Key takeaways:
Two years after Kris Lehmer (now Kris Armstrong) and Brandon Smith married, a car accident left Brandon unable to care for himself.
A judge allowed Kris to become Brandon’s legal guardian instead of his wife.
Kris remarried, and she and her husband, James, help care for Brandon together.
When high school sweethearts Kris Lehmer and Brandon Smith, who lived near Houston, married in 2006, they traded promises to love each other for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.
Kris and Brandon were both 21 at the time. They had already started to think out loud about the family they wanted to have some day.
But just 2 years into their marriage, a traffic accident shattered those plans. Brandon’s car was T-boned by a truck, leaving him in a coma.
Waiting for her husband to emerge from a coma
Kris didn’t know much about what it meant to be in a coma. But she held out hope that Brandon would one day open his eyes and come back to her — still the same person she had planned to spend the rest of her life with.
After 2 months, Brandon gradually emerged from the coma. But the traumatic brain injury he had suffered left him unable to feed or take care of himself. At the time, the couple also didn’t have health insurance.
About a year after the accident, Kris says, it was clear “he was never going to have a significant recovery.” She remembers realizing, “He’s never going to be independent. He’s never going to work again. He’s never going to be able to take care of himself.”
Feeling mixed emotions of loss
For Kris, facing the reality of that kind of future together was tough.
“It was very much like he was gone,” she says. “I felt very much like a widow, but I wasn’t.”
Kris hadn’t heard the term “ambiguous loss” — or loss without clear resolution or closure — at that time. But when she heard it in a support group for people whose loved ones have traumatic brain injuries, it helped validate her grief. The term describes feeling the loss of someone who is both absent and present at the same time, such as a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease.
At first, Kris tried to take care of Brandon at home with the help and support of friends from her church. But she soon realized she couldn’t keep up with the 24-hour physical and emotional demands of his care.
Where can I find support groups for caregivers? This list of resources includes online and in-person options.
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“I was drowning,” she says. Her friends came to her — in something like an intervention — and said, “You can’t maintain this.”
Kris realized she had to move Brandon to a skilled nursing facility. His care at the facility was eventually covered by a combination of Medicare and Medicaid. But she was unwilling to fully relinquish her role as caregiver.
Kris, who says she relies on her strong faith for support, began to feel a sense of peace when she thought of a way to honor her vows to Brandon, now that they could no longer share a husband-and-wife kind of love.
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An unusual legal request
Kris consulted lawyers about whether, if she and Brandon divorced, she could become his legal guardian.
“I was the only person in his life who was capable of caring for him,” she says. “I didn’t want Brandon to become a ward of the state.”
The request turned out to be more complex than she had imagined. But throughout the process of getting an answer, Kris took Brandon to medical appointments and saw him nearly every day.
‘I will always take care of him’
When Kris went before a judge for her guardianship hearing, the judge asked what would happen to Brandon if Kris later decided to remarry and have kids.
“Absolutely, he will be in my life forever, and I will always take care of him,” Kris remembers answering.
The judge granted her request to become Brandon’s legal guardian. And each year since, Kris has renewed her guardianship paperwork and sent a picture to the judge to let her know she’s honoring that vow.
Building a new family
In 2014, Kris was ready to find love again, and she met James Armstrong online. She explained her commitment to Brandon during her first conversation with James. And he responded by saying, “I think that’s beautiful.”
Weeks later, James met Brandon. Kris says she left the room briefly, and when she came back, James’ arm was around Brandon.
“To me, that was a big sign,” she says.
Kris and James married in 2015 and have since had two girls together, adding to their family, which also includes James’ son from a previous marriage.
Kris, now 39, is a speech pathologist who works with people who have brain injuries and spinal cord injuries. She is also a travel planner for Disney vacations. She and James bring Brandon to their home at least once a week and care for him together — whether that means changing him, transferring him, or feeding him. Their kids call him Uncle Brandon, though they know that he and Kris used to be married.
“James really honors and holds space for the fact that Brandon was my first husband and that I’ll always love him,” says Kris, who has shared her story on Tik Tok.
James has also surprised her with a promise that she’ll never forget. “James said that if anything happened to me, he would step in to become [Brandon’s] guardian,” she says.
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