Ian Murphy was 21 years old and driving to work in Pittsburgh when his car went off the road. It was September 30, 2006. The impact left him with brain damage and his body paralyzed. He could not speak. He could not eat on his own.
His girlfriend, Larissa, had met him a year earlier at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. When the doctor gave her the news, she did not think about leaving. She moved into Ian’s parents’ house and began caring for him every day.
“I didn’t know whether he loved me,” she later recounted. “He couldn’t speak or eat, so our relationship was probably strange. But we had a wonderful time.”
She made herself a promise: if Ian ever communicated with her again, they would get married. The recovery was slow, year after year. In 2009, before he could see the wedding, Ian’s father, who was ill with brain cancer, died.
A year later, Ian put the words together to propose to her. Since he needed legal authorization to make life decisions, a judge had to approve the wedding. “You two are an example of what love is”, he said before signing.
They got married in 2010, four years after the accident, surrounded by family and friends. Love, this time, came walking slowly, but it arrived whole.
