By Robert Coleman,
Can you imagine losing all memory of your husband or wife? This woman went through the traumatic experience, but it’s safe to say that she has since come out the other side.
If you’ve tied the knot and married the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, there’s a high chance that you did so because you want to be able to wake up to their wonderful face every single morning for as long as you shall live. After all, there’s nothing better than catching a fuzzy-eyed smile from your husband or wife as they take their first peek at the morning sun, and being able to share your life with your best friend is a magical experience that just cannot be explained.
However, life doesn’t always follow this fairytale-like storyline. While most people dream of this morning smile and the laughs and giggles along the way, there are some who have to go through some harsh twists and turns throughout the process. One couple found this out for themselves when the woman suffered intense memory loss that meant she couldn’t even remember she was married in the first place. Who was the man lying beside her? Did she really love him? This incredible story will show you that love really does know no limits…
Sharing her story
Incredible stories that involve true love and defying even the strongest of odds don’t come around too often, but it’s safe to say that this one has made its mark. That’s all thanks to Laura Faganello, who decided to share her story with the world on social media. After going through a traumatic and life-changing ordeal, she decided that she could no longer keep her timeline to herself.
Not only did she share a short snippet of her love story with her friends and followers on Facebook, but she also shared her love story from start to finish on the Love What Matters blog. Because of this, people across the globe have fallen in love with her and her husband – just as she did all over again.
The couple in question
Of course, to truly understand just how magical this story is, we need to learn a little more about the couple in question. Laura and Brayden Faganello are a married couple from Victoria in British Columbia, and there’s no doubt about the fact that they have proven that their love can carry even the toughest of times.
While they are now happily married and going through the motions of their lives as husband and wife, they have been complete strangers on more than one occasion throughout their relationship. In fact, when they spoke for the first time, they had never even met each other in the flesh.
Back to the start
In 2015, Brayden Faganello was serving in South Africa as a missionary within the Church of Latter-Day Saints. Although Laura didn’t know Brayden herself, she knew his cousins, and they seemed to think that they were perfect for each other. They told Laura to write him a letter and even gave her Bayden’s address across the world – but Laura just wasn’t interested.
She was gearing up to visit her parents in Brussels where they were stationed for their own missionary work, and then she was heading to Spain for a study abroad program that would take up a huge amount of her time. She just didn’t have space in her life for a love interest…
Giving it a go
Despite the fact that Laura wasn’t in any position to welcome a man into her life, she realized that she didn’t have much to lose. So, she wrote Brandon a letter but decided to keep her return address as her home address in Victoria, rather than her parents’ house in Brussels.
This way, she could forget about Brayden during her busy summer while she spent time with her mom and dad and took part in her summer program. In fact, Laura completely forgot about the letter she sent to the missionary until her brother called her while she was in Europe with news from back home in British Columbia.
A birthday letter
Laura’s brother called her on her birthday and noted that she had received a letter from Brayden. Not only did he want to wish her a happy birthday, but he was also intrigued by her. Brayden wanted to know more about the woman on the other side of the paper, and he also wanted to make sure that he was impressing her with his own wit and charm.
Thankfully, he seemed to do the job perfectly. Laura noted that his birthday letter was the “funniest thing I had ever read,” so she decided to write another letter to the missionary, but with her current address added to the envelope. She wanted to know more about him, too.
Talking all the time
Before too long, Laura realized that her decision to send Brayden a letter was one of the best decisions she had ever made. They began to talk all of the time, and they sent letters back and forth to each other over the course of the next eight months.
Although they both had cell phones, they decided that they wanted to continue to send letters, and not partake in any phone calls or Facetime sessions. In fact, they only opted for one email a week alongside their letters. Within her blog, Laura noted that her “happiest days were the ones a letter from South Africa appeared in my mailbox.”
