I lost part of my life.

After my brother’s wedding, the whole family, extended family and all, spent a few days in Corpus Christi. We played on the beach, hung out at the pool and just had fun with relatives we hadn’t seen in quite a while. I went offshore fishing one night with a couple of cousins. The boat took us a couple of miles off the coast, just far enough to make it legal to sell beer on the boat. We spent the next three hours with our lines in the water, drinking beer and laughing.

Unlike my cousins and I, who paid the extra dollar to use the boat’s equipment, the guy next to me had brought his own rod. Now this guy had some serious cash invested in his fishing gear.

We had been out for about two hours and the guy with the expensive fishing gear had downed more beer than the three of us combined, maybe that was to blame. Whatever the reason, one minute he’s holding this rod that’s worth more than my car (It was 1985 and I had a 1977 Monte Carlo) and the next minute we’re all watching it vanish into the depths of the Gulf of Mexico. All he could do is stand there and mourn, because as the boat’s bait guy put it, “Baby, it ain’t coming back!”

It’s very frustrating to me to lose anything. I’ve been known to search desperately on my hands and knees, for longer that a sane person should, to find a single screw that I’ve dropped in the garage.

I really hate losing stuff.

Imagine, if you will, how a person with such an intense dislike for losing things feels when he loses something really valuable and has no possible hope of ever retrieving the missing item.

In 1990, my wife and I were headed to friend’s house for dinner, when I turned left in front of a pick-up truck. In the blink of an eye two months of my life, along with several of my personality traits, sank to the ocean’s floor and I’ve spent the better part of 14 years standing and mourning.

I suffered a closed head injury and was in a coma for a month. I spent three months after the coma as an inpatient at Dallas Rehabilitation Institute (DRI) and the next eight months in outpatient rehabilitation therapy.

In life, everybody has to do things that aren’t exactly what they want to do. And while they may not be happy about what they’re doing, they are doing something

From the third month to the end of my outpatient stint at DRI, while I didn’t necessarily want to be there, I do have memories of being there. I was doing something. I have memories both enjoyable and frustrating. I have memories of daily physical and occupational therapy sessions. I have memories of people and events, both good and bad. And I have memories of physical and mental struggles. Life was going. Life was happening.

Not so for the month I spent at Parkland Hospital and my first month at DRI. Those days are not there and never will be. The doctor told me that there was so much brain swelling and so little brain activity, that it wasn’t like being asleep. I was closer to being dead. At least brain dead.

Early on, I found myself longing to know what was happening while I was out. Not in the whole world, just in my world. I know from the countless cards and letters my family saved for me that people were concerned and praying for me. I know that my family felt scared and helpless as they waited on pins and needles, praying the doctor’s next report would be good news.

I’ve heard all the stories and I lived through the hardest part of the rehabilitation. But that can’t be all. I was gone for two months. I know there’s more. There’s got to be more. Doesn’t there?

I wore out my wife and family long ago asking questions about what people were doing and thinking. I want to know moods. I want to see faces. I want to understand. I want to be able to remember.

Part of me feels like I’m being selfish. The people I’m questioning, they don’t want to remember. They don’t want to relive September 8, 1990. Remembering pain isn’t easy or fun. I can’t even imagine how painful the whole experience must have been.

I can’t even imagine and I guess that’s the problem.

My brother printed me a copy of the journal he kept during the whole ordeal. I’ve read it a thousand times in hopes of having some kind of revelation. And while it helped I still want more.

After spending the last 14 years on my hands and knees, I’ve all but abandoned my desperate search for clues to my life’s missing parts. You see, life doesn’t slow down and wait for people to play catch-up. You’re expected to keep trudging along, and fill in the gaps as best as you can. And I found that as time wears on, people’s memories of those events aren’t very detailed or reliable anymore.

Today there is a before accident or “Old Hugh” and an after accident or “New Hugh.” There was a time when most of my memories were of the Old Hugh. I still had crisp clear memories of Old Hugh and I forced myself to live in his shadow.

I spent more time than I probably should have comparing New Hugh to Old Hugh. Comparing New Hugh to Old Hugh was hard, because New Hugh never seemed to be able to measure up. He was never quite as quick, never quite as smart, just never quite as good.

As time moves on I find myself losing touch with the Old Hugh. There was a time when New Hugh’s voice, which was affected not only by the brain injury, but also by vocal cord trauma due to a tracheotomy, sounded very strange to me. And while I still don’t like how new Hugh’s voice sounds, these days hearing a recording of Old Hugh’s voice is what sounds strange. It’s like hearing a voice you recognize, but just can’t put a face to.

These days I find that the Old Hugh is becoming harder and harder to find. I’m not sure, but I think the dividing line between the two Hughs has become so blurred that after 14 years it has become hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

New Hugh is a nice guy too. In many ways he is very much the same as Old Hugh. But there are still times that I really miss Old Hugh. It’s mostly things only my wife or I would notice.

Old Hugh visits me sometimes in my dreams. He’s still happy, carefree and young. Living his life like nothing can hurt him. He speaks clearly and his words pour out polished with never even the hint of effort. But sooner or later I awake and find that my speech is still labored and a little choppy.

No matter how badly I might want to, I know I'll never be able to dive into the murky depths and retrieve Old Hugh, because baby, he ain’t coming back.