Our memories define us and shape us. So what happens when we lose not just a few, but all our memories? When 22-year-old Su Meck was struck on the head by a ceiling fan, her life vanished; everything she had ever done, everyone she had ever met and everything she knew how to do, including read, write and tie her own shoes, disappeared. In I Forgot to Remember, a brave and honest account of her recovery, Meck gives voice to the overwhelming confusion following her traumatic brain injury.
Pieced together from hospital records and conversations with her husband, children, relatives and friends, Meck struggled to reconnect with the person she saw, but didn't really know, in the mirror. "I died, in a way, and was reborn, with the same physical form, but not the same mind," she writes. "The two Sus have lived separate lives. She never knew me, and I know nothing of her except what people have told me." Meck navigated the scary world of raising toddlers, then relearned to read, write and do simple math with her kids. She held down jobs in fitness clubs and made multiple moves for her husband's work, including to Egypt and back to the United States. She also continued to trust and rely on her abusive husband, who spent more and more time away from home, all while searching for her identity. Meck's chronicle is a brave testament of willpower and perseverance against almost insurmountable odds--and a plea to the world to reassess the gravity of traumatic brain injuries. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer