the situation as best he could: Trying to go to school was going to be a challenge for me. In the mornings before leaving for work, Jim would drive the boys to their Montessori preschool, and then drop me off at the campus.

  I seriously have to question the rationale behind this little experiment. What exactly were these people thinking, sending me off to be a college student? I couldn’t even read. I could barely write. I was totally socially unaware and inept. What did I even do when I was in class? Did I understand what was going on? How did I act around other college-age students and professors? And how stupid was it that we paid full tuition for this craziness? Maybe it’s a good thing that I don’t remember! But even though I don’t remember it, I am angry when I hear that I was put through something
like this. And that a doctor suggested such a thing. This charade came to a grinding halt some weeks later. Jim remembers that someone found me sitting on a bench on campus, sobbing. I didn’t know where I was. That person was somehow able to get in contact with Jim at work. He came and picked me up and took me home. That was the end of my education at TCU.

  In May, Jim planned another, more appropriate “experiment” by way of a family trip to Sea World in San Antonio, Texas. He desperately wanted things—meaning me—to get back to normal. He thought a low-key, typical suburban family vacation would help. Jim knew that I had gone to Sea World with my family when I was younger, and he thought that putting me in what might be a familiar environment could possibly spark some Su-type memories. At least that is what he hoped for. In one photograph from that trip, Benjamin and Patrick are sitting in strollers shaped like whales. They are wearing matching outfits and have matching haircuts. They could almost be twins. Pictures such as these are often all I have, because I certainly don’t remember that vacation.

  Patrick, Benjamin, and me at SeaWorld—a Nice Normal Family Vacation, San Antonio, Texas, 1989

  I can, however, repeat the stories of that trip after having been told them again and again. Apparently, at one point Jim lifted Patrick up so he could see the dolphins better, and so he could pet them. Patrick immediately started screaming and struggling to get out of Jim’s arms, so Jim set him down. When Jim asked him what was wrong, it turned out that Benjamin had told Patrick, “You better watch out because Mommy and Dad are going to feed you to those big fish.” Benjamin’s precocious intellect, developed as a result of my dependency on him, was unfortunately the bane of Patrick’s young existence. This incident was reminiscent of another one earlier that spring while they were playing together in the sandbox in the backyard. Benjamin told his little brother that fire ants tasted like purple Skittles. Poor Patrick ended up with a horrendously sore and swollen mouth and tongue.