UNSEEN CHAINS

A few days ago, I got an e-mail that stated Bill Lindsay had passed away. Bill was a local Suffolk County Legislator and friend of AHRC Suffolk, where my daughter attends program and resides in a home. Bill was also the husband of Pat his lovely wife who shares the table on a few committees and the Board of Directors with me.

It is a sad day for me because although I don’t really know Bill the husband or politician or even friend of the agency, I know him as a father of a child with disabilities, a child that he has worked hard and long for and who shared the pain and worry of raising and caring and planning a future for.

And now it is left to Pat solely, to be the advocate for her daughter, the person who must think and represent their child. Pat has been doing that, but now she does it alone, without the emotional help and assistance of her husband!

All too often we take things in stride, we look to offer our condolences, our sympathies and gratefully walk away from the sadness as we close our door and hope behind it that something like that doesn’t happen to us.

Death is a funny thing sometimes. Many times it is a relief for the sick and dying, sometimes it is a burden on the survivor, many times it is the end to the sense of well being we all try to bring to our lives.

My tears are not for Bill, although I am relieved that he does not suffer, that is my comfort, not his. Instead my tears are for Pat and their child. I envision the day I am gone and have left my wife with the burden of carrying on alone. Oh, we have family, we have sons and siblings and friends, but the first day I am gone, we will not have each other to share the real death of life, the caring of a child with mental and physical disabilities. We can close our door at night and seek in each other the comfort of knowing the other is there to lift up each other when a crisis affects our child, our most vulnerable child, that knows only pain and frustration, loneliness and can only give love in return.

And so Pat will have to adjust, get her head back into the game with a new game plan so to speak. She is not only a strong woman, she is a smart and extremely capable woman, one who will make all the right decisions, on her own, that I am sure. I just wish she had the comfort of her Bill to help her share it all.

Tomorrow the sun will shine, children will play and Pat will laugh, cry and live her life, like all of us, and seek to find peace with her daughter’s future. That is what it is all about, that is what the parent of a ‘special needs’ child will gives us all.