Moving back home
Although they were world’s apart in South Africa and Europe, these moves weren’t permanent for Laura and Brayden. In fact, they both moved back to Victoria within one month of each other, and they finally got the chance to meet each other in person. After speaking to each other for months on end, their first meeting was everything they could have dreamed of and more.
By the time January came around, they were officially dating. Then, as February loomed ever closer, they told each other they loved each other. When April came to a close, Brayden had proposed, and they were gearing up for their big day.
Getting hitched
Just three months after Brayden asked Laura the most important question of her life, the couple had planned their wedding and were exchanging their vows. Their July wedding allowed them to become husband and wife on a warm summer’s day, and they were able to share their joy with their closest family and friends.
It was a day that Brayden would never forget, but they had no idea that their lives and their marriage would change forever. The newlywed couple had just nine months worth of marital bliss before they found their lives turned upside down. In fact, this incident would cause Laura to lose all memory of her married life.
A helping hand
So, what was the incident that changed Laura and Brayden’s lives forever? Just a few days after Laura completed her final college exam for the year, a family friend asked her whether she would be able to lend a helping hand.
They were setting up an event and hoped that Laura would be able to help them deck out the tent and make sure that the place was ready for the day ahead. However, this wasn’t just any normal day. The wind was howling, and the tent wasn’t providing any cover for the glasses and the balloons that were shattering and popping.
Noticing something specific
There are certain aspects of this day that stick out to Laura, and it seems as though she won’t be able to forget them for the rest of her life. That’s because one detail she remembers “so clearly” is seeing three women struggle to make sure that one of the support poles for the tent wouldn’t fall down.
Laura could see that the pole wasn’t in place properly, but she also took note of the coordinator that was helping them out. Because of this, she assumed that they were doing this for a reason, and she didn’t think anything else of it until it was too late.
Coming crashing down
In preparation for the event, Laura was given the task of decorating the tables inside the tent. While she hunched over a table and tried to make it as beautiful as possible, she distinctly remembers hearing a gasp from the women who were closest to her. It was at this moment that she knew something was happening, but she didn’t have time to react or even understand what was going on.
That’s because all she heard and felt was a huge thump on the top of her head, where the tent support pole came crashing down and landed on her skull. Almost instinctively, Laura grabbed her head in her hands and tried to make sense of what had happened.
Blacking out
Although she was conscious after the initial impact of the pole on her skull, Laura found that the room soon began to spin. She blacked in and out of consciousness, and it wasn’t long before she couldn’t quite work out where she was or even how old she was.
In her mind, she was still 17 years old, and all she wanted was for her parents to pick her up and look after her. That’s because she had completely forgotten about the fact that her parents had moved to Brussels three years earlier. Her brain was spinning, and she just didn’t know what was going on.
Clear memories
Laura’s knock on the head has caused some serious damage to her memory, and it seemed as though all knowledge of her current life had disappeared with a thump. Instead, she believed that she was much younger than she was, and she had no idea who some of the people were around her.
Her life had become a complete fog, and she even had no recollection of her wedding day. To make matters even more confusing, she didn’t even realize that she was old enough to get married – let alone that she was married to Brayden. According to her lost memory, she had never met the man in her life…
A rush of panic
Because Laura’s accident had caused her life to backtrack, Brayden was a complete stranger to her. However, he still considered her to be his wife, and her family wanted her to try and assume a normal life after her memory loss. Although this was a good idea in theory, it was horrific for the woman at the center of the whole ordeal.
Laura was surrounded by strangers, and she was waking up next to a man she thought she had never met before. Within her blog, she noted that she often woke up in a “Rush of panic” when the stranger next to her woke her up with a smile and a “Good morning, Laura!”
An unknown life
When this happened, Laura was so overwhelmed she could barely make her way to the bathroom in time to throw up. It was all too much for her, and she couldn’t believe a stranger was trying to convince her of an unknown life she supposedly had. However, she couldn’t deny the fact that the facts were right there in front of her.
