A Final Goodbye

Dear readers,

I started this trying to help myself find hope in the fog.

For a long time I believed that if I just kept walking, if I kept reaching, something would appear. A thin ray of light. A shape in the distance. A reason. I told myself that the fog was temporary, that grief has seasons, that even the darkest nights eventually give way to morning. I searched for meaning in small things—the sound of rain, the way light falls through a window, the memory of a shared laugh. I tried to hold on to the idea that loss could somehow be redeemed, that the pain was carving space for something new.

But sometimes there isn’t hope to be found. I hope your journey ends differently in the choices others make about relationship with you than mine has.

For me, the fog doesn’t lift. It thickens. It settles into the bones and stays. And in that place, the searching itself becomes another kind of exhaustion. You reach until your arms ache, and still there is only gray.

I’ve lost my sisters.

I’ve lost family.

I’ve lost my skill set and strengths.

I’ve lost connection with people.

I’ve lost my life as I knew it.

I’ve even come close to losing my wife.

These are not abstract losses. They are the sudden absence of voices I knew by heart, the empty chairs, the quiet rooms that once held conversation and ordinary days. They are the erasure of a future I thought was certain. Everything that once oriented me—love, family, the simple continuity of tomorrow—has been taken by others that don't care back. What remains is a hollow space that no amount of time or effort trying to still be allowed to live family has been able to fill.

For three years despite incredible difficulties with symptoms, memory, and fatigue I took notes, paid close attention, and tried to follow our family members’ lives. I spent hours each day relearning and trying to be ready to share life. I invited. I visited in person. I texted follow-ups on the things I had learned in those conversations. There was almost no reciprocation of understanding or of being known. No desire to know our life. Time has made it clear: it doesn’t matter now who they are, where they work, or what they do now. We valued family in a way no one in our families valued us back. That effort I've spent over my whole life, but especially these three years intentionally despite the injury, amounted to nothing. My time and effort to know any of them was truly wasted.

There is nothing left to hold onto in that direction. No remaining thread strong enough to keep pulling us forward.

I do have one possible path left. If we can sell this place and move somewhere life is sustainable for life with a disability, somewhere a new community exists, there is a chance I might get my wife and children back. So I am turning my energy there because that's all that matters. I will leave the time spent notes on our other family behind and accept I will not know any of them anymore. I will focus instead my time and energy on the house projects that need finishing so we can prepare to list the home and go. That is where my remaining strength will go.

Even with that path ahead, the older recognition of what has been lost still surfaces with terrible clarity:

“Cursed be the day I was born!

May the day my mother bore me not be blessed!

Why did I ever come out of the womb

to see trouble and sorrow

and to end my days in shame?”

— Jeremiah 20:14, 18

I understand those words now in a way I never wished to. They are not poetry. They are the cry of someone who has measured the weight of existence and found it nearly unbearable. I think probably most or all brain injury survivors and their caretakers understand those words deeply.

Focusing on being the best brother I could be during my recovery did not create the family relationships we hoped for to support my wife and family throughout my recovery and our life. It did, however, give a clear answer: the family we tried to prioritize and love is not a source of hope. But there is a different kind of hope elsewhere—in the practical work ahead, in the unexpected kindness of strangers we may meet in the move, and in the more sustainable life we are choosing.

Thank you for the many kind messages, for the support from people I have never met, and for walking this journey with me. I’m humbled by how many of you have read and followed along, and saddened by how many of you are living so much pain so similarly. The conversations we shared here, the quiet company of reading and being read, mattered more than I can express. I am grateful you were here.

I leave these pages now to focus on what can still be fixed and moved. Maybe someday the fog will thin enough that I can write again and tell you about it. For now, this is my last post. My time is needed preparing to go.

I wish I had found more hope to share with you in your own recoveries. If you find it though, please share it. I am still glad whenever it appears, wherever it can be found, especially when it’s found by another survivor. You are not alone.

Goodbye.