“Spend a day with me…walk a mile in my shoes.”

Grieving a loss after a death, catastrophic injury, chronic illness or transitional loss is a hard, long, and difficult process. When a family member survives a traumatic brain injury, there are still losses to grieve as life will not be the same again. Avoiding the emotional pain that comes with grieving can delay and complicate the healing process.

There is no way to the other side of grief except to go through it. Take time to heal – for however long that takes! You are worth it!

Each loss and every aspect of the loss can be a source of pain and must be grieved. Each loss needs to be worked through individually and yes, this takes time.

Can someone tell me?
Where is my son is he lost for ever?
How come he can not talk to me,
what is his purpose now?
If he is here then how come he does
Not know me?

Her son’s brain injury left Tracy Spracklen’s son severely disabled with physical and communication impairments. She expresses a mother’s grief, anguish and despair as it alternates with hope and joy at small gains. Her son’s survival makes her question the meaning of life and her search for answers continues in her role as caregiver and loving mother.

There are many types of death with brain injury. With my son, Derek, it was the death of physical pain and suffering. That’s the “blessing” you often hear preachers talk about. But, in my opinion, no violent death is a blessing! Not in the hearts and minds of those who must endure the darkness of their own private hell!

Whether it is the death of a loved one or the other deaths that many victims of brain injury must face, I still cannot see the blessing in that.

It is our duty, as advocates, to shed a brighter light on the darkness of ignorance and the often-devastating effects of brain injury. Stories such as mine show some of the horrors that brain injury can have, not only upon the victim but upon their family and loved ones.

The single most important element to successfully surviving a brain injury is learning to live with the many impairments—physical, cognitive, emotional, and/or behavioral—that accompany a major insult to the brain.

My wife Jessica’s automobile accident caused irreparable damage to her brain. A split second of inattention permanently transformed her in many ways. For Jessica to recover successfully from her injury, the most important thing she needed to do was to recognize and learn to live with her new impairments.

Married just nine months, her husband’s brain injury left Barbara Stahura feeling shocked, fearful and anxious about his survival and their future. Watching him in coma she questioned whether he would survive. Once medically stable, there were new concerns once he spoke as the severity of his brain injury became apparent.

She wanted to look inside Ken’s brain, to see what the scanning machines could not, to find his lost self. Would Ken’s brain heal? How much? When? No one could provide the answers. There was nothing to do but move through the days.

My brother didn’t die the night of his car crash that resulted in a severe brain injury. I still have my brother here in body, but only in spirit. He is not the same brother. He’s a new brother that I have to learn to love now.

I wonder sometimes what it would have been like if he had died in his accident. We mourn and grieve for the brother we lost but others don’t understand because he survived. Brain injury is like a death but the person is still there.

Geoff had a large brain tumor pressing against his brain stem. How does a family learn to pick up the pieces after the traumatic events of a brain tumor and brain stem strokes to a child? How does a family watch as the son and brother they knew lie weeks on end in the ICU and then a nursing home? The prognosis was bleak at best.
Families survive by never giving up hope. They survive by allowing each person to deal with their emotions in their own way. They survive by trusting in the human spirit they know exists in us all. And they survive in knowing Miracles CAN and DO happen.

When my seventeen-year-old son, Daniel, sustained a severe brain injury in a car crash, we didn’t know if he would survive – or if he did what kind of recovery he would have. After a five week coma, the physicians weren’t optimistic about his future. They told us that in addition to his right-sided hemiparesis (weakness on the right side of his body), they were concerned about his language skills. They predicted significant impairment in Daniel’s receptive language skills (his ability to understand what was said to him) and his expressive language skills (his ability to express himself either verbally or in writing).

Daniel’s friends were regular visitors. They brought in music tapes, hung posters to decorate his hospital room, and told him stories school, hockey and summer camp. They started playing games with him. The first was Tic Tac Toe.

A mother and two siblings reveal how a child and brother’s traumatic brain injury touches every single member of a family. Her son, Paul, who is the survivor of a severe brain injury gives his point of view of how his parents and siblings reacted and supported him.

The physical trauma of brain injury is an emotional trauma for the family. Each member reacts differently and each members grieves and adjusts in his/her own way. Relationships change as children grow up and the survivor recovers.