She saw her belongings sitting next to Brayden’s on the vanity, she could see their wedding album on the coffee table, and she saw the wedding ring that sat on her finger. The pieces of the puzzle were there, but Laura just couldn’t fit them together to create one complete picture.
A daily occurrence
What made matters even worse was the fact that this was a daily occurrence for Laura. Every single day she would wake up next to this stranger, and every single day she would have absolutely no idea who he was or how she had gotten to that point in her life.
Sometimes she would wake up with tears streaming down her eyes. Other days she would wake up screaming at the top of her lungs. There were even some lucky days when she woke up and realized that she wasn’t in immediate danger. This made Brayden happy, as he couldn’t stand the thought of his wife being scared of him.
Two years of struggles
Unfortunately, Laura’s memory didn’t simply return after a couple of weeks. She instead spent the next two years existing in a life of misery where she had no idea what was going on, where she was, or who she was with. As if that wasn’t enough, Laura was also suffering from physical pain alongside her emotional and mental trauma.
As the pole fell on the young women, it caused significant damage to her spinal cord, which caused her to experience tension headaches and back spasms. She would often wake up in the night in intense pain, and Brayden often too his wife to the ER in the hope that they would be able to heal her. However, it was just part of her injury.
Leaving college
Because of the inexplicable pain that Laura suffered from on a daily basis, she couldn’t function normally. She had to leave college before she was able to graduate, and this meant that she had to give up her dream of one day becoming a teacher.
As if that wasn’t enough, Laura had also lost her ability to read and write, and she often struggled to speak in coherent sentences. Although she tried to reach out to the company in charge of the event, they didn’t acknowledge their safety mistake on the day. Because Laura was too ill to fight, she didn’t receive any compensation for the incident.
Losing her job
With medication and medical bills to contend with, Laura found herself in a sticky situation. She had received no compensation, she had to leave college, and she even lost her job because she could no longer function to the best of her ability. It seemed as though things were getting worse for Laura, but this was just the start of her tough journey in life.
Alongside all of the other pressure, the young woman also had to come to terms with the fact that she was a married woman. She has no idea who her husband was, but in the eyes of the law, she was betrothed to him for the rest of her life. It was a bitter pill to swallow.
Hoping for the best
As Laura learned more about her supposed life before the incident, she spent her days hoping for the best. She dreamed of a day where she would simply wake up from a long sleep and remember everything that she had forgotten – but that just didn’t happen. In fact, it still hasn’t happened today.
Laura has no memory of what once was, and she still doesn’t remember the day that she read Brayden’s letter for the first time or the day that they got married. However, that never happened. Laura was instead pining for a life away from the stranger beside her and was pining for her parents and her old friends, and her old life.
A tough blow
Brayden could see that their situation was eating up his wife, and he just didn’t know what to do. It was a tough blow for the young man, who had to deal with the fact that his wife would jump at his slightest touch and look at him like a stranger. After all, he was a complete stranger in her mind.
He just hoped that things would go back to normal, and he hoped that memories of their love and their relationship would come back to her. He knew that it was a tall order, but he wanted nothing more than to get his wife back. Thankfully, the ball had started rolling…
Losing the attachment
After a few months, Laura and Brayden’s relationship seemed to reach a turning point. The more time that the young woman spent with her supposed husband, the more that memories of the same man came back. While she couldn’t remember or feel the love that they shared, she knew that there had been a relationship there – and she knew for a fact that they had been married.
However, this caused a state of confusion. Laura knew that she was supposed to love her husband, but she began to resent their marriage. She looked down at her wedding ring and realized that she was trapped. She was married so she had to stay with him, right?
The right thing
Laura found herself in a tough position because she knew that she had to make a decision. She could either move on from the man who was quite clearly in love with her and the man that she had supposedly been in love with herself, or she could stay with him. Laura knew that the right thing to do was to stay with him, but she felt as though she was committing herself to a life of lost memories if she did so.
