The Passing of A Friend

Today started like any other day.  Kids were up and wanted breakfast and the dog was itching to get outside.  Then the phone rang.  My mom was on the other end and she asked me what my friend Joni’s married name was.  I knew immediately why she called………………………………………………………………………………………….

Last night I went to bed early and when Chuck came to bed he woke me and told me that there had been a person killed in a mowing accident.  I thought how horrible and wondered how it happened and then went back to sleep.  When mom asked me about Joni, I said, “Oh no, it couldn’t have been her”.  Mom hesitated and I told her about what Chuck had told me just hours before.  She said she was sorry to deliver such bad news so early in the morning, but it had been her.  Apparently, Joni was mowing her yard and was near the mailbox.  A 72 year old woman went left of center and struck Joni and killed her.  When her husband came home, he found ambulances and the sort and their mower in the middle of the road.  Tragic.  Horrific.  Unthinkable.  Numb.

At first I was not sure how to react.  There were four of us my senior year in high school that went to lunch together every day.  Joni was one of them.  We were in choir and band together as well.  I had known her since sixth grade.  As we went our separate ways after graduation, got married and started a family, we drifted apart.  Last year, she and her family moved back into our home county.  Last November we started e-mailing each other as we had a common interest.  Our sons.  They had different diagnosis’ but shared common abnormalities.  Each time we communicated, I felt like I was back in high school.  Same old Joni.  Big laugh, wide smile, joy dancing in her eyes.  Granted, we were e-mailing, but you could see and hear it in her words. 

I cried, bawled actually.  Even though our friendship didn’t stand the test of time, we had reconnected.  But, it is the circle of motherhood that brings us all together…closer.  The ties that bind were seared with the tears and joys of raising our children.  Our connection was with our boys.  That is where my heart aches.  All mothers reading this will have a lump in their throat, thinking what if that had been me and what about my family.  But, it is the bond you form with other mothers over your developmentally disabled children.  I’ve been surrounded by them for the past four years and it is a unique group.  I am searching my soul for what I can do to help her son.  I feel like it is my duty and would definitely be my honor.  I feel like it is my mission to do something that will benefit him.  As I search and fumble for an answer, I also think of someone else.

The third person in our lunch quartet was our friend, Sarah.  She managed to keep the friendship fire burning with Joni and they became almost like sisters, sharing in joys and sorrows of their lives.  Sarah and I have reconnected as well and have a date every Thanksgiving weekend to see each other and have a good laugh.  She, like others, are in pain over this tragedy.  I called her this morning because I wanted her to know that I understand how she is feeling and that I want to be there if she needs to talk.  She is my sister-friend and you just can’t have to many of those.  The ironic thing is that when I talked last about hill jumping and donuts in the parking lot, Joni was behind all of it.  Her and her big old car.  She was definitely the adventurous one of the group, yet she always made me feel safe.   Joni was mischievious and caring.  She and I never exchanged a cross word or had a heated argument.  She had an athletic build and excelled in whatever she did.  She was kind and ornery – very ornery – she could make me blush quicker than anyone with the things she said.  She was a wonderful wife and mother; a reliable daughter and a loyal friend.  But, most of all she was a good person.  It may sound so simple and cliche, but it is the truth.  She was proud of her family, but I hope she was proud of herself.  Rest In Peace and May God Bless You and Your Family.     

A License to Kill??

Bryce is attending summer school this year and he goes four days a week.  The school is located 25 miles away and since the price of gas is too high for me to drive back and forth each day, I have been discovering things to do in this town.  Yesterday, I forgot to eat lunch before we left and after I dropped of Bryce I grabbed a coney dog from the local A/W.  I drove to the parking lot of Home Depot and sat and ate my coney before entering.  I switched the radio to the AM stations to check out what was going on on talk radio.  I first pulled up 700 out of Cincinnati and was listening to Bill Cunningham(my Dad looooves Bill C. and signed up for 700’s fan club or whatever it was called).  He, of course, was debating a highly sensitive topic that was generating lots of opinions.  The topic:  a 16 year old boy who was in a juvenile detention center waiting to hear if he was going to be tried as an adult for the death of two teenage girls that were passengers in his car.  That may seem to be a clear concept of what is going on, but wait, there is more.

