Cole didn’t even own a cellphone back then; he didn’t like them. Now he uses one to read him his e-mail and even books. It was too hard to learn Braille because the brain injury makes it hard to retain new information.
“Thank God for my wife. You know, after I had the accident, they put this metal plate in my head. They had to remove part of my brain that was damaged. I like to say that my wife is that part of my brain now. She keeps the checkbook and does the bills and remembers the things I don’t. I’m a lucky, man.
“I was glad Jimmy offered me a ride home that night. My car was in the shop. There was a minute—it was seconds, really, now that I think about it, but they stretched out into a whole world of time–I saw that we weren’t turning and I saw that he wasn’t even looking up at the road. He was reading a text from his girlfriend.
It must have got him thinking for two seconds. He didn’t survive, so I don’t know what he was thinking.
I do remember what I was thinking. It was, ‘This is gonna hurt.’ It did.”
We forget, you know, how everything really works. That we are all depending on each other out there.
We’re just hoping that we’ll stay awake for each other, stop at the reds and slow at the yellows because if we don’t, we crack to bits.
The driver’s girlfriend came to see me in the hospital when I woke up. It was almost a year later. I didn’t know who she was. She wanted to say she was sorry she sent the text. She knew he’d be driving, but she thought he’d look at it later.
I wasn’t very good at putting my words together then. I couldn’t find any for her. I wasn’t thinking about her sending the text or his reading it. I was wondering how I was going to live. There’s a lot to get used to when you lose your sight. I’m still not always sure the chair will be right there under me when I go to sit down. I decided right then and there just not to be afraid of it all. Being afraid just wasn’t going to help any.
The people at my Carson Traumatic Brain Injury group help with all of this stuff. They get me out of myself. They help me remember how good it is to be part of something while I figure out this new way of living.
Well, as some of the young kids say, “X to the text.”
By JAC Patrissi
