Love, Strokes, and Brain Surgery
A Reflection on Faithful Intention
I remember moving this ussie that Bri took of us (with his left hand you may notice) in the woods of the Upper Peninsula to a spot in our kitchen where it remains to this day.
I did that then because, nine years ago Bri was moved to a rehabilitation facility just out of his weeks in ICU before and after his lifesaving brain surgery after multiple strokes due to a rare genetic condition called moyamoya.
Moyamoya affects fewer than 5,000 people in our country. So what were the chances that moyamoya would have Bri dancing on the razor’s edge between life and what is beyond?
Chance is moot when it happens to you. Sounds cynical, but sit Bri down for a heart-to-heart and he would tell you with a tremendous depth of sincerity that he wouldn’t change a thing.
His experience is most important here to be centered without question. And yet, nine years later I offer my vantage from when I was moving that photo.
I remember not caring about the abandoned nail in the wall from where I took this photo of us.
I remember trying to create solutions for how I would get him upstairs into our bedroom given he couldn’t walk, but the medical They told us it would be months and months before he could come home anyway.
I remember being grateful to have this image of us in love in the woods kissing just in case…well, just in case.
I remember feeling the energy of just in case, not as an exercise, but as a rehearsal of sorts, an emotional preparation for every outcome.
I get that’s not how everyone rolls, but moving this photo of us was my gesture to myself, to the house(?), to the world(?), that Bri wasn’t going ANYWHERE.
Clearly that was true, because I put him, us, right there front and center in the kitchen. And it didn’t matter how long it would be, or where he slept, he would come home and I would just figure out the rest.
I remember hanging that photo and realizing how little else mattered in the moment, in the past six weeks, in the next months and years.
That was a hyperconcentrated experience of our human condition superseded even by the magnitude of my love for him right then as I straightened the photo before checking on the boys to ground them in light of the chaos, head to bed for a few hours, and get up in the morning to see what we would face next.
I share this not from a place of sadness, on the contrary. I share this from an energy of the most profound and indescribable gratitude. Today Bri is in D.C. doing a job he loves perhaps like it is just another day.
But it is the day I moved our kissing ussie into our kitchen as an act of aspiration and intention. Bri made it so.
And here we are living that aspiration and breathing life into that intention every day.
May we all keep the faith with acts of love, dear ones. ❤️🔥 to this day.
*This article was originally posted on Medium on October 22, 2025.
