THE PRICE OF PARENTHOOD

I don’t pretend to be an expert on parenthood, as much as a witness to what it costs. Having raised 4 children with my wife Ellen, we have had our days of joy and pain, all through the acts and fortunes of our children. Not a day goes by that we don’t reflect on all of them throughout the day.

Through the course of the years, we have paid an exact price as parents. The price has been costly, high and we are over-charged. It is an honor and a duty, both a joy and a dread as we have as parents, plowed through each day.

Losing a child is always hard as we can attest to. But parents lose a child many ways, and to them are the hardest, death and mental disabilities. You can lose a child philosophically and emotionally, but they don’t compare to the finality of the truth of life and death.

When we lost our son, Joseph, so many years ago, we felt the sting of emptiness that enveloped our lives, watched what could have been compared to other children his age, and grieved inside for ourselves, and our missing child. We wondered how we got to the point of death and put it aside, to carry on for our other three children.

Institute of Basic Research

But, before that fatal day in January of 1981, we were mourning for our beautiful daughter, one, when born promised in my mind, to give me riches such as company and grandchildren, comp\fort and love. But he progress stood still, she was almost zombie-like as she physically matured to the point that we, in desperation, sought held to modify her behaviors and awareness. She moaned, cried, and demanded constant attention, as she got older. I decided that we needed to do something, and arranged for her to be analyzed by the Institute of Basic Research. · IBR’s research teams are dedicated to conducting basic and clinical studies of the causes, treatment, and prevention of developmental disabilities, including autism, fragile X syndrome, Down syndrome, the neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses, and inborn errors of metabolism. 
·  https://opwdd.ny.gov/institute-for-basic-research/contact

They, professionals that they are, pinpointed some of the issues and tossed the many drugs my daughter Ellen was on for new ones that benefitted her more accurately and found something we didn’t expect: anxiety! Yes, my daughter was suffering from anxiety and we never knew it. They asked us if we wanted to abandon the regimen of drugs she was currently for new ones. We responded positively and with the objections of her medical staff and their unwillingness to accept the changes, we did.

Suddenly there was a transformation, a rebirth of my daughter that made both her parents happy and grateful, transforming our lives into something better than it had been.

Then two or three years ago, things turned toward the worst, and she slowly declined when it all started with her breaking her leg. The operations, nursing homes, and rehabs started in a never-ending sequence. A broken hip, cancer of the colon, another broken bone, and more hospitalization, pneumonia, and tracheotomy and things and events I can’t keep track of has kept my wife and me prisoners to her well-being, changed to her bedside in Medford Multicare Center. 

They live for each other!

We as parents have over-paid the price of parenthood, we will continue to over-pay and we will continue to try to recover some semblance of life as it should be for a retired couple in their seventies. Our price was jacked-up a few years ago when or grandson, Robert Courtney was born while his mother Courtney passed on the delivery table, and we as were her parents were unprepared to pay the awful price. 

As for my little grandson, the professionalism of the nursing staff at the birthing hospital and the eventual rescue at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles where they flew the little guy to, thrives today, giving off love, happiness and a lot of smarts, just like his big sister Darby.
 
But for Ellen, every day I visit her, as she has left us and reverted to her old ways of zombie-like attrition and has closed herself from the world. We will stay with her until we can’t anymore.

Thank God, my son is their father, he is wise, loving and makes their lives beautiful. To help this along, we have a friend in our Irish Nanni, Cricket, who has been the corner stone of these two beautiful children.