Wife Spends Five Years Falling in Love with Husband She Couldn't Remember After Losing Memory
After the death of her first husband to heart and lung disease in 1998, Oklahoma woman Angela Sartin got remarried to Jeff Hartung.
The couple and their children lived happily for over a decade together, and in 2012, Angela moved to New York so that her daughter could train with the SLK ballet.
But in 2013, Angela stepped into a crosswalk and was struck by an NYPD vehicle.
She was raced to the hospital and put into a medically induced coma. Angela suffered a traumatic brain injury, broken teeth, partial hearing and vision loss, facial fractures and nerve damage.
“At the beginning, we weren’t even sure she was going to survive,” Jeff, 51, said. “She started showing signs of severe brain injury with limb movement when she was unconscious.”
Jeff watched over his wife day in and day out until, eventually, she awoke from the coma. However, she no longer knew who he was.
For the first two weeks after waking up, she was unable to speak, and would stare at the man who’d set up an office in her room.
When she learned that man was her husband Jeff, she didn’t believe it.
Angela awoke believing it was the year 2000. She’d forgotten the death of her first husband, memories of raising her kids, and her marriage to Jeff.
“I thought he was the doctor,” she said. “I thought it was the year 2000. I thought my kids were 2 years-old and maybe 8 years-old.”
In the next five years, Angela moved back to Tulsa with her family and worked to piece her life back together. Although her memories never returned, she has continued to rely on her faith and her husband to pull her through.
“I’m in the business of re-building and creating new memories for her,” Jeff explained.
“I’m getting excited,” Angela said. “My memory is still completely gone, and it takes me a lot to remember to get excited about things, but I have pictures all over the house of Jeff and me, and he’s just such an awesome man. It makes me cry.”
And the love the two shared over the years was so strong that they have fallen in love again. The two are now planning to renew their vows in Central Park to give Angela a memory of their marriage.
“It’s so what I want. I remember getting married to my first husband. I want that [with Jeff],” she said. “I am falling in love with him again.”
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