And some says once divorced, you can't be friends...C'MON

[theking]

Wife continues to care for husband after traumatic brain injury ... and so does her new husband

In 2008, Kristen Armstrong received a terrifying phone call: Her husband, Brandon Smith, had been involved in a car accident — and it was bad.

“They couldn’t tell me if he was alive or not,” Armstrong, 38, tells TODAY.com. “I remember asking my mom, ‘What will I do if Brandon is gone?’"

She couldn't picture her life without her "rock."

Armstrong, a speech pathologist, and Smith, an auto mechanic, had been married for two years, but together since they were in high school.

When Armstrong got to the hospital, she learned that Smith was in the neuro trauma intensive care unit after being T-boned by a commercial truck.

Smith, who had suffered a traumatic brain injury, would spend two months in a coma.

“Even though Brandon’s doctors warned me that if he did wake up, he would be forever changed because of his severe traumatic brain injury, I held onto hope that a miracle would happen and he’d be the same Brandon,” she says.

“But he wasn’t,” she adds, quietly.

Smith, who now needed around-the-clock care, moved into a nursing care facility in Texas.

“Every morning I woke up and I was hit by this train of sadness. He was my soulmate, my best friend," Armstrong says. “I was grieving a living person, and that was very complicated and isolating.”

Smith was 23 at the time of his accident, and Armstrong was 24. She dreamed of having children. When it became clear that Smith would never recover, Armstrong made the “heart-wrenching” decision to file for divorce.

“I had a lot of talks with God, and I decided I was going to take care of Brandon until the day he died,” Armstrong says. When Armstrong filed papers to become Smith’s legal guardian, the judge had some concerns.

“She asked me, ‘What happens when you have a family of your own? Will you still be able to take care of this man?’” Armstrong recalls. “And I said, ‘Yeah, I’m not going anywhere.’”

Armstrong kept her word. She and her husband, James Armstrong, who have been married since 2015, see Smith regularly — and so do the couple’s three children.

[Believe_N_Me]

I just don't see the point in staying friends or keeping in touch once you've moved on with someone else. If you're both still divorced and single with no prospects then sure, why not be in a situationship. Plenty of older singles do that, not healthy, but something is better than nothing.

At this point, what she has is not much different then niam hlob, niam yau. Some people just can't simply start anew. They must keep dragging the past along with them into the present.

 

[Visualmon]

These type of people love to cling onto someone and cannot move onto a new life. 

[Believe_N_Me]

These type of people love to cling onto someone and cannot move onto a new life. 

Yep.