Laura Hart Faganello was 23 years old and had been married for nine months when a pole fell on her head at her workplace in Victoria, Canada. When she opened her eyes in the hospital, she believed she was 17 years old. The man sitting beside her bed, Brayden Faganello, her husband since 2016, was a complete stranger to her.
The traumatic brain injury did not erase just one specific memory. It erased the entire relationship. The handwritten letters during the eight months before they met, the first meeting in person, the wedding. Laura had to relearn how to read, write, and form coherent sentences. She went through depression and constant physical pain. And meanwhile, Brayden was still there. Without her knowing who he was, without her being able to recover anything they had lived through together.
What happened afterward has a clinical coldness that is unsettling. Laura decided to get to know him from scratch, as if it were the first time. And with no prior memory to guide her feelings, she fell in love again with the same person. On August 19, 2019, she announced her new engagement on Facebook. Her original memories never returned. What she feels today for Brayden is, strictly speaking, a completely different love from the one she once had.
