(84th Entry) The First…

Today is the first of what will repeat itself throughout this next year… Today would have been my parent’s 51st wedding anniversary. My father passed away on November 22nd, a few days before Thanksgiving.

Last year I wrote in my blog…

http://todreamtotouch.blogspot.com/2007/12/13th-entry-to-my-parents.html

Next we’ll have Christmas, then News Years, then his birthday, then Father’s Day, etc… Technically Thanksgiving would have been the first major day. I think that it was so close to his death that it just didn’t register.

Today my Mom has plans… she’s having people by the house and then they’re all going out to dinner… about 16 people.

Life goes on… In fact, the tribute to my Dad is that we are going on!

As he was dying we promised him that we would take care of one another and that we would all be ok.

I’m reminded of an interview that I did 22 years ago in Lufkin, TX. I interviewed a family whose first daughter was born with Down Syndrome. I was around 25 years old at the time. The couples name was Jim and Yvette. They were probably only in their early 30’s at the time. As I said, their first daughter was born with Down Syndrome. Their second daughter, Heidi, was in the sixth grade in what was called, “talented and gifted” program. Heidi was very bright and out going.

Yvette spoke so eloquently that day about her experiences with her daughter and her disability. The daughter was around 12 when I interviewed them. She had done remarkably well.

In one part of the interview Yvette talked about when she brought her daughter home from the hospital, she kept all of the drapes closed and didn’t want anyone to see her or her daughter. She talked about the process of working through these feelings and coming to terms with not only her own feelings, but the reactions of others. She then talked about having a second daughter who was “normal” and how this didn’t diminish in any way her feelings towards her first daughter. I can’t do justice to the words that Yvette spoke that day. But what I can do is express what she did for me.

During this time in my life I had been searching for a lot of answers. I had even gone to visit my childhood doctor’s. I had asked them many questions about how my parent’s handled my being born. It had been so many years that they really couldn’t remember details. What Yvette did for me was give me an insight into what parent’s go through when things happen in life.

As my friend and I drove home that day, we didn’t say a word for at least a half an hour.

Sometimes I wonder why I’m reminded of some event in life when writing in the blog or why an event just crosses my mind from no where. I’m still wondering about this one… Actually I probably know. It was Yvette’s ability to express the struggles, the feelings, the fear, the joy… It was her ability to put it all in perspective independently of my own life and my own experiences. By looking at someone else, I was able to see much of the details of my own life and my own family in new and different way.

Life is a series of memories… Easy to distort, easy to misunderstand, easy to forget…