英语美文：丢失记忆的男人

 Terry Evanshen was one of Canadian football’s greatest receivers——a little man in a big man’s game who carried the ball for more than 10,000 yards in 14 bone-jarring seasons. He played every down as if it was his last. And in all his years in the pros 1 a career that put him in the top 10 in total catches with a remarkable 2 92 touchdowns he surrendered only three fumbles 3. A statistic 4 that’s a measure of his legendary 5 determination to never give up. Despite his Hall of Fame career, Terry’s memories of his playing days have been irretrievably lost to amnesia 6. The 14 years that saw Terry win the Schenley Award for outstanding Canadian player twice, seven all-star selections and a raft of other records have been forgotten.

特里?伊文森是加拿大橄榄球史上最伟大的接球手之一。在这项大个子的运动里，小个子的他每逢比赛，要抱着球狂奔10000码（约9144米）以上。他在狂暴而激烈的赛场上闯荡了14个赛季。 每次进攻，他都将它看作是自己的最后一次进攻机会。他总共92次完成“触地得分”，成绩骄人。在他打职业赛的全部年头里，他是接球次数最多的十大优秀橄榄球手之一，他只掉过3次球。这些数字正是那他非一般的决心的真实写照—永不放弃。 显赫的职业生涯使特里在“名人堂”占有一席之地。然而，他对自己辉煌岁月的记忆，都在失忆后被彻底抹掉了。14年中，特里曾经两次荣膺象征加拿大顶级运动员的“申里奖”、七次入选全明星队，并获得无数其他荣誉，但这些通通被遗忘了。
It was in the summer of 1988 that his post-football career in sales was taking off. One day in July, his youngest daughter Jennifer remembers getting a phone call from Terry on his way home from work. “He called on his cell phone, and said, ‘I’ll be home in 10 minutes.’ Coming home for a barbecue.” Jennifer said, “And I said, ‘I love you’ and he said, ‘OK, I love you. I’ll see you in 10 minutes.’” But as he passed through an intersection 8 a van ran a red light, smashing into Terry’s jeep, ripping him out of his seat belt and sending him hurtling five meters through the air. Within minutes Terry’s unconscious body was picked up by paramedics at the side of the road. Noticing his skin had taken on a deep blue hue——indicating a lack of oxygen——medics put a pipe down Terry’s throat, and he was rushed to nearby Oshawa General hospital. “By the time Terry came in, we were ready and waiting for him,” said Marianne Timmermans, one of the nurses who initially 9 worked on him. He was in critical condition.
那是在1988年的夏天，退役后的特里经营的销售事业正处于攀升阶段。他最小的女儿詹妮弗回忆说，那是七月的一天，她接到了特里的电话。他告诉女儿，他已经下班了，正在回家途中。 “他是用手机打的电话。他说：‘我10分钟后就到家。’他正赶回家烧烤，”詹妮弗说，“接着我说：‘我爱你。’他回应道：‘我也爱你。10分钟后见。’” 然而，当他驶过一个十字路口时，一辆大货车闯红灯，直接撞向了特里的吉普车，把系着安全带的特里撞飞，抛到了5米以外。 很快，不省人事的特里被救护人员抬到了马路一旁。他的皮肤呈青紫色，很明显他已经严重缺氧。医生把一根管子插进了特里的喉咙，他被迅速送到了附近的奥沙华全科医院。 “特里被送进来之前，我们早已准备就绪，在等着他了。”当年照顾他的其中一位护士玛丽安?提莫曼斯说。 特里的情况相当危急。
Moments later, police arrived at the Evanshen home with the news. Lorraine, Terry’s wife of 25 years, remembers seeing him in the intensive care unit for the first time after the accident. There was nothing but machines all over him. He wasn’t a pretty sight, and at that time their hope and that of the doctors wasn’t very good. Terry lay deep in a coma 10. But as unbelievable as his injuries seemed to be, so too were Terry’s powers of recovery. Three weeks after being thrown from his vehicle, he came out of his coma. But although he was by all appearances intact, Terry would soon reveal an injury far more severe than whatever damage had been done to his body. A lifetime of memories had been vir-tually wiped clean. He didn’t even recognize his own wife. It wasn’t just his memories of people and events that had been erased 11. When Terry awoke from his coma, he had been all but reduced to the level of a child; everything from his ability to talk and walk to his understanding of what it meant to be a husband and a father were all gone.
