My Life, Deleted

by Scott Bolzan

  That night Joan mentioned that an insurance broker named Jerry Pinto had set up our group health insurance plan when we still owned WJA, and we should give him a call. Joan had mentioned Jerry earlier when explaining the concept of “best friends” and said that he and I had been close for twenty years, ever since my financial planning days in Chicago. She’d also mentioned a guy named Mark Hyman, who lived in Scottsdale, and my college teammates, Phil Herra and Brendan Dolan, who lived in Chicago but whom I didn’t talk to as often. Jerry, Phil, and Mark had called since my accident, she said, and so had my cousin Brad, but with everything that had been going on, Brad and Phil were the only ones she’d called back. I hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone, so she’d been saving all the important phone messages for when I felt well enough to listen to them.

  Now that I had a pressing reason to talk to Jerry, I decided to give him a call, but I was dreading it because I still didn’t feel I could carry on an intelligent conversation with anyone. I would have preferred to simply say, “Joan needs your help resolving this insurance problem,” and hand the phone over to her.

  When Jerry answered, I spoke in the slow and deliberate phone manner I’d unknowingly been using since the accident. “Hello, Jerry Pinto, this is Scott Bolzan.”

  Unaware that I wasn’t being my usual teasing self, Jerry replied in a similarly slow and deliberate voice. “Hello, Scott Bolzan, this is Jerry Pinto. How can I help you?”

  The old Scott, I’m told, would have responded with equal sarcasm, but the new Scott was taken aback by Jerry’s tone. When I briefly told him I’d had an accident and lost my memory, Jerry was immediately apologetic. “Scotto, I’m really sorry. What the hell happened?”

  I gave him a few more details, explaining that I didn’t remember him. There was a long pause as Jerry digested the news.

  “Well, we’re best friends and we always will be,” he said.

  “Yeah, Joan mentioned that,” I said. “That’s why I’m calling.”

  “Do you want me to come out there?” he asked. “I’ll hop on a plane if there’s anything at all I can do for you.”

  “No, not at this point,” I said.

  That was a nice gesture. We must have been good friends if he’s willing to fly here on a moment’s notice.

  Antsy to get off the phone, I tried to wrap it up, asking Jerry to help Joan resolve our insurance problems while my brain healed. “It would mean a lot to me if you took good care of her,” I said, happily turning the phone over to Joan.

  Jerry said he’d get in touch with the people who bought my company, and within a day or two he and Joan were able to persuade the buyers to pay that month’s premium.

  Once we got the insurance sorted out, we went back for my EEG. The technician attached a bunch of electrodes on suction cups to my scalp, and even though I had a headache at the time, he said I had to lie flat.

  “How long is this test going to take?” I asked, grimacing inside.

  “Twenty-five minutes,” he said, setting a timer and leaving the room while I lay there, practically counting the minutes, in pain.

  When the results came back, it was the same story all over again—they couldn’t detect any abnormal activity. It seemed that no one could tell us what was wrong with my brain, why my memories still had not returned, and why this relentless pain would not let up. When, I wondered in frustration, will these doctors do a test that will actually diagnose my problem so they can treat me and let me return to my normal life?

  In addition to this frustration, I was also dealing with the constant annoyance of tripping over things I couldn’t see with my right eye. This often happened if I turned a corner to the right, so I started having to remember to look down more when I walked. I’ve got enough to deal with, and now this.

  The new owners let our insurance lapse again the following month, but thankfully, Jerry was able to get us new group insurance through Legendary Jets for $1,200 a month. Meanwhile, with me still clueless about how to run my business, Joan had to start looking for a new job. We not only needed cheaper insurance, our finances were in a shambles.

  Determined to be more independent and also to overcome my anxiety issues with the grocery store, I decided to take a spin over there by myself in my 2007 BMW 750Li.

  I took the set of keys from the center console and put the flat plastic one into a horizontal slot in the dash as I’d seen Joan do, only the lights on the dash came on but the car didn’t start. After all this time driving with my wife, I realized that I must not have actually watched her start the car. I sat puzzled at my inability to determine what I was doing wrong. Reluctantly, I had to go inside and ask her for help. “Could you come out here with me?”

  “Is everything okay?” she asked worriedly as she followed me outside.

  “Just one problem. How the hell do you start this?”

  I could tell by her expression that she was nervous about my getting behind the wheel. I knew what she was thinking: If you can’t start the car, how are you going to drive it? After she showed me what to do—put my foot on the brake and simultaneously push the Start button on the dash—I thanked her and shut the door before she could stop me from going.

  I didn’t realize how much of a problem my vision deficiency was going to be until I tried to back the vehicle out of the single-car door of our three-car garage. The vehicle had only four inches of clearance on either side, so my lack of peripheral vision to the right posed a challenge.

  I backed out slowly and, realizing that I was cutting it too close, had to pull forward to straighten out and try again. I could see Joan standing in the doorway, watching to make sure I didn’t hit anything, but I was determined to do this right. I finally made it out, turned the car in the driveway, and headed out to the street.

