Retired Pastor Ruminates

I have a brain injury. It is one of the bald facts of my life like being tall or having brown hair. Unlike those facts though, I was not born with a brain injury, but acquired it on August 5, 2000 (see “I Lost My Marbles on the Mohawk Trail”). In my life story that day is a dividing marker. There is the time before my injury and the time after my injury, just as ancient Israel divided its life into before and after the fall of Jerusalem and the Babylonian Exile.

The great thinkers and writers of Israel who gave us some of the best parts of the Bible were preoccupied with why their exile happened. Or more precisely, they asked “What had they done wrong to cause the exile?” Why had God done this to them? As Rabbi Kushner asked in the title of his best-selling book: “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

I honestly don’t ask that question about my accident. I don’t feel guilty about my brain injury. Some things in life just happen that we are powerless to do anything about, and I believe this was one of those things. I don’t believe God throws people off bicycles. And I’m not ashamed about my brain injury, although it has taken me awhile to deal with the strange reactions of many people to my disability.

I bump into people in the grocery store, and they ask me if I am feeling better, and I smile and say I am doing OK, which I am. But the real answer in regard to my brain injury is “no.” I’m not better and, like Humpty Dumpty, I’m not going to be put together again. The task for me is to take care of myself and adjust to my disability from day to day as best I can with a lot of help from my family and my professional caregivers.

So it is what it is. I sometimes grieve for the life I expected to have. I am sometimes sad because I miss my ministry and the purpose and meaning that came with it. But I am unable to do it anymore and that is that. I am grateful for the thirty years I had to do it. I am grateful for my wife and children and family and friends. I am grateful I still have speech and memory, and the cognitive capacities to write and imagine.

And I am one of the lucky ones. Of the roughly 1.4 million who sustain a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) each year in the United States 50,000 will die. One of the reason I choose to speak openly about my TBI is there are many of our neighbors out there who have TBI and they are struggling. The CDC estimates over 3 million Americans have a long-term or lifelong need for help to perform their daily activities because of a TBI.

And there will be more. Many returning veterans have TBI from concussive injuries. Many of these heroes will daily struggle to manage stress, control their tempers, solve problems, and deal with life’s emotional issues. Many will have difficulty finding and keeping a job. Many will be unable to work. I am glad that Gary Trudeau has created a sympathetic character with TBI for his Doonesbury comic strip. The more people know about TBI the better.

One of the reasons for better education is that many people with TBI go undiagnosed. Many of these will self-medicate with drugs and alcohol. Untreated and unsupported such people with TBI will have very tough lives, and so will their family and friends.

So I choose to talk and write about brain injury so that more people can know about it, and can seek the support they need. There is support and services for people with TBI. I have been helped by the Massachusetts State Head Injury Program (SHIP). Massachusetts has an active Brain Injury Association, as do other states, and there is a National Brain Injury Association with a good website.

I was recently driving on the highway and saw a billboard from the Brain Injury Association. It pictured a camouflaged helmet, the kind our troops wear in Iraq and Afghanistan. The sign said: “You can’t camouflage a brain injury!” It’s really time we stopped trying to do that.