Yeah but that wouldn’t be the person I married. I (hypothetically) married an adult I can do adult things with. Yeah I could do stuff with such a person, but that doesn’t mean I want to.
My former neighbor was faced with a very similar situation to this. She and her husband were married 20 years. He was an electrician by trade and a very nice man - good with their children, a great help to me when I needed him, and a general “good Joe.” He then had a sudden, catastrophic stroke that pretty much left him with the functioning capacity of an infant. It was heartbreaking in lots of ways. Still, Charlotte said “Hey, I married Ernie and said I be here 'til he died. So, I’m here.” She has the patience of Job, but the wear and tear are slowly killing her.
See my earlier post, I sat around and drooled for a year or so. I remember a nice woman that can around and brought me fruit or banana pudding. She claimed that she was my mother, she was telling the truth. After about a year I came to realize this. My condition has improved. Brain damaged is not brain dead make sure you know which is the case.
I was under the impression we were talking about a permenant condition here.
What about if your spouse had an accident and was horribly disfigured (like she gained 15 lbs…ok kidding) but retained all mental faculties? I think that’s a harder one to answer.
Not really. They’re still the same person. And cosmetic surgery is a lot more reliable and successful than brain surgery or therapies designed to reverse brain damage. In fact, I think it’s rather shallow to even compare the two situations.
The romantic in me wants to say “til death do us part.”
But I’ve seen a family be pretty messed up by this. The wife had an aneurysm (IIRC), something that substantially decreased her mental capacity and changed her personality and harmed her memory. She wasn’t the same person. She didn’t really remember or care about her family in the same way. She needed a lot of care, a lot of medicine, a lot of therapy, and the family didn’t have the resources to get the best off those things. The husband had to work increasing hours and the children were suffering–not just from the loss of the mother they knew, but from the considerable strife and stress in their home life with this erratic, unreliable adult around and a father who was at his wits’ end.
There were times when I thought this guy should cut his losses. It sounded really cruel, and many people would judge it so. I have no idea what would happen to the woman in this circumstance. But it might have been the best thing for his children and himself.
Altogether an incredibly sad situation.