Three years ago, yesterday

And this year I feel quiet. Not as prone to public weeping, but filled with a sort of bone deep sadness. Reflecting on the losses we've undergone and continue to live with.

Two years is the magic mark in traumatic brain injury, the window of time when you can expect to see the most improvements. Three years feels a bit more resigned, a settling in, an attempt to accept, to figure out solutions, to find a way to reknit our lives, to come to terms with the person Dave is now while still loving and mourning the person we lost. Dave still needs full time care, will always need it, and the burden falls almost entirely on my mom, which concerns me more than I know how to say. This is the year we need to regroup and make plans for the present and the future.

The part I don't like to admit, even to myself, is that it's easy for me to resent the new Dave, to feel as if he has somehow stolen away the person I loved so dearly. I imagine that if I threw a big enough tantrum he would stop pretending to be this new person and come back to us the way he was. I revert to being a child, stamping my foot over an uncooperative parent, angry in the futile way of children.

And then I feel guilty, because we are lucky and I can see glimpses of the old Dave and sometimes he remembers to tell me he loves me, and he means it. We love each other, not because we are a family. We are a family because we love each other, because we share these years and moments and experiences.

And within it all, still, there are moments of joy, bursts of the kind of love that make you want to squeeze someone so tightly that your jaw clenches up.

{dancing with dave at my wedding - photo from melissa}

We are complicated beings.

I'm taking a few days away, back next week with piles of wedding stuff. It's time.

11/14 - ETA - I can't thank you guys enough for your comments and emails and general support last week. It means so much to me and my family. My heart goes out to all of you dealing with similar situations, truly.