Laura was in between a rock and a hard place, and Brayden was making her decision even more complicated. That’s because, despite her reservations, he never gave up trying. He wanted to make sure that she was happy and loved, and she couldn’t bear the thought of upsetting him.
A new passion project
When she was at her lowest, Laura knew that she had to do something to make her life more bearable. Although she couldn’t hold down a normal job, she decided that factor wasn’t going to stop her from earning a living and trying to live a normal life. So, she began to think about what she wanted to do before the incident took place.
Laura and Brayden had always dreamed of owning their own photography and videography business, so she decided to put all of her time into creating that dream. It became her “passion project,” and she put all of her efforts into it. However, she had to take it slow at first.
Working in increments
Due to her head injury, Laura struggled to concentrate for long periods of time. So, when she first started working on her passion project, she could only work in small 15-minute increments. She would then need to rest and recuperate for three hours because she would suffer from extreme tension headaches, and pain.
Working made Laura cry out in pain, but she knew that she couldn’t let her tears or the pain get the better of her. When they dried up, she picked her laptop back up and continued to work as hard as she could. Before too long, her love of photography and capturing beautiful moments swirled back into her memories, and she realized that she had made the right decision.
New energy
As the second year of her incident passed her by, Laura seemed to wake up with a newfound sense of self and energy. She told herself that she wasn’t going to let her situation get the better of her, and she knew that she had to push past the pain if she wanted to move forward with her life.
So, she took herself back to school and enrolled in two college classes that would hopefully allow her to graduate. The work itself and the exams were tough, and Laura still found that her mind fogged over, and she still struggled to read and write. However, she didn’t give up, and she was determined to succeed.
Making a decision
With this new passion for school and her career, Laura knew that she needed to make a decision in terms of her personal life. She couldn’t continue to live her married life in limbo, and she needed to work out what was going to happen with her and Brayden. Thankfully, she knew exactly what she wanted to do.
After mustering up the courage to speak frankly with her husband, Laura made her way over to where Brayden was sitting with her engagement and wedding rings in her hand. She needed to tell him something, and she didn’t know how he would take it.
Dating again
Brayden was working on their business when his wife made her way over to him, and he couldn’t believe it when she came forth with her new idea. Laura noted that she wanted to date her husband again, and he was a little confused. However, when Laura explained her reasoning behind the strange request, everything began to make sense.
She confessed that she wanted them to fall in love again, but that it would take time and energy. After all, “You know me, but I don’t know you.” Although it took Brayden a while to fully come to terms with the fact that his wife wanted to backtrack on their marriage, he knew it was for the best.
Asking him out
To put this plan into action, Laura decided to ask her husband out for a date. She wanted them to head to the mini-golf course, and she wanted them to pretend as though it was their first date all over again. By the time they reached the third hole, the couple was laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe properly.
It was as though they were connecting again, and Laura found that she was having a huge amount of fun. Before too long, they were heading out on long drives and walks as a couple, and they were going through the motions as a new couple.
Learning about him
More than anything, Laura wanted to know everything she could about the man she had married. She didn’t remember the stories or the facts that he had once told him, and Brayden was more than happy to divulge this new information.
Of course, this also meant that Brayden had to hear Laura’s stories over and over again, but he didn’t mind. He could see that his beloved wife was coming back to him, and he was over the moon. He showed his happiness and his affection by leaving adorable notes on their bed, and even reading Laura some of her favorite books before they went to sleep.
Loving him again
After a few weeks of dating, Laura realized something about her relationship with Brayden. While she still didn’t remember their marriage before the incident, she did know that she was beginning to miss the moments that she didn’t spend with him. When they weren’t together, she thought about him all the time, and all she wanted to do was see him and be in his company.
Alongside this, she found herself giggling and smiling whenever he came near her, and she just couldn’t get enough of him. She would tell anyone who would listen just how perfect he was, and she knew that she was beginning to love him again.
Going through the motions
Of course, Laura knew that their new relationship would be a process. She couldn’t bring herself to jump right back into a marriage with someone who was still so unknown to her, but she soon found herself going through the motions of this love.
