I miss my best friend.
The strange thing is, he’s sitting right in front of me.
He’s alive. He’s here. He still loves me. And I love him more than I could ever explain.
But sometimes I look at him and wonder where the hell my best friend went.
Not my husband. He’s still my husband.
I mean the guy I used to laugh with. The one who got my jokes without an explanation. The one I could talk to about absolutely nothing for hours.
God, I miss talking about nothing.
These days, everything seems so serious. Medications. Pain. Appointments. Symptoms. Whether he’s feeling okay. Whether something is wrong. Whether something is about to go wrong.
Somewhere along the way, our conversations became less about life and more about keeping him alive.
And I hate that.
I Still Tell the Jokes
My husband, Sjohn, suffered an anoxic brain injury after a cardiac arrest. His brain went without enough oxygen, and life hasn’t been the same since.
His memory isn’t what it used to be. Neither is his ability to follow some of the things we used to find hilarious.
But I haven’t stopped trying.
I’ll make a joke or say something that would have sent us both into hysterics years ago.
Sometimes he just looks at me.
Sometimes he doesn’t understand.
And sometimes, every once in a while, I see it.
That little gleam in his eye.
He remembers. He gets it.
And we laugh.
Really laugh.
For a minute, there he is.
My guy. My best friend. The one I’ve been looking for.
And here’s the part I almost hate admitting.
I cherish those moments, and I hate them at the same time.
Because I know how quickly they can disappear.
One minute we’re laughing like we used to. The next, the connection fades, and I’m standing there missing him all over again.
It’s like getting something precious back just long enough to remember how badly you miss it.
Nobody warned me about that part of caregiving.
Then Came This Week
I’m writing this from a hospital room.
Three days ago, Sjohn was in ICU with respiratory failure and pneumonia in both lungs.
His heart stopped.
They brought him back.
He was on a ventilator, sedated with propofol, while I sat there wondering whether the man I’ve spent so much time trying to hold on to was about to be taken away from me completely.
When they finally removed his breathing tube and woke him up, he didn’t know who I was.
Let that sink in for a minute.
The man I’ve cared for, worried over, fought for, slept beside, and loved through all of this looked at me and didn’t recognize me.
I knew he had been through something enormous. I knew the medications, critical illness, and his previous brain injury could affect his thinking.
Knowing that didn’t make it hurt any less.
Thankfully, it only lasted a few hours.
He recognized me again.
And then he wouldn’t let me out of his sight.
When I told him what had happened, he kept apologizing.
Apologizing.
As if he had done something wrong.
As if he’d somehow hurt me on purpose by not knowing who I was.
I wanted to tell him a thousand times that he had absolutely nothing to apologize for.
But I also wanted to cry.
Because for those few hours, the thing I’ve been afraid of for so long was right there in front of me.
I was looking at my best friend.
And he couldn’t find me, either.
Apparently, We’re Back to YouTube University
This morning, things are different.
He’s out of ICU and on a regular hospital floor.
I finally got some sleep after three days of being wound tighter than a cheap dollar-store watch.
And at five o’clock this morning, I woke up to Sjohn hollering my name.
Apparently, he’d been calling me for ten minutes.
He wanted his CPAP off and couldn’t find his nurse call button.
So much for sleeping in.
A little later, he was back to his regularly scheduled programming.
YouTube.
Lots and lots of YouTube.
Within what felt like minutes, I was receiving breaking news about how much a basketball player makes, a basketball player’s size 22 shoes, how fast a sloth can move, and the latest poker statistics of Rampage, his favorite player.
All delivered with the enthusiasm of a man who had just discovered the internet.
And there I sat.
Listening.
To every single ridiculous fact.
Because three days ago, I didn’t know whether I’d ever hear him ramble about anything again.
And suddenly, listening to him talk about the speed of a sloth didn’t seem so bad.
Not exactly the deep, meaningful conversation I’d been missing.
But it was him.
My Sjohn.
And for this morning, that was enough.
Loving Someone and Missing Them at the Same Time
Here’s what I wish more people understood about caring for a spouse with a brain injury.
You can love the person sitting in front of you with everything you’ve got and still grieve the relationship you used to have.
You can be grateful they’re alive and still be angry about everything that’s changed.
You can laugh together at breakfast and cry in the bathroom an hour later.
You can miss someone who hasn’t gone anywhere.
And none of that means you love them any less.
I don’t want a different husband.
I want the one I’ve got.
I just wish we could have some of our old life back.
The easy conversations. The inside jokes. The laughter that didn’t require an explanation.
The feeling of being a wife instead of the person who always has to know what’s next.
I miss being two people just living life together instead of two people constantly managing what life has done to us.
I’m Still Looking
I don’t have seven tips for fixing this.
I don’t have a printable worksheet that’s going to bring back our old conversations.
And I sure as hell don’t have a neat little inspirational ending where I tell you everything happens for a reason.
Some things just hurt.
This is one of them.
But I still tell the jokes.
I still look for that gleam in his eye.
I still listen when he tells me something completely random that he learned on YouTube.
And sometimes we laugh.
Sometimes we really, really laugh.
Those moments don’t erase what we’ve lost.
But they’re ours.
And after this week, I’m grateful we still get to have them.
Even if I now know more about basketball shoe sizes and poker statistics than any woman should reasonably be expected to know.
I still miss my best friend.
And I’m still sitting right here beside him.
If you’re caring for your spouse or partner and you miss the relationship you had before illness or disability changed everything, I hope you know you’re not the only one. You can love them fiercely and still miss what used to be.
That’s not betrayal. That’s being human.