Remember???

This weekend, we spent a few hours at a family event for The Husband's parents. It was a nice, casual event attended by people we hadn't seen in at least 15 years. There was lots of "Oh, you remember so & so, don't you?"

Nope, people, he doesn't.

It was really the first time since TBI became part of our vocabulary that we were in an environment where people repeatedly said "don't you remember me, So&So, etc?" to The Husband.

It was an interesting experience.

Especially because The Husband's favorite response was "Nope, sure don't." And then awkward silence.


Sometimes the person that was doing the introductions or the person he was being introduced to would follow up with "well don't you remember *insert some type of memory jogging event here*?"

And The Husband would again follow up with "Nope, sure don't.".

And more awkward silence.

Eventually the person he was meeting would say "well you were little" or "it was a long time ago" or some other phrase that indicated they were ready to move on from memory lane and they'd shake hands and chat for a bit.

This went on for 3 hours.

At no point, did the family members making the introductions understand that The Husband honestly doesn't remember: with every introduction, every "nope sure don't", every awkward silence they would just stand there and observe. At one point I observed them becoming irritated with The Husband's inability to remember someone.

And it occurred to me that they just don't get it. He honestly doesn't remember.

He didn't remember that the reason an old family friend "had dropped a TON of weight" wasn't because he'd found some new diet but because that friend had had a massive stroke a couple of years ago and his recovery had been slow and painful. I admired how well family friend was doing while The Husband was baffled by how different he looked. He didn't remember family friends that were a daily fixture in our dating life, just like he doesn't remember certain events from our dating life or our married life or a couple of days ago.

He did very well in the situation and he handled it much better than we both thought he would.

But it makes me wonder how we teach those who see a guy who looks fine, that he's not fine. That he's not just being rude when he says he doesn't remember. He honestly doesn't remember. How do we get it through to them that he doesn't remember the time his brother did this or his brother did that. He's not saying "yesterday is fuzzy" to be funny, he's saying "yesterday is fuzzy" because if he didn't write down what happened yesterday, then it's fuzzy.

Maybe we'll have a TBI shirt made for these type of events: "Hi, I'm not being rude, I genuinely don't remember you because well my brain got a little rattled and I don't remember anything if I don't write it down, so please just identify how you know me instead of expecting me to know you"

Or maybe we'll just have another fun time of "Nope. Sure don't." and irritated family members....