I had a friend for many years that was like a brother. I thought so, anyway. I loved him like a brother, trusted him completely, knew that he’d never lie to me or do me wrong in any way.
Then he had a stroke.
He lost some strength in his right side and his speech was a little slurred, but he recovered pretty quickly and after about a month he could drive his car again and talked pretty normally again.
He’d planned on coming out to visit me last May and by the time May rolled around he was in pretty good shape again, and made the trip, by taking a Greyhound bus. We sat out on the front deck at the patio table and barbecued up steaks and chicken and were swapping stories, and that’s when I realized a few things.
One was that he’d lost a lot of memory from having that stroke. It wiped out a bunch of his memories. Another thing I realized as I listened to him talk about the things he did remember, was that back many years ago, he’d cheated me on a business deal and lied to me. A lot. He’d forgotten that he wasn’t supposed to tell me the things he did.
While he was here, he was rude to me, tried to order me around in my own home, and insulted me without even seeming to notice he was doing it. He treated me with contempt, because that was how he really felt about me. Only he’d kept it hidden all these years.
And that’s when the final realization hit me, that I didn’t know this guy. The guy I knew was killed by that stroke, and I’ll tell you, I would have been happier if I’d never found out how he really felt about me.
He left, took the bus back home, I’ll never see him again and don’t want to. After telling him how much he’s changed and how badly he behaved, he doesn’t want to see me again either, so that worked out okay. That stroke caused him to blow his act, and it’s always better to know who your friends really are than to think they are what they’re not.
I had no idea that strokes changed your personality like that. If it happened to me it might not make much difference because I treat my friends exactly as I feel about them and think of them, I never try to take advantage of them, and I say what I think. But the idea of having my brain rearranged so that I become some kind of abusive, manipulative jerk is repulsive to me. If I should ever have a stroke, the reader has my permission to shoot me. But not until then.