We, in this earthly life, will suffer at some point or another. We will suffer the pain of emotional splints as well as physical. Pain is a given and no one is immune to it. Every time I see a newborn baby I realize the sadness of that young life, portend of suffering.
In my lifetime I have felt all the insidious kinds of pain that gripped me by my soul, rend my heart and crush my spirit. I feel the vise of despair and the fear of falling into a deep abyss.
As a child I had a severe case of mumps, so severe it ruined my hearing. This was during the epidemic of mumps in the early 1950s. I lied in bed with both cheeks so swollen that I was in great pain and at one point was having hallucinations of my Dad standing on a red ball shouting out at me.
That episode so affected me that I great difficulty in school. The constant abuse of my teachers because I missed so much in the classroom, my trembling fear of the consequences of both the punitive repercussions in the classroom, the humiliation that would be heaped upon me and by the fear of my parents and their swift vengeance created a very frightened child.
I was considered stupid, designated to a human junk pile so laden with humiliation I became reticent to speak and started to lie to make myself seem better than I thought I was. Yet, in those times people didn’t have the psychological tools or understanding we have today.
Learning on the streets of Brooklyn that I needed to take care of myself, soon I developed some confidence that protected me emotionally and physically. I refused to let anyone bully me and never backed away from a fight.
When I moved away from Brooklyn and attended school I was tested for the first time by a hearing test that revealed my hearing loss, something my parents were unaware of. Suddenly I had an excuse for being stupid they thought. It is funny how tags stick long after they are disproven.
I had to work even harder than the other students, often getting a seat up close to the teacher or professor or instructor in the classroom. But something clicked and I realized I was as smart and in some cases smarter than those around me. I was no longer afraid to speak out, voice my opinion and say what was on my mind.
As I entered college I no longer had the fear that I wasn’t college material and fought the cold sense of failure, reaching the Dean’s List. In that time I was in college, I suffered physically in a car accident as a passenger. My right foot suffered compound fractures and I was in a full leg cast for over 9 months.
After college, I was lucky to find someone who is understanding and non-judgmental. She loved me for who and what I was and made my life worthwhile. We had four children and even then I started on a whole new plain of suffering. My first child was born with developmental problems both mentally and physically from Angleman’s Syndrome and so we suffered as a family to give her a life worthwhile. My siblings had children and theirs were perfect in their eyes while mine was not.
My second child came along and was a perfect son, never disappointing himself or us. But he drove himself too hard to make up for his older sister’s issues and it took him into a depression.
In 1979 my second child came along and soon we discovered he was like his older sister, with the same problems. This time we would suffer more horribly than the last time, for he succumbed to his issues at the age of 21 months. It was a cold barren January that year in 1981 as we laid him to rest under the snows of a wintry week. As I turned to head back to the car from the graveside I looked at how perfect the snow lay on the ground, a slight sheet of ice allowing it to shimmer and I realized how imperfect my life was.
Another child came along and I was determined not to make him take the place of his deceased brother, but to grow and be his own man. I was suffering the loss and did not want that to ruin my newest child’s life. I thought God takes and God gives and realizes now that he takes happiness and gives me suffering.
Then another horrible chapter began one summer day in California as I was happily expecting the news that I was a grandfather for the second time. My oldest son called to tell me my daughter-in-law was in labor. That was followed up with the call that she had passed while delivering my beautiful grandson. Every time I see my grandchildren I see two motherless children. But they have an amazing dad, I am and always proud to call him my son, now he is, more importantly, my grandchildren’s daddy. My heart aches for him and those children.
About two years ago my oldest child with all her problems fell one morning and broke her right leg between the kneecap and the ankle. Being disabled and unable to talk she suffered for a while as she lay in her room before someone discovered her. They put on an external fixate to keep he knitting bone in place while it healed. Then after it healed the surgeon put in a permanent metal rod. We as her parents lived on the edge as she healed. But it wasn’t over by long shot.
A few months later she fell once again, this time striking her head against the kitchen counter in her group home, causing a brain bleed. This rocked me emotionally and I wanted to just check out of this life once and for all. The only reason I didn’t was that too many people needed me at this point. Suffering through the hospitalization once again took its toll on me.
To bring you up to date Dear Reader, she fell once more and partially broke her hip causing major pain and then pneumonia. While she suffered in the hospital she was given a c-scan and one Sunday morning the nurse hit me with the news: my daughter who suffered so much was about to suffer more. She had colon cancer and was operated on May 10th, my mom’s birthday, but somehow I knew this fact would be to her benefit and it was. The surgeon told us cancer had not spread to other parts of her hospital and that she would not need chemotherapy!
It is now November of 2019 and she has not been in her home in over 9 months. She contracted pneumonia and a tracheotomy was performed and so she suffers. There is a terrible bedsore that causes her constant excruciating pain that was the size of a hand that grew on her butt, exposing the bone and it will never go away.
Every day we look for signs of relief that I know will never come. Instead, I see her whiter in pain and it tears me apart that I can’t do anything for her. But my wife and I will be there for her until our or her end comes.
