Griffin proms: 2 Cesare proms: 0
This is Griffin's friend Zaynia's Junior Prom. Griff and Cesare are seniors and the dreaded Senior Ball has not crept up quite yet. Tonight, Ces watches Griff walk out the door for his second time around at Junior Prom fun. This isn't an intellectual process, Cesare understands that Griff was invited..that Griff has friends...that Griff will have a wonderful time. And Ces cheers him on. But none of us in this house can separate ourselves from Cesare's loss. Cesare is slow, but not developmentally delayed. He is disabled but sharp as a tack. He falls into a social crack that his cavernous. His typical friends from Kindergarten, first grade, want nothing to do with him. His peers see him as slow and always in the company of his one to one nurse at school. He has absolutely no friends. Ces is in a "social skills group" run by the local college's speech and language department but most of the kids there have Aspergers and Ces doesn't seem to relate to them, or them to him. Pariah is too strong a term, I suppose, but his peers keep their distance.
As a parent, I don't want Griff to leave the house feeling guilty (though he does). I want him to enjoy being a healthy typical kid. His survival guilt is palpable. He has been accepted to college in the fall and all I want is for him to step on to that campus and leave us behind. I hope that he can do it.
Tonight, I will try to get Cesare to dance with me in the family room. I will try to make him giggle and make sure he has ice cream for dessert. But, it will not be the evening he hopes for.
Thought of you all last evening. What an emotional predicament to journey through: you want to be able to feel the total joy of a proud and optimistic mom seeing your beautiful boy in a TUX going off to spend the evening with a beautiful girl. That would be enough to swell any heart to bursting. At the exact same moment (and entire evening) you feel your other gorgeous boy's sadness, and you will fight your hardest to try to lighten his heart and help him feel loved and important and convince him he has an excellent life. Either emotional task is sufficient to exhaust a mom. I wonder how you managed the Herculean emotional challenge. I hope both boys found peace and joy in their evenings and you, mommy, were able to share in the joy as well.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Gwen. Actually, our morning was punctuated with Cesare giving Griffin a good swift kick. "What was that for?" Griffin snarled. I knew..."It's the epilepsy, stupid."
DeleteYour post makes me sad, then angry and yes! I can relate, then I feel guilty for feeling bad for my son's own situation,then I feel worse because I should not be complaining (God please forgive me), but we are all in this epilepsy boat after all. I can relate. I have always describe the situation with my son as "five cents short of a dollar". I am happy that we are just a cent short now and remember the days when it was more like 50- cents, we are still battling uphill, one cent short. That "cent" makes a whole difference. more on that later
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