To begin with, Brayden became her best friend. The more they spent time with each other, Brayden then became her crush. Before too long, she had fallen right back in love with him and found herself wanting to spend every minute of every day with him. Within her blog post, she noted that “Love is a choice, and I am choosing to love Brayden.”
Something new
While Laura knows that she will probably never get her old memories back, she can rest easy knowing that she has been able to make new memories and acknowledge new feelings for her husband. That’s something that many people don’t get the chance to do, but they have been lucky enough to experience this new way of life.
Thanks to this second chance, they were able to keep going, and Brayden was able to keep the love of his life in his arms. If Laura hadn’t decided to give their love another chance, would they have lasted a lifetime? Or would their marriage have crumbled due to lost memories?
A beautiful summer
Amazingly, the couple dated for a whole summer, and there’s no doubt about the fact that this was a summer of love. Laura enjoyed getting to know her husband, and Brayden loved the chance that he was getting the chance to fall in love with his wife all over again. In fact, by the time the summer was over, he knew that he had an important question to ask the love of his life.
Although he remembered their first set of vows, he didn’t want Laura to go without the memory of their wedding day. So, he asked her to marry him for the second time! Of course, Laura said yes. She couldn’t wait for them to have their new beginning.
Unconditional love
While Laura could have questioned her decision to marry the man who had become a stranger, she knew in her bones that it was the right thing to do. Not only had she learned to love her husband again, but she had also been blessed with a man who was willing to go to the ends of the earth for her.
He had struggled with Laura’s memory loss, and there were times when he questioned whether his wife would ever love him again. However, he knew that he had to continue, and he knew that it would work out in the end. His love was unconditional, and he meant it.
Planning a wedding
Laura and Brayden are now planning their second wedding, and Laura can’t wait to tie the knot with her husband and remember the amazing day for the rest of her life. While she knows that she was married before, she wants to use their second wedding as one to embrace the second stage of their life.
After all, many people don’t get the chance to fall in love twice, but they have the option to showcase their love and their commitment to each other for the second time in their lives. That’s something that cannot be replicated, and it’s something that nobody can take away from them.
Looking back
Although Laura’s life has dramatically changed since her incident, she knows that her life has since made its way back on course. She has fallen in love with her husband all over again, and she has been able to take her career in a completely different path.
If she had not experienced the knock on the head, she might have gone on to be a teacher and not enjoyed her life as much as she does now. Today, she can rest easy knowing that she has been able to create a thriving business and that she has been able to share that with the love of her life.
A real rollercoaster
Today, Laura and Brayden run the hugely successful videography company by the name of Fagonello Productions. Specializing in couples and wedding ceremonies, they make it their mission to showcase the love between two people on their special day. Not only do they get to work together as a couple, but they also get to surround themselves with those who are just as loved up as they are.
This gives them the chance to remind themselves of how far they have come over the past few years. They went from strangers to lovers, and then from lovers to strangers, and then back again. It’s been a rollercoaster, but one that has got them off at the right stop.
Following their journey
Thanks to Laura’s social media post and her online blog, people from across the globe have been able to read their amazing story. While there are many people who have sent their condolences and apologized for the struggles that Laura has had to face over the years, they have also congratulated the couple on defying the odds and proving that true love always wins.
In fact, many of these people now follow the couple on social media and love to keep up with their whereabouts and the goings-on in their life. They can see that the couple are mad about each other, and it’s hard to believe that they went through such struggles.
Defying the odds
True love is often hard to find, and you never quite know where life is going to take you next. While there are some people who get to experience the fairytale lifestyle, there are others who find themselves struggling due to ill-health or personal circumstances that are out of their control.
For Laura and Brayden, they never expected their lives to be turned upside down after a devastating incident. However, after losing her memory and realizing that her husband was a stranger, Laura has since fallen back in love with Brayden and defied all the odds. We wish them the utmost happiness.
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