  It felt weird driving this car, knowing that I had driven it hundreds of times and yet feeling as if it was the first time. But even weirder—and a welcome surprise—was that I had retained my procedural memory. Maybe it was in a different part of my brain. I still knew I was supposed to hit the brakes to stop and the accelerator to go forward. I knew that at a stoplight, green meant go and red meant stop. I also knew what a stop sign was. Even so, the brakes seemed very touchy, and because Joan had set the seat and the mirrors to fit her small frame, I had to pull over just past our driveway to make some adjustments and settle down for a moment or two.

  You can do this. Just relax. Take your time. There’s not a lot of traffic. I wish I could have kept the memories of my wife instead of remembering how to drive.

  The center of the dash displayed a navigation screen for the GPS system, which I had watched Joan use a number of times. I figured it would come in handy in due time, once I learned how to use it. But I also knew I didn’t need it for this short jaunt because the supermarket was so close—a simple right turn at the end of our street, another right turn, then a straight shot for about half a mile. Still, in an abundance of caution, I decided to follow the same routine from my last trip there with Joan.

  I drove about forty miles per hour to the store, five miles under the speed limit, and parked the car in the exact same spot. Taking a deep breath, I walked inside, grabbed a cart, and examined the list of items at the end of each aisle to get an overall sense of the layout for next time.

  When I finally made it to the cereal section, I picked up two boxes of Quaker Oats Granola. Joan said I liked the stuff; she wrote the name down for me and even told me where to find it on the top shelf. I was sick of eating oatmeal every morning.

  After ten minutes of roaming around with my cart, I still had no more than the cereal. I got in the checkout line behind the other shoppers, whose carts were full, and when it was my turn I put my two boxes on the conveyor belt.

  “Why didn’t you use the fifteen-items-or-less line?” the checkout girl asked.

  I didn’t have a suitable answer for her, so I just shrugged.

  “Do you have your Safeway card?” she asked.

  “No,” I said
.

  “Punch in your phone number,” she offered, unaware, obviously, that I didn’t remember that either.

  “You know what? Forget about that,” I said. “Let’s just ring it up.”

  I was a little embarrassed and felt like I was in one of Taylor’s favorite movies, which we had watched recently, Baby’s Day Out, where the baby hero heads out for the first time alone into the real world. But all in all, I had done okay for myself. Other than choosing the wrong checkout lane, I had made a successful trip to the grocery store.

  When I arrived home safely, I felt as if I had just climbed Mount Everest. Joan could probably tell how proud of myself I was because she seemed happy for me too.

  “You made it back,” she said, smiling with obvious relief.

  “Of course I did,” I said. “Even I could do this.”

  That said, I didn’t know if Joan was happier that I’d managed to find my way home or that I’d managed not to hit the garage door as I pulled in.

  Chapter 9

  ON JANUARY 21, 2009, exactly a month after my release from the hospital, I sat in my big chair with a whopper of a headache, nervously awaiting my parents’ arrival. Much like a soon-to-be-adopted child, I wondered if I was going be accepted and vice versa. I clutched my parents’ picture and studied their faces so they wouldn’t seem like such strangers when I opened the door.

  Alice and Lou Bolzan were seventy-two and seventy-four and felt they were too old to travel alone, so my sister Bonnie, who is six years older than me and three years older than our sister Candi, was coming with them from Chicago. They had been planning to come out in May for Taylor’s graduation, but when my memory wasn’t returning as the doctors had predicted, they decided to visit now. My mother, whom Joan described as an eternal optimist who never wanted to hear anything negative, didn’t want to wait four more months to look me in the eye and make sure I was okay.

  Joan had given me a bit of history about the relationship between me and my sisters, cautioning that she was conveying my past feelings about them without adding her own perspective. If and when my memory came back, she said, she didn’t want me thinking she’d been trying to fill my head with her views. There wasn’t any bad blood between my sisters and me, she explained, although in the past Bonnie and I had experienced some painful personal disagreements. But I was never really that close with either of them because we didn’t have much in common.

  Around 2:00 P.M. the doorbell rang.

  “They’re here,” Joan called out.

  I let out a big sigh and hoped the visit would go smoothly. It was important to me at this point in rediscovering myself to get a sense of who I was from someone other than my wife and kids.

  “Scott!” my mother shouted as we opened the door, lunging to embrace me and kiss me on the cheek. I reciprocated by doing the same.

  My father, who was slightly taller than me at six feet five inches (about an inch shorter than he used to be) and about two hundred twenty pounds, came toward me. At a loss for how male family members were supposed to welcome each other, I stuck my hand out awkwardly. When he came in for a hug, I hugged him back.

  “Hey, you’re looking great,” he said, pulling away to look at me. “How are you? It’s good to see you.”

  I instantly felt connected to them. I’m not sure if this was because Joan had told me I would feel the same bond that my children shared with me or if it was something instinctual, built into my genetic makeup, that let me know, deep down, that I’d been here with them before.