过了一会儿，警察来到了伊文森家里，将这一意外告知了他的家人。 和特里生活了25年的妻子洛兰，回忆起事故后第一次在重症监护病房看到丈夫时的情形。 当时他全身上下接遍了大大小小的仪器。他看起来情况不妙，家人和医生们都不抱乐观态度。 特里处于深度昏迷状态。 正如他的受伤是突如其来的一样，他身体的康复能力同样是让人始料不及的。车祸后的三个星期，特里就从昏迷中清醒了过来。 虽然从表面看起来，特里的身体并没有受太大伤害，但人们很快发现，车祸给特里造成的影响，远不止身体上的伤害。 车祸把特里之前所有的记忆抹掉了，他甚至认不出自己的妻子。 消失的还不仅是特里对人物和事件的记忆。当他苏醒过来后，他倒退到了儿童的认知水平——无论是语言能力和行走活动，还是对“丈夫”和“父亲”角色的理解，他和一个小孩无异。
At age 44, Terry Evanshen would be starting all over again. Terry had to retrain himself how to think, how to speak, even relearning something as basic as how to shave. But as unsettling as his behavior was for his family, what made it worse was that Terry’s brain could not understand the most basic human emotions. He recalls what it was like to live without a sense of what love is: not knowing what the word meant, I wouldn’t know how to look at other people. I wouldn’t know how to show proper affection to you. What is that affection anyway? What is right, what should I do? But as much as Terry had a problem, he also had the support of his family, marked by small victories and a renewed bond between him and his three daughters like when they taught him how to play football again. “So I was standing 7 there and I said ‘Put your hand out,’ like he used to,” said Terry’s daughter Tara. “So he did and then Tracey threw him the ball and that’s when he stood there, and that’s when I realized, ‘Oh my god, I think he really doesn’t remember how to do this.’ ”
到了44岁的时候，特里?伊文森的人生突然被迫重头再来。 特里必须重新学习如何思考，如何说话，甚至学习像刮胡子这么简单的事情。特里的状况让家人痛心不已。更糟的是，特里的大脑已经完全无法理解最简单的人类情感。 后来，特里回忆起在不明白爱的那段日子里的生活情形：“不知道‘爱’这个字意味着什么，我便不懂得该用什么目光看别人；我不知道怎么向他人恰当地表达感情；感情的涵义到底是什么呢？怎样做才是对的？我该怎么做？” 特里遇到了困难，但他的家人一直不离不弃，他们在帮他一点一点地克服障碍，他和三个女儿之间也建立起了一种更加亲密的关系。她们还教他打橄榄球。 “我站在那里，对他说‘伸出手来’，就好像他从前曾做的那样，”特里的女儿塔拉说。“于是他照做了，接着特蕾西把球抛给他，但他依然直愣愣地站在那里。那一刻，我猛然意识到——‘噢，天啊，我想他真的已经忘了如何打橄榄球了。”
But when Terry returned in 1992 from a six-month stint 12 at a state-of-the-art rehabilitation 13 center in Washington State, his recovery really began to pick up steam. It has taken years to rebuild his shattered life, but today, more than 20 years since his playing days Terry is a highly sought after motivational speaker. He tells his inspiring story of perseverance 14 and courage in his presentation, Seize Each Day. “Never forget, we’re all in this game of life together,” Evanshen said, as he frequently referred to his large stack of cue cards in his hands. “We will get to the finish line, one day at a time, one moment at a time, but celebrate the journey. Seize today, because yesterday is gone and is never coming back.” The subject of the most watched Canadian movie of 2005, The Man Who Lost Himself, Evanshen says his family has been his most important asset. He stresses that he refuses to be a victim, claiming he is a survivor 15.
然而在1992年，当特里结束了在华盛顿州一个顶级的康复中心所进行的六个月疗程后，他开始加速复原。他花了多年时间让生活重新恢复正常。然而在他的运动生涯结束了二十多年后的今天，他成了一位炙手可热的励志演说家。在题为《把握每一天》的激励演讲中，他讲述了自己如何坚持不懈、勇敢面对生活的故事。 “别忘了，在生命这场竞赛中，我们都是参与者，”伊文森在演说过程中，不时需要查看手中的一大叠提示卡。“终有一天，我们会到达终点，生命中总会有那一刻的，但是，让我们为过程欢呼吧。把握今天，因为昨天已经流逝，而且永远不会再回头。” 作为加拿大2005年最卖座的电影《丢失记忆的男人》的主角原型，伊文森说他生命中最重要的财富始终是家人。他强调，他没有成为命运的受害者，他说他是与命运抗争后幸存下来的人。