In my lifetime I have felt all the insidious kinds of pain that gripped me by my soul, rend my heart and crush my spirit. I feel the vise of despair and the fear of falling into a deep abyss.
As a child I had a severe case of mumps, so severe it ruined my hearing. This was during the epidemic of mumps in the early 1950s. I lied in bed with both cheeks so swollen that I was in great pain and at one point was having hallucinations of my Dad standing on a red ball shouting out at me.
That episode so affected me that I great difficulty in school. The constant abuse of my teachers because I missed so much in the classroom, my trembling fear of the consequences of both the punitive repercussions in the classroom, the humiliation that would be heaped upon me and by the fear of my parents and their swift vengeance created a very frightened child.
I was considered stupid, designated to a human junk pile so laden with humiliation I became reticent to speak and started to lie to make myself seem better than I thought I was. Yet, in those times people didn’t have the psychological tools or understanding we have today.
Learning on the streets of Brooklyn that I needed to take care of myself, soon I developed some confidence that protected me emotionally and physically. I refused to let anyone bully me and never backed away from a fight.
When I moved away from Brooklyn and attended school I was tested for the first time by a hearing test that revealed my hearing loss, something my parents were unaware of. Suddenly I had an excuse for being stupid they thought. It is funny how tags stick long after they are disproven.
I had to work even harder than the other students, often getting a seat up close to the teacher or professor or instructor in the classroom. But something clicked and I realized I was as smart and in some cases smarter than those around me. I was no longer afraid to speak out, voice my opinion and say what was on my mind.
As I entered college I no longer had the fear that I wasn’t college material and fought the cold sense of failure, reaching the Dean’s List. In that time I was in college, I suffered physically in a car accident as a passenger. My right foot suffered compound fractures and I was in a full leg cast for over 9 months.
After college, I was lucky to find someone who is understanding and non-judgmental. She loved me for who and what I was and made my life worthwhile. We had four children and even then I started on a whole new plain of suffering. My first child was born with developmental problems both mentally and physically from Angleman’s Syndrome and so we suffered as a family to give her a life worthwhile. My siblings had children and theirs were perfect in their eyes while mine was not.
My second child came along and was a perfect son, never disappointing himself or us. But he drove himself too hard to make up for his older sister’s issues and it took him into a depression.
In 1979 my second child came along and soon we discovered he was like his older sister, with the same problems. This time we would suffer more horribly than the last time, for he succumbed to his issues at the age of 21 months. It was a cold barren January that year in 1981 as we laid him to rest under the snows of a wintry week. As I turned to head back to the car from the graveside I looked at how perfect the snow lay on the ground, a slight sheet of ice allowing it to shimmer and I realized how imperfect my life was.
Another child came along and I was determined not to make him take the place of his deceased brother, but to grow and be his own man. I was suffering the loss and did not want that to ruin my newest child’s life. I thought God takes and God gives and realizes now that he takes happiness and gives me suffering.
Then another horrible chapter began one summer day in California as I was happily expecting the news that I was a grandfather for the second time. My oldest son called to tell me my daughter-in-law was in labor. That was followed up with the call that she had passed while delivering my beautiful grandson. Every time I see my grandchildren I see two motherless children. But they have an amazing dad, I am and always proud to call him my son, now he is, more importantly, my grandchildren’s daddy. My heart aches for him and those children.
About two years ago my oldest child with all her problems fell one morning and broke her right leg between the kneecap and the ankle. Being disabled and unable to talk she suffered for a while as she lay in her room before someone discovered her. They put on an external fixate to keep he knitting bone in place while it healed. Then after it healed the surgeon put in a permanent metal rod. We as her parents lived on the edge as she healed. But it wasn’t over by long shot.
A few months later she fell once again, this time striking her head against the kitchen counter in her group home, causing a brain bleed. This rocked me emotionally and I wanted to just check out of this life once and for all. The only reason I didn’t was that too many people needed me at this point. Suffering through the hospitalization once again took its toll on me.
To bring you up to date Dear Reader, she fell once more and partially broke her hip causing major pain and then pneumonia. While she suffered in the hospital she was given a c-scan and one Sunday morning the nurse hit me with the news: my daughter who suffered so much was about to suffer more. She had colon cancer and was operated on May 10th, my mom’s birthday, but somehow I knew this fact would be to her benefit and it was. The surgeon told us cancer had not spread to other parts of her hospital and that she would not need chemotherapy!
It is now November of 2019 and she has not been in her home in over 9 months. She contracted pneumonia and a tracheotomy was performed and so she suffers. There is a terrible bedsore that causes her constant excruciating pain that was the size of a hand that grew on her butt, exposing the bone and it will never go away.
Every day we look for signs of relief that I know will never come. Instead, I see her whiter in pain and it tears me apart that I can’t do anything for her. But my wife and I will be there for her until our or her end comes.
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| 1979-1981 |
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| my beautiful daughter |
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| college |
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| my oldest son and his late wife |
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