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Kamilah Kashanie (KK): So far this season we’ve touched on some heavy stigmas…secrets of the past… dealing with shame… and searching for forgiveness…

In this episode…. we’re going to talk about the challenge of losing your identity as a soldier…

Society tells us all the time what “normal” should look like… And if you’re in the Military, those expectations can be even more intense…because soldiers are supposed to be tough… and show no weakness.

Sgt. Matthew Perry grew up with his own image of what it meant to serve… and he always dreamed of being a soldier.

Matthew Perry: From what I heard from my family, I wanted to be a Marine since I was six years old and. I loved being a Marine. 

Helen Perry (HP): The thing that I admired about you the most when I first met you was that you were so dedicated to the Marine Corps… Everybody jokes and says you ‘ate the apple, loved the core’.

KK: But what happens when that identity is lost?

HP: They said, ’well, what do you remember? And you kind of thought for a minute. And he said, I’m a Marine, right? I’m a Marine’. And we were like, ’yep, you’re a Marine’.

KK: This week…for Veterans Day, we’re going to hear the story of a Marine fighting to stay who he was… and the woman… who helped him find a new purpose…

It’s the StoryCorps Podcast from NPR. I’m Kamilah Kashanie.

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KK: In 2008, Matthew Perry was hit by three IEDs – in one day. An IED is an Improvised explosive device. They left him with multiple Traumatic Brain Injuries… 

But that didn’t stop him…

… he continued to serve

And then a few years later, while on leave from the Marines…he met a college student named Helen …

HP: Our first date was Olive Garden, and that was very fancy for us then. You were kind of chunky back in the day. 

MP: And devastatingly handsome, you forgot that one.

HP: Devastatingly handsome.

And you were a nerd on my level. So we could have good Star Trek conversations. 

MP: Kirk is better than Picard. 

HP: That is debatable… 

MP: Okay…

HP: And you were funny…and optimistic…. and nothing could break you. 

KK: Helen and Matthew got married. They started to build a life together…

And during that time, Helen finished nursing school and joined the military too. 

Then… one day in 2014…she got a phone call…

It was from Kings Bay Naval Base – where Matthew was stationed – they said his car needed to be moved…

HP: And I said, well, why don’t you call Matt? And they said, ‘Oh, we didn’t realize you didn’t know… Matt had a seizure.’ And I said, ‘No, he didn’t, like don’t say that, you’re going to get him kicked out of the military’. And they said, ‘Ma’am, you don’t understand. Something happened. You need to get down here.’

KK: When Helen got there, a couple hours later….Matthew had already been discharged from the hospital… 

But because she was a critical care nurse… she took one look at him, and knew that something was wrong.

HP: You would go from talking really, really quickly to talking very… slowly… and you couldn’t really remember my name. You suddenly stopped talking and you did what’s called ‘fencing pose’, your arm kind of goes up into this weird position. We got you down on the floor and you stopped breathing. And I remember saying, oh, my God, I don’t feel a pulse. 

KK: Matthew had had a serious grand mal seizure. It’s an uncontrolled electrical disturbance in the brain…that causes a loss of consciousness and violent muscle contractions.

And his heart stopped… 

Helen reacted  the only way she knew how… She gave him a precordial thump… which is basically like a big punch to the chest… 

HP: You immediately took this big [GASP]… And I just remember how relieved I felt … 

But when he came to… something was different….

HP: The doctor came in and started doing the neuro exams. ‘What year is it?’ You didn’t know. ‘What was your name?’ You lifted up your wrist and read your name off the bracelet. You said, ‘Perry, Matthew, R.’ And they said, ‘Do you know who this is?’ And you turned and looked at me and said, ‘She seems familiar.’ 

You were still, like, real attached to me. Like, if you went for a test, you’d be like, ‘She needs to come.’ And I remember I asked you one time, ‘What if I had been the cleaning lady?’ 

MP: You might have just been taking out trash, but you were there. [Laughs]. 

HP: But I was there.

And then they sent you home and then two months later, three months later…. you still had no memory.  

KK: Matthew’s memory still hasn’t fully come back…

The trauma from the blasts back in 2008 led to something called Post-Traumatic Epilepsy…. which is a cognitive disorder.

It did serious damage to both his long and short term memory. 

And what’s wild… is that sometimes these injuries don’t even show up until 5 to 10 years later – like in Matthew’s case. 

