GOING HOME AGAIN

Recently, I went to a home for people with developmental disabilities, which I visit once a year: to inspect for the board of directors for my daughter’s agency. As a member of the board, we have a responsibility to view these homes and other programs such as our workshop program, educational and day-treatment programs and report back to the board on how things are going.



This particular house has special meaning to me: since it was the first home my daughter went in to live with the agency. The home is just that, a home, filled to the brim with loving caring people that need love and help with their daily lives, and with the same loving intent from the wonderful people who care for those with developmental disabilities.

One of the hardest things on one of the hardest days of my life was when my wife and I along with Ellen’s baby brother left her off for the first time. We sat in what was a tense situation for all of us in my family. Ellen was unsuspecting that her mom and dad would be in a sense abandoning her, and it was killing us all that we were doing it. We knew that the long-term effects would all be positive, but we needed to fight through this feeling and do what we needed to do to make us all have better lives. Some day we would not be here for Ellen as parents, and we wanted our sons to be free of the burden and responsibility of the daily living of a person with developmental disabilities. We also realized that some day they would marry, and it would not be fair to lay that on their wives!

When we left the place, after being told not to visit for two whole weeks, we walked to the car, and could hear my daughter crying for us, that we had left her! It was a very heart-wrenching thing to go through, and the rest of the day was a complete downer, even though we knew it would mean better days for all of us.

In the ensuing years, Ellen prospered; thrived and grown into a young woman from the teenager she was when she entered that home. She loves where she lives, can’t wait to go back ‘home’ when we bring her to our house for dinner and holidays. When she enters her home, and sees a caretaker, she will immediately hug them to near death!

As I returned to do my inspection, the same feeling, one that I get whenever I visit my Mom, the sense of love, security and happiness pervades the building, and I love that place, it makes my daughter happy.

The agency provides Ellen with not only a warm bed and meals, but 24-hour nursing care, entertainment and peers. She is constantly under a doctor’s care and supervision as well as a house parent. She has a cook: someone does her hair and nails, and is treated better than I am! Good for her!

Homes like Ellen’s are essential, they do things that are unseen, they giver a sense of belonging to those who would otherwise be shut out of life, they give a sense of purpose to those who care for the residents, it instills a sense of relief that parents and siblings will be free to live and die without the burden and worry of what happens when mom and dad are gone.