It was the last day of school and this young man offered the girls a ride home from school.  As they were driving home, the route that he took was more for joy ride purposes and he began to race with another car.  The road in question is posted as a 35mph speed limit.  According to the sheriff, he was driving 70mph.  The young man lost control of his car and crashed, ejecting one of the girls from the car to her death.  The parents of the deceased have asked the prosecutor to NOT charge him as an adult because it will not help bring anyone back.  The story continues.

According to the LAWS of the land, this young man can be charged as an adult because he was in violation of more than one law that would allow him to be charged with involuntary manslaughter.  First, he was speeding.  Second, the passengers in his car consisted of more than one underage teenager(who knew?).  To note, this young man was tested for alcohol and drugs and came back CLEAN.  Incidentally, if he had tested positive for anything, it would not have changed or weighted the decision because evidentally it doesn’t factor in(again, who knew?).  If he is tried as an adult, he could be sent to the prison in Chillicothe or Orient and basically, time in those prisons for this age of boy will be detrimental.  I found out through callers, that this young man is from a good family, has no prior record, had his own lawncare business during the summer and was an excellent student.  The parents are considered upstanding citizens without any records of their own.  And to reitterate, the parents of the deceased do not want him tried as an adult.  They want him to stay at the juvenile detention center because he is a person who can be “rehabilitated” and he will live with this the rest of his life.

So, here are my own personal thoughts.  How many of you reading this did stupid, stupid things when you were teenagers.  I have many.  My short list of idiotic things I did with a car, either as a driver or a passenger include:  doing doughnuts in the parking lot of the swimming pool when there was inches of snow on the ground; going hill-jumping in prime daylight hours; hiding a friend in the trunk of the car to get into a X-rated drive-in movie because she was not of age and missing an exit on an interstate which led me into a “not so nice” section of Dayton.  The thing is pretty much everything I did was between the ages of 16 and 18.  Why?  Because we could and it seemed like a lot of fun and we never got caught.  I was a better than average student, I had a summer job at the local ice cream store, I had no priors and my parents were upstanding, church-going, paid their bills on time citizens.  I could have been in this young man’s position if things had gone awry one of those many times I did something stupid.  Of course, my family would not want me to go to a maximum security prison and I don’t think this young man should either.  The selling point for me is, if the parents of the deceased do not want the young man that caused the death to be tried as an adult, then the prosecutor should follow their wishes.  Joe Deters do not give me this wishy-washy crap that you have to follow the law, for gods-sake, we have priests and Presidents who have broken laws, I think you could side-step this one time.

What do I think needs to be done to, at least, help stop this from happening again?  Change the age of driving.  A person has to be 18 to vote, 21 to drink legally, 18 to join the military, but we give a drivers license to a 16 year old teenager and the keys to a “2,000 pound machine” and allow them to share the road with me and you.  Crazy.  Yeah, when I was 16 I would have been mad if they decided to change the age of driving to 18, but I would have been two years older, two years wiser and two years more mature.   If you have to be at least 18 years old to participate in other life experiences, then why not include receiving a drivers license.  What do you think?  

Let’s Not Fight Over the Cause, Instead, Fight For the Cure

OK – I am feeling a bit feisty today so let me see how many people I can get riled up.  Immunizations do not cause autism!!  Yeah – I’ve preached on this subject before but until I can see hard proof on paper in front of my inquiring brown eyes, I’m sticking with my gut feeling:  IMMUNIZATIONS DO NOT CAUSE AUTISM!

A few nights ago I read on the scrolling screen below the nightly news people that a judge was trying to decide if an autism related case should go to court.  Apparently a woman in D.C. wants to sue a pharmaceutical company and the government because an immunization shot gave her daughter autism.  Autism is directly correlated with the neurological functions of the brain.  This malfunction is already in place when the child is born and because of it not working properly autism and other developmental disabilities can come into play.

