I meant it when I ended last April saying things
with Coleman were very, very good. All aggression was gone, most OCD was
gone, lots of bad habits were ended, countless unproductive routines were
stopped...in all, so many good changes. Coleman was happy, we were happy,
and we felt that finally, truly, we were on the right path. The changes in diet combined with medical
supplements had proven to be a powerful force for Coleman. I really
believed there was a real possibility of a different outcome for my boy. I believed that anything was possible. And then Life said, “Hold my beer.”
It started as just a little crankiness.
Maybe he’s getting sick, I thought.
It persisted and after a couple of days he started touching things
again. He started yelling at the girls.
He stopped smiling. And then
driving, when I turned left onto Main Street, he exploded, yelling “No, go the
other way!” I started in disbelief in the rear-view mirror and thought,
Houston, we have a problem.
Over the next couple of weeks, his behaviors
worsened. Coleman was highly irritable, yelling at anyone that came his
way. He was perseverating on lights and routines and touching everything
again. His school notes came back with comments like “tough day again”
and “doesn’t seem like himself”. At the park, he kept to himself, not
caring about the kids running around playing tag. He stood facing a tree, scripting into his
hand, putting together short angry phrases that had no meaning. On his
bike, I had to practically pull him along, so stuck was he in his own world of
scripting and repeating. And the beach,
a place he had grown to love, was a disaster.
He made it impossible for any of us to enjoy, screaming at the girls to
sit down, get back to the water, get out of the water, put the book down, pick
it back up, don’t talk to your friend, go talk to your friend. Holy hell we
wanted to kill him. And when we finally
got him down to the water, he refused to go in more than a few inches, no
matter how much we prodded him. He
seemed to forget completely how he had loved to go neck-deep and let the waves
wash up over him, laughing excitedly as they approached. Instead, he stood motionless in the
ankle-deep water, scripting incomprehensible words and phrases, hand to his
face, until we had to finally coax him back out of the water. Summer turned to fall and he continued on this
path, He awoke angry every morning,
turning the start of every day into a shouting match, so much so that the rest
of us pretty much raced to see who could be the first one out of the
house. No more than 6 weeks after it had
started, things had completely unravelled and nearly all of the gains Coleman
had made over the previous 18 months were gone.
Left behind was a sad, angry boy who had stopped smiling and laughing,
who seemed lost in a world behind his scripts and shows.
It’s hard to drop so swiftly from great optimism
to great doubt. To question everything you are doing. To begin to lose hope. It was a fairly depressing year.
Around mid-February after a particularly
difficult day, I lie in bed staring at the ceiling and began to pray. Mom,
I thought, I need help here. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know
what is best, who to talk to, where to go. I need help. Please help me.
I feel asleep in tears and woke up as usual for
the busy day ahead. I dropped Emma at school, and had just arrived at my
office when my phone buzzed. I glanced at the text message and stopped in
my tracks. I was confused. The message looked like it was from my
mother. It was a text that read in part, “Good morning love. I can’t wait to see you. I just want to tell you how much I miss you.
Remember to do your very best and of course, how very much you are loved.”
I stared in disbelief. I
re-read the text again and with my heart racing, I tried to make sense of
it. I realized after a minute it was from
Emma but I was still confused. I closed
and opened the message again, and amid my panic finally realized it was a
screen shot. Emma had taken a picture of a message my mom had sent to her
years ago. I quickly texted Emma, and
asked why she had sent it. I knew she had no idea about my prayers the night
before. Emma said she didn’t know why
but she had awoken with a strong feeling about my mother and couldn’t stop
thinking about her. So she went through her phone to look at old messages
from her and found some. She loved
reading them and had forwarded one to me.
It was a sign I desperately needed. Keep going, stay strong. She was there. Silently, invisibly, continuously there.
I cried at my desk reading the message again and
then laughed and said out loud, “Thank
you. Where the hell have you been?”
J
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