  I was surprised to see that my dad looked frailer than in the photo and that he walked slowly. I was expecting someone with a more muscular build, like mine, partly because I’d forgotten that people shrink with age. My full-figured mother, in contrast, looked sprightly for her age and much younger than my father.

  Bonnie, who was chunky with short dark hair, gave me a hug and kiss like my mother, only it didn’t feel the same, and neither did I. Her hug wasn’t as warm, and I didn’t sense the same kind of connection; I also felt guarded as I had during the hospital visit with my NFL acquaintance. With Bonnie, it almost felt as if I was meeting a stranger whom I’d rather had stayed in the car. This puzzled me at first. I realized that I hadn’t studied a picture of her before the visit and vaguely remembered Joan pointing her out in family photos, but based on what Joan had said, I figured it was probably something more complex. Nonetheless, my uneasiness took away from the comfort I felt with my parents.

  We sat down to visit in the family room, with me in my chair, my mom on the couch closest to me, and my father next to her. Bonnie sat quietly some distance away. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to give my parents more time alone with me or if she was preoccupied with her own thoughts, but I sensed that she felt just as uncomfortable as I did. When she asked how I was feeling, it seemed forced.

  In contrast, both of my parents seemed genuinely concerned about my health and asked lots of questions, telling me to lie down if I needed to. “How are your headaches?” my mother asked. “Are you getting any fewer?”

  “No,” I said. “They’re pretty much constant all the time, but I try to control them with the pain medication.”

  We made small talk for a while, chatting about their flight and the Thunderbird Hotel, where they were staying in Scottsdale. Because I couldn’t engage in conversation for long without closing my eyes for fifteen minutes, they let me rest while they puttered around in the kitchen or watched TV.

  After my little shut-eye, my parents showed me the scrapbooks they’d brought with them, the pages tattered, with yellowed tape holding down photos and news clippings that were faded and crumbling after thirty-five years. As I flipped through the years, I saw myself as a little boy, in my teen years with surprisingly long hair, almost touching my shoulders, and throughout my NFL career. I could see my adult self in that happy kid’s face, unlike Grant, who looked nothing now like he did as a child.

  Yeah, that’s me.

  My father had taken a majority of the photos, and he seemed to remember every sporting event down to the plays, the touchdowns I made, and how I’d plowed through the other players when I was quarterback. Seeing myself in a football uniform at such a young age told me I’d loved that sport from way back.

  “Whose idea was it for me to start playing?” I asked.

  “It was your idea,” my dad said, adding that I used to watch kids playing in the park even before I was old enough to join Pop Warner. “But you couldn’t play until you were in the fifth grade. You wanted to start playing the year before that.”

  Although the album had photos of me playing Little League, at that point I knew very little about baseball because the season hadn’t started yet and there were no games on TV. I knew even less about wrestling other than I thought my uniform was strange and tight, with weird headgear.

  The love and care that had gone into collecting these mementos was obvious; I heard it in my parents’ voices, and I could see it in the white ribbons and buttons that read, That’s My Boy, which my mother had attached to several of the high school photos. She’d also painstakingly recorded scores for each football game and enclosed every congratulatory note and letter I’d received, even my letter from the U.S. Air Force Academy thanking me for my interest in attending. Apparently my aspiration to be a pilot had taken root early on as well.

  Taking turns narrating, my parents explained the relevance of each photo or news story as they turned the pages. My dad proudly described taking me to football practice, noting that he and my mom had never missed a game. “I just loved watching you play football,” he said.

  During the California Bowl in college, he said with his eyes sparkling, he was on the field taking pictures because he’d talked my coach into getting him a press pass. I was amazed and yet flummoxed that this man in his seventies could recall the minutiae of my life when I couldn’t remember a single thing.

  Still, I couldn’t believe or understand why they’d kept this stuff for so long. “Why
did you save all of this?” I asked.

  “Because that’s what mothers do,” my mom said, as if she were stating the obvious. “I wanted you to be able to share this with your children and grandchildren. And thank God we did!”

  The more stories they told me, the more my head hurt, so I had to stop after a while even though I wanted to hear more.

  Around five o’clock we decided to get some dinner. I didn’t feel up to going out, so Joan got some Mexican food from Nando’s, the restaurant where Taylor worked as a hostess.

  When we sat down to eat, Joan tried explaining my condition in a bit more depth; we were waiting and hoping, she said, for my lost memories to return.

  My mother, however, didn’t want to accept that I had changed one iota.

  “Scott, I don’t see any difference in you,” she said. “When I opened that door and I saw you, you looked the same. You act the same as you always have, your sense of humor is the same, and your personality is the same except that you’re a little calmer.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  I wanted to believe her, but inside I knew that wasn’t possible. How could that be if I couldn’t even remember who I’d been? I also didn’t feel that I had much of a sense of humor, even though I did make my mother laugh when I joked about noises coming from the bathroom while my father was inside.

  My mom was concerned about my pain, which she could see in my eyes, but she kept reassuring me that everything was going to be okay. I think I was the only one who realized that my condition might not go away.