When the alarm goes off in the morning you instantly feel the burn of tears behind your eyelids. “Please God,” your silent plea goes out again. “Help me get through this day.”

Before opening your eyes, you listen for the sound of your husband’s breathing next to you. When he first came home from the hospital, it was irregular with long, terrifying moments of silence between each breath but now they are regular and even. You are grateful for that small gift.

You open your eyes and sit up, wincing. Last night was not a good night and you got very little sleep. He wanted sex but it didn’t go well and he called you names you’ve read in books but never heard spoken to you. You know it was his disappointment and brain injury speaking, but you still feel the hurt. You tell God you’re trying hard to be a good wife and love your husband. There’s a bruise on your inner thigh that you’re not even going to think about.

“Please God, help me be a better mother today.”

The children are up and you forego a shower to make sure they’re getting ready for school. (“Turn off the TV! Yes I forgot the laundry. I know you’ve already worn this outfit but we can wash the little spot on your pants and dry it with my hairdryer so no one will notice.”) You fix their favorite breakfast foods because this may be the only meal they get today where no one is yelling and where they can enjoy “family time.” This is the time you get to hear about school assignments, and a successful test and you are reminded about lunch money due. But it only lasts an hour. You put them on the school bus and then drive the opposite direction toward your job.

Your husband is still asleep in bed; the sleep is healing for him, according to the therapist, so you try not to be envious. “Please God, I want to help him get better.”

You will take 40-minute coffee breaks again today to take him to occupational and physical therapy sessions. You will apologize to your manager each time and in the back of your mind you wonder how long this can go on. Will today be the day they fire you? How would you live on his disability payment? Who else would hire you? You try to push that out of your mind.

At work, you fall into routines that are comforting and your shoulders relax a bit. After two hours, the cell phone alarm goes off and you race to your car and rush home to pick him up for his therapy session. The therapists will ask you how he is doing and you will say he’s still having issues with anger but you think you see improvement in some cognitive skills. The therapist says she will send home some homework tonight that might help with the cognitive skills. She gives you (once again) the list of ways to divert anger and touches your arm, saying she knows it’s hard to deal with his anger. You know she doesn’t really understand because she doesn’t live with a brain injured person. You go back to work knowing in two hours you’ll need to pick him up and take him home. You work through lunch, do the therapy runs again, and work an extra hour to make up for the long coffee breaks.

“Please God, help me get through this day.”

You order pizza and pick it up on the way to your mother’s house to gather up the kids. You used to let the kids go straight home, but they and their dad had some run-ins. He wants to play with them but he’s too big and clumsy and they get hurt. One day you found your daughter standing outside in a violent thunderstorm, soaking wet, because she was afraid to go inside where her dad was watching television. He yells at her if she walks between him and the television and it scares her. He didn’t even realize that she was outside. Thank God for your mother who reduced her hours (and income) so the kids could spend after-school hours at her house.

When you get there, the kids don’t want to go home but you bribe them with the pizza.

“Please God, help me be a good mom.”

On the way home you hear that you forgot to send a permission slip for a field trip so your son had to stay at school while his friends went to the zoo. You tell him you’re very sorry. You ask him if he could help you by putting things like that on the kitchen counter where you can see them. He says he did. You apologize again. He has a slight meltdown about how you used to pay attention to him when he asked you things but now you forget everything. Your daughter curls up in the corner of the back seat and cries as she looks out the window. When you get home you find the permission slip waiting where he left it on top of a stack of bills.

Your husband has homework after dinner. You sit with him and help him read (or talk or move his limbs) while the kids eat pizza and watch television. After an hour, your son asks for help with a math assignment (not your specialty) and when you move your attention to him, your husband gets up, knocking over the chair and throws his exercise gear (papers, computer disks) across the room.

While you try to answer your son’s question, your husband goes to your daughter and tells her she has to do her homework too. She says she’s done, but he disagrees. He grabs her by the hair and drags her to the table where her backpack lies. He pushes her face into the backpack and holds it there because he can’t remember what to say. Your son jumps up and runs away. You get in your husband’s face and yell his name and ”Stop! Stop! Stop!” He lets go of your daughter’s hair and she turns to run away. He reaches to grab her again but you get between them. She starts to go to her room but turns around, runs back and hits him with her fists as hard as she can, yelling “I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you!” He calls her names—the same ones you heard last night-- and she stands behind you and screams back at him. Out of the corner of your eye you see your son returning from his room and he’s holding a baseball bat like a club.

“Please God, help me, help me, help me!”

Somehow you stand between your kids and their father and create enough distance that everyone retreats. You are shaking. You tell your husband that his actions were “inappropriate and can’t happen again.” Later you will try (once again) to explain to your children that their dad doesn’t mean to act like that, but that his brain doesn’t work quite right since his injury. They don’t care. They are afraid, and in the case of your son, dangerously angry and out of control. No one will sleep tonight.

That night after everyone else has gone to bed, you will throw the laundry in the washer but fall asleep on the couch and forget to transfer them to the dryer. You will write a note to the school saying that family business prevented your kids from getting their homework done. You will prioritize the bills that need to be paid and pay one or two of them for which you have money. You will push aside the homework and notes, lay your head on the table and wonder if you and your children can continue to live like this. You see yourself as the only rescuer in an ocean where a boat sank beneath your family. You wonder if you will be able to save your family. You know you cannot let your children suffer this abuse just because your husband is brain injured and cannot control his anger. You will NOT consider telling anyone how bad life is right now because you love your husband and do not want to betray him when he can’t help himself. You wrack your brain trying to think of a way to stop this craziness. You wish there was someone to talk to who understands.

You will be stiff and sore in the morning when you wake up. “Please God, help me get through this day.”

Brain injury can destroy families. This story is true and it is painful to read, but also painful to live. No one is to blame and every family member loses. If a family has financial and social resources they have a better outcome because they can afford help. But many families have few resources. Informed support and counseling can save families as well as survivors.

Brain Injury Family Resources www.braininjuryfamily.net

Missing Pieces: Mending the Head Injury Family, by Marilyn Colter-- available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle editions.

http://www.amazon.com/Missing-Pieces-Mending-Injury-ebook/dp/B0061YCCYQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1321563380&sr=8-2

“I was immediately drawn in and comforted from page 1. I hope more people will find their way to your book.”­­_ B.H. Brain injury family member

"The gutsiest, most compassionate, most on-target advice ever for the head injury family."
—Brain Technologies president Dudley Lynch, Florida

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