One night I was scrolling through
Facebook, and read a post about a
disabled child being strapped in their
seat……and forgotten for 3 hours.
It's not like I don't see stories like this
often enough, but this one brought
back a clear memory of our Rachel.
We had put her in a good school.
We had liked all the teachers.
They assured us we could drop in
on them anytime, as was our custom.
This was key for us.
One day, we did just that.
Rachel was in her 'grasshopper' which
is a hard plastic therapy equipment.
She looked very uncomfortable.
We looked closer and she was
whimpering quietly. A rare thing by this age, because we had learned how to
meet her needs before the cry.
Her Dad asked how long she had been in this chair. Not one teacher knew!
There were red spots on her legs and places rubbed raw from being there
far too long. This baby girl had enough
pain in her life, so we were impatient with those we had entrusted to make sure she didn’t receive more pain.
Her Daddy picked her up,
and we loved on her a minute.
We packed up all of her things and left,
telling them we would be back, if
they were able to get better teachers.
She never went back.
But that memory came to me in a
rush as I read the other story.
I began to cry, thinking of the times
Rachel could not communicate.
How often was something missed?
People cannot understand the issues
you encounter with special needs children.
Most don’t particularly care.
We can hardly take care of our own issues.
I understood that.
We had some great teachers,
some not so good and a few bad ones.
Often, the experts are rigid and intimidating, not in love with the outcasts of society and cultures geared to just the well children.
We had to become her advocate in everything. I just cried thinking of what
she might have had to endure,
that I didn't know.Then I wept for all the ones who come our way so broken.
These times are called grief attacks.
Grief attacks are those times you think your grief is safe inside,
but there it will be, out in front of God
and everybody in a benign moment.
I remember standing in the garden
statues of a big store.
There was a statue of Jesus with a boy
on one side and a girl on the other.
All I saw was my children in heaven.
I burst into tears.
People probably wondered why I was so passionate about garden statues.
But I was transported to heaven right
then and there.
It was a grief attack.
Don't let these scare you.
They will come and go.
You will see, hear, smell, touch, do something and the memories will flood
all over you. You’ll be wringing wet.
It won't matter where you are or who is watching. Or what triggered it.
It will happen and when it does,
you can choose to explain or to be quiet.
I don’t mind telling people I have
children in heaven, and sometimes,
both my husband and I still grieve that.
We always will.
Death is part of life.
I feel that if it happens to them,
they will know it's okay to grieve,
no matter how long it's been.
It doesn't mean we haven't processed
our grief and moved forward.
It just means we will never forget the
eternal blessing of their lives.
I could never forget Ethan, Rachel,
Abigail or Matthew. They weren’t born
just to be forgotten.
They live today, just not in my presence.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
This is normal protocol about something
that never is quite given to normal.
Grieve well.
It's part of who you are.
When you grieve well, you give others the strength to grieve too, and together, we rise up stronger in our dark nights
and walk into the new horizon by faith.
~Ann Stewart Porter