Bryce is attending a summer school progam that is geared towards children who will begin Kindergarten this fall.  The school, The Nicholas School, teaches K-8 during the regular school year to children who have neurological disabilities.  This is the only children they accept.  No typical children to serve as role models, just the children who are in need of therapeutic learning.  When we went to the open house, I was blown away.  Very high tech equipment and an extremely knowledgable staff.  We were given literature to read before the first day of summer school.  One of the papers outlined the 4 steps to neurological growth from birth.  It started with a baby following a parent with their eyes and responding with cries to ending with talking and walking at 18 months of age.  It explained what the brain function was for each step of the way and what happens when the brain has been slightly damaged or altered and is unable to relay messages to the baby on how to accomplish each step.  The information laid out how they will use their therapy to not make the body do what it should but how it will teach the brain to do the right thing.  Best analogy that I can come up with is that you have a lamp that is not working properly.  You change the bulb and it still does not work.  Instead of banging it on the table to see if you can jumpstart a wire to make everything click, what you actually do is rewire the whole lamp from scratch to make it work.  This will take longer, but in the end you will have a better result.  So, in a nutshell, the brain is already messed up at birth.  An immunization is not given before birth so I don’t see why this is such a popular theory.  The brochure did list possible reasons for a cause: alcohol, drugs, x-rays in the first trimester and anesthetics.  I had to take insulin during the last trimester and I have always wondered if that had somehting to do with it, but I will probably never know.

I never heard what the outcome was on the D.C. mother.  I feel for her and understand her pain and frustration in parenting an autistic child, but how does going to court help the situation.  Even if she won, no amount of millions of dollars is going to change the way her daughter is.  Instead, let’s put that time, energy and money spent in the court system to a research facility to find a cure.  Let’s not battle each other over the CAUSE and instead UNITE FOR THE CURE.    

Yoo-Hoo Social Security, Where Are You?

Have you ever received the letter summing up your reported income and how much you have paid into Medicare and Social Security.  Normally, once a year after you have done your taxes this handy little info-guide to your retirement shows up asking you to take a look at the reported income and make sure it is accurate.  It then tells you what your family/spouse would receive upon your demise and whether you have made enough to request Medicare at the age of 65.  I always find these letters entertaining.  It amazes me to see that if I would croak tomorrow, I am actually worth more dead than alive.  I have worked, in my lifetime, a total of 19 years.  The income I have generated allows for a nice monthly payment to go to Chuck to help with the kids.  Since I am a stay at home mom right now, any money that he would receive is more than I am making now.  So really I am worth more dead than alive(monetarily).  But, here is where it becomes absurd.  

In this letter it also explains how Social Security is used and how it has been distributed.  The latest letter(we received this week)tells us that if WE do not do ANYTHING about the current state of Social Security, by the year 2040 it will be gone.  WHAT!  Where is all the money going?  According to their statistics, the money being paid out in Social Security has doubled in the last 20 years and they see this becoming the trend.  Ooooh – many questions filled my head.  So I will ask them and let all of you give me the answers.

1.  Why do WE have to DO something about it?  Where the hell are all of our elected officials in Washington?  Oh I forgot.  They are too busy campaigning and slamming the leader of the free world to worry about their constitutents.

2.  Where is Al Gore and his little black lockbox when we need him?  I kid.  Or am I?  That lockbox sounds like a good idea right now, but he is too busy telling me how to save the Earth.  Why do I need to go “green” now when I may not get any “green” when I am 65.

3.  Is my pending SS money going to illegal aliens?  I don’t know and some of you may think that is an ignorant question, but COME ON PEOPLE.  We have people sneeking in from Mexico to come to this country to “seek a better life” and to live “in the melting pot of the world”.  Fine.  But could you at least have the courtesy to learn English.  You snuck in, now give me a reason to WELCOME you by learning to speak our language.  At least years ago immigrants came on a boat passing the Statue of Liberty and upon reaching the shore got down on their hands and knees and kissed the land.  They were appreciative and I welcome them for that.  Do you think that when they crawl over a fence in the black of night they stop for a second and kiss the ground?  I digress.

