isolation

Awaiting my daughter’s fate

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Five years ago, my daughter was rushed to emergency surgery. I was also in college at the time and was working on a poem for my creative non-fiction class. I wrote this poem while waiting to learn my daughter's fate. I am not the same person I was five years ago, but I wanted to share another part of my writing. Poetry is not my forte, but this poem did represent what being a single mother feels like during a crisis; and sharing my poem helps me knock down the walls that still surround me.
Five years ago, my daughter was rushed to emergency surgery. I was also in college at the time and was working on a poem for my creative non-fiction class. I wrote this poem while waiting to learn my daughter’s fate. I am not the same person I was five years ago, but I wanted to share another part of my writing. Poetry is not my forte, but this poem did represent what being a single mother feels like during a crisis; and sharing my poem helps me knock down the walls that still surround me.

The Inferno Within

I stared into the empty waiting room,

Awaiting my daughter’s fate.

Two hours went by

Since they rushed her to the operating room,

The sound of the ticking clock

Pounded in my anxious head.

My young son was the only one around,

Seated innocently by my side,

Reading a book with his headphones on.

I did not dare burden him with my despair.

I sat alone with hope in my eyes and dread in my heart.

Years before when I dreamt of motherhood,

I never envisioned the loneliness and isolation I live now.

I imagined one parent to bandage our children’s “owies”

And a second to kiss them;

One to listen to their prayers

And another to turn off their light;

One to walk them down the aisle

While the other tossed out the rice.

Hand in hand, we would guide them through their life,

Proudly letting go as they headed toward their dreams.

Never did I conceive an empty house,

An aching heart, and three broken children.

What kind of man abandons his family?

I cook meals, help with homework,

Run them to appointments, wash their clothes,

Hold them tightly while they are sick,

And desperately struggle to make ends meet.

What dream of his could possibly replace

The needs and hearts of his own helpless children?

Don’t get me wrong,

There’s no other place I would rather be,

But it is nights like this that stir up my contempt and anguish.

I cannot help but believe my children deserve more.

The guilt sets in when I see my tired, weary son

Sleeping in the university library,

While he waits for me to complete my studies;

Or when he wants to watch a movie or play a game,

But my eyes, like a steel trap door, struggle to stay open.

I do my best to move on and leave the pain behind.

But a crisis or a trigger from the past will bring it all soaring back.

It’s the angst of knowing my children are scared and are hurting,

While knowing their father is too selfish to discern.

Every day as I grow strong, I hold their hands in mine,

And I realize it is all worth it, as I truly love them so.

I could never fathom leaving them behind;

Yet, my repulsion toward his apathy is profound.

And just like my daughter’s cyst,

I fear I, too, may begin to rupture.

I hold on tight and fight back the tears.

If I let go, I am afraid of what happens next.

But I must let go of these chains that bind me

To a coward and a louse.

The surgeon finally appears before me.

Good news! She is safe and sound ….. Relief!!!

As I walk into hold her hand and kiss her softly on the cheek,

I cannot help but see the other patients in recovery

With their friend and family gathered round;

And in my heart I am joyful and reassured,

But still somewhere deep inside me,

The toxic cinders from the past seem to smolder on,

Waiting for time to eradicate any embers left behind,

Opening the chimney for fresh air and healing to wander in.

Is selling the story more important than the people it hurts?

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Does the news need to blame someone so much that they don’t care if they stigmatize a whole group of people who have done nothing wrong? Tonight I received a text from a colleague asking me if I heard the Sandy Hook killer had Asperger’s Syndrome? I thought I was going to be ill. I really thought the news had let go of that. I remember when the shooting happened, and a diner owner had reported that to the news. He said the mom had told him once (years earlier) that her son was being tested for Asperger’s Syndrome. TESTED!!! Tested does not equal a diagnosis, and even if it did, it does not mean that was the cause for the shooting.

The shooters own brother said he had been diagnosed with a personality disorder. That could mean so many things, but again did not mean Asperger’s Syndrome. And just so we are clear, when the brother was interviewed by cnsnews.com, he was interviewed under anonymity because he was under orders from the investigators not to disclose information to the media. All of the sources I have searched up weren’t credible enough to say for sure or even to say “could be” or “might be” or “we have an inkling” that the shooter had Asperger’s Syndrome. Where were the interviews with the shooter’s therapists and doctors? You know, the ones who were actually treating him.

Having a child with Asperger’s Syndrome, I know first hand the stigma he faces in our world without having the national news pointing a finger at him. I thought our society had out grown away from the mentality of the Salem Witch trials, but I guess I figured wrong. When a tragedy happens, everyone wants to point fingers and come up with an easy solution to the problem, even if that solution could ostracize a whole group of citizens unfairly. As long as it doesn’t affect us, why not, right? Wrong! It’s time our society grows up and realizes that not everything can be wrapped up nicely in 30 – 60 minutes like a television show. As a society we need to get off our social media and start educating ourselves on the world around us.

I am not saying that the killer wasn’t mentally ill, but that’s all that needed to be reported. Putting a name to his illness without 100 percent proof is unconscionable. Yet, tonight NBC news did it again. My colleague pointed out that the information was coming from the shooter’s father and that this time it was a major news show that was airing it, so she trusted the validity. It made me wonder too, so I went on to watch the interview. The only problem when I watched the interview is that the interview wasn’t with the father of the shooter. It was with a reporter who had interviewed the father. In other words, it was one reporter interviewing another reporter on his interpretation of the father’s words. Might I point out that the shooter’s parents were divorced, and it was the mother who had been seeking out the mental health help for her son, so now we have a reporter interviewing another reporter on his interpretation of his interview with the father who was actually giving his second hand knowledge of what the mother had learned year’s earlier. Have any of you played the telephone game as kids? How well did that information get passed around the room? Well, these are adults playing that game, yet it has major affects on a whole group of citizens from around the world.

Instead of pointing fingers at individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome and causing them to be feared like the witches were in Salem, or the Jewish people and the Japanese were during World War II, or even how the Muslims have been since 911. We are so quick to blame a whole group of people for something one or a few might have caused. It is soooo much easier and quicker. Instead we need to educate ourselves about mental health issues and find ways to help each other, instead of judging each other. The time and energy it takes to point fingers and gossip, people could put that towards lifting up their fellow citizens.

I read Frankenstein recently to a group of my college ESL students. I had never read Frankenstein before, and it brought me to tears. The monster wasn’t evil and ugly, society made him evil and ugly. Even his own master turned against him because of how ugly he thought he was. He didn’t bother to get to know him and love him, instead he banished him and sent him out in the cold to die. We do that to people everyday and then people cry out “what’s wrong with the world”? We all need to take a look in our own mirrors, including myself. Not one of us is perfect, and if we quit striving to be perfect and accept each other for who we are, we might be able to walk out of our glass houses and get to know some truly amazing people that we have been building up walls to protect ourselves from.

My husband did not want a child who was different and walked away and started a new life, pretending the first one never existed. He tossed his kids out, just like Frankenstein did his creation. No one ostracizes him! When I searched for positive, male role models in my community for my son, no one stuck with it because it’s