And they can be debilitating…

But Matthew was more worried… about if he’d be able to keep doing… the thing he loved the most… 

MP: The moment they told me I had seizures, was the moment I knew, OK, they’re going to kick me out of the Corps. I was just like, well, there’s nothing else that will make me happy. Nothing else was on my mind. All I knew I was.. I’m not going to be a Marine anymore. 

HP: I think the thing that affected you the most was for a long time, you didn’t know what kind of a Marine you were and you were worried that maybe you weren’t a good Marine.

MP: I don’t remember the good times or the bad times and even though they’re bad times. It would be nice to know them….

KK: And one of those “bad times” was coming face-to-face with the impacts of war… 

Going back to the day of the blasts… when Matthew was hit by three IEDs… there was something else that happened…

His best friend, Ivan “Willie” Wilson” had been killed… 

HP: …You are wearing a bracelet right now that has Willie’s memorial on it. And… We took that off of you when you’re in the hospital, obviously, because you couldn’t have anything hard on you for seizure precautions. And so when we got home, I set it aside. And you were just kind of… You were so confused that you would fold the same basket of laundry repeatedly and it would keep you busy so that I could go do things like make dinner and things like that. 

And one day I came in and this was only a couple of days outside of the intensive care unit and you walked out of the bedroom and you were holding the bracelet and you, um, asked me. You said ‘Something really bad happened, didn’t it?’ Because you had seen that Willie’s name was on there. And I had to explain to you what happened to Willie. And that was really horrible, just because I knew how much it hurt you. And I was sort of realizing how sick you were, and I just hated having to be the one to give you that news. 

MP: Hmm.

HP: I know you don’t remember any of that, do you?

MP: No. 

HP: Yeah. 

MP: I don’t really remember, like, how we met. The reason I remember we were close….because I have a photo of me and him going to… Iraq or Afghanistan?

HP: No, that was Afghanistan.

MP: It was Afghanistan. We’re on a plane and we’re both sleeping and both of our heads are resting on each other….

HP: How would you describe your memory loss to a stranger? 

MP: It’s frustrating that…I don’t remember, and every day is kind of like a new day and everything behind it was, like, deleted.  It’s like reading the back cover of a movie, but not watching the movie. 

HP: Which I guess you get to skip some of the boring parts, maybe that’s a perk.

MP: Yeah, the romantic parts. [laughter] 

Truthfully, I don’t know why some things stick around and the other things don’t. 

HP: I remember one time you told me it’s hard to know what you’re missing if you don’t know what you’re missing. It’s just gone. 

MP: Mm hmm. 

HP: How do I help you? [laughs]

MP: Oh, here we go. How much time do we got?

You go to my appointments because if you did not, I would not be able to explain what’s going on with me. At all. You help me fill out paperwork because I sometimes date things 1960s. 

HP: You told me one time I was your ‘service support wife’…

I know that one of the things that I have started asking you is how you feel about things, because I know that knowing your emotions for a certain experience is something that you don’t remember a lot. So I’ll ask you, like, ‘did you like this? Were you excited? Were you anxious?’ 

So that I can remember for you. And then that way, when you ask me about it later on, I can sort of be your working memory to fill it in for you. Just remember that sometimes I’ll throw in fake stuff just to throw you off.

MP: Vegetables…

HP: Vegetables. You used to not eat anything green. You would eat some salad with ranch. And then when you came home from the hospital, I started with chicken and broccoli and you said, ‘Do I like this?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, it’s your favorite. That’s why I made it’. And then we tried asparagus and we tried brussel sprouts…and we figured out which veggies really you like and don’t like…

MP: Yup. Marriage based on lies. [laughter]

KK: To keep their lives on track… Helen and Matthew came up with a system… They set up whiteboards around the house with important information, calendars with daily routines, alerts for all the medications Matthew takes… basically all the things they need to keep life moving.

But even with all their systems, their love, and their humor…they still struggled…

MP: I know a bunch of other guys. If they had my injury, those spouses would’ve been out the door real quick. 

MP: Was there ever a time when you wanted to give up on us?

HP: Oh man. We’ve had some rough times….

KK: So far this has mostly been Matthew’s story… 

After the break, we’ll hear what Helen was going through…

Stay with us…

KK: Navigating a relationship with severe memory loss is something that most people probably can’t imagine… 

Matthew was constantly facing a past that he couldn’t quite hold on to…

And Helen became his caregiver… nurse… partner…and his memory bank… 

Over time….she started forgetting how to take care of herself… 

In 2016, Matthew was forced to retire from the Marine Corps…. a few months later… Helen left active duty too.

She decided to go on a three-week humanitarian aid trip to the Middle East…

And not long after she got back home, she had some really hard realizations…

HP: When I came back from Iraq, I was broken and lost. Part of what made it so bad was I was in this horrible war zone, and I was happier there than I was at home. 

KK: By the time she got back to the States… they were both dealing with serious depression…

But Helen couldn’t quite let go…

HP: People used to heckle me because, you know, even though we were separated at that point, I would still message you to be like, did you take your meds? You know, do you know when your appointment is, you know, trying to keep you squared away with that kind of stuff.

And then you got in a bike accident and broke your collarbone… When you woke up after surgery, you called me and you said, I don’t wanna get divorced…. I want to work this out. I was like, OK… We’ll try to work things out. 

MP: I remember the hospital part. But I don’t remember the phone call. 

HP: Yeah…

But it was never because I wanted to give up on you… that wasn’t any of it at all. 

KK: They started finding their way back to each other…they continued to go to therapy… and reimagined what “normal” looked like for them…

And then …. Another big life change happened…

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HP: Do you remember what you said when I posted the ultrasound on the bathroom mirror? 

You were like, ‘what’s this?’ And then you got very excited. 

KK: Doctors had been telling them for the last ten years that they couldn’t have their own kids…

MP: I do remember Ethan’s birth. I was the first one that got to hold him. And then I got to take him to the room and spend just a solid two hours just me and him, nobody else. Don’t 100 percent remember how I felt, though. 

HP: What’s your favorite part of the day?

MP: Ethan. Waking up and changing his diaper and feeding him like I don’t know why people complain about diapers after you give them a bath… 

[Ambient audio of Matthew and Ethan playing]

And he’s just calm, and you’re giving them his milk, and he’s like just winding down towards bedtime, especially when he burps and smells like formula. I don’t know why people complain, it is like a pleasant smell. 

HP: [Laughs]

HP: What are your biggest fears? 

MP: That I’m going to fail as a father. 

HP: You’re a great daddy, though.  

MP: For the beginning part. But when he gets older and starts asking me questions? That’s going to be really tough, because it can be hard to tell him to do it this way or this way if I can’t remember how to do it myself.  Everybody else grows up and they learn from their experiences. I don’t get that. 

HP: You have so much love for that little boy… And you turn all of the same love and attention that you had for the corps, you give to him times a thousand. 

MP: And I get to be a stay at home daddy. 

HP: And you do it with a smile on your face…

KK: Matthew has a new purpose in life… being a father….

But he won’t ever be an active duty Marine again… 

And the honest truth is that his condition is only gonna get worse… 

HP: It was really hard when you realized your seizures weren’t going away.. 

MP: I feel like I’m like a volcano. It’s not a matter of if –– it’s when. And I don’t know when that’s going to come. I don’t know how big it’s going to be. 

HP: How do we overcome those fears? 

MP: I don’t think we really overcome them, I think we just live our lives. Yeah. We make bucket lists and do things that everyone says they wanna do, but they don’t.

HP: I think when you first started having your seizures, it was eye opening for us to realize that life is… literally very short and we just need to make the best out of it…Love all the people around us and….and laugh as much as we can. 

MP: And you married a marine. Marine’s are nothing but jokes. 

HP: You are nothing but jokes. 

MP: Am I still the same person? 

HP: You’re still the same person. You still have this optimism about you and life and… you still make fun of me… You’re still just you.

KK: Matthew eventually received a Purple Heart… 

And Helen still works part time doing humanitarian aid relief in warzones. 

Their son’s middle name is Wilson… in honor of Matthew’s friend, who was killed in Afghanistan

And they’re expecting their second child in February…

That’s all for this episode of the StoryCorps podcast. 

It was produced by our lead producer, Eleanor Vassili, and edited by Jarrod Sport, who’s our senior producer. Our technical director is Jarrett Floyd, who also composed our theme song. Our Associate Producer is Max Jungreis. Our fact-checker is Erica Anderson. And Jasmyn Morris is our Story Consultant.

To see what music we used in the episode… go to StoryCorps – dot – org… where you can also check out original artwork created for this season by artist Lyne Lucien.

For the StoryCorps podcast, I’m Kamilah Kashanie. Catch you next week.