4.  Where in the hell are the people in Washington?  Oops.  I already asked that question.  I forgot.  The Democrats are too busy trying to rally votes for an Immigration bill and the Republicans are too busy worrying if Fred Thompson is going to enter the Presidential race.

So ladies and gentlemen I guess we do have to solve this problem ourselves.  My solution would be to start stashing your money under your mattress like our grandmothers used to do – but don’t let Elisabeth Hasselbeck know because she would think you were breaking a marriage vow by hiding money from your husband.  In the words of my mother:”Whatever”.  

  

The Graduate

I have had a day to compose myself before I could sit down and write this.  Yesterday was a day that I will always remember:  Bryce graduated from Pre-school.  It was beautiful and moving and painfully poignant and fun all at the same time.  You know what I mean?  It’s like other days that will live on in your memory:  graduating high school/college, a first kiss, your wedding, the birth of your first child, the first day of school for your first born and then for the baby of the brood.  It was very emotional and really, I did not see it coming.  I knew I would feel very proud and happy for him, but I was not ready for the floodgates to open.  I kept pinching my hand so that I would not call attention to myself as I was trying to control the river of tears that were flowing from my eyes.  There were 124 students and I did not see one other parent as choked up as I.

The school has a ratio for special needs children versus “typical children” in each classroom.  Each teacher has approximately 8 special needs children with 4 typical children acting as “role models”.  So, not all of the children yesterday were special needs, but it didn’t matter, because I think that everyone just saw a large group of excited 5-6 years olds each wearing a colored graduation cap with a rainbow colored tassel.  The students paraded in and took their seats.  After the obligatory introduction, a song was sung and then four classes made their way to receive their diploma.  Each student marched through a balloon archway and made their way to their teacher who handed them a manilla folder with their name on it.  They lined up and were applauded and then took their seats.  Then another song was sung and more diplomas.  This was the ritual until all students had been recognized.  Then the lights were turned off in the gymnasium and each child had a flashlight that they used while they sang, “This Little Light of Mine”.  Cue tears.  The lights then remained off while a power point presentation was shown on a huge screen.  Cue the sentimental music from Lee Ann Womak, Nat King Cole and others.  With the music serving as a background, a picture was shown of each student sometime during the school year with their name in big bright colors.  Some were in the classroom while others were shown with their happy, smiling faces on the playground, which was the case for Bryce.  Cue many, many more tears.  Then the lights came back on and refreshments were ready to be devoured by a lot of hungry little children……and parents, too!

When we returned home, I told Chuck that I will never make it through the first day of kindergarten.  After he left to go back to work, I went to the safe-haven of my bed and cried my eyes out.  Even now, I am welling up.  To witness Bryce’s first day of Wee School and see the young man he was at the ceremony was quite a transformation.  He is not yet a “typical” student and he may never be, but he has made leaps and bounds towards striving to be better and integrate himself amongst others his age.  Three years ago, Bryce had no language skills, no social skills, very little eye contact and was lost on so many different levels.  Yesterday, I saw a little boy who was excited and anxious; a little boy who was tapping his friend’s shoulder to point out that another little boy had the same shirt on as him; a little boy who was telling his friend Tyler ”see Brady, he my brother”(how he could see us in the nosebleed section, I’ll never know!) and a little boy who wore a smile the size of the quarter moon.  Here was a boy that couldn’t sit still and didn’t want to be near others three years ago and with the aid of a social story that his teacher wrote for him, sat through the entire program happy as a clam.

He did it.  Iknow to some it may seem like just a silly little story with an overprotective mother who needs to get her head examined, but it really is so much more.  He did it.  He walked by himself through an archway towards his teacher without someone holding his hand.  He sat in a chair for an hour without a big fuss.  He participated in the songs.  He physically touched other people.  He did not wince at the noise and change of lighting.  HE SMILED WITH JOY IN HIS EYES AND IN HIS HEART!!!  He did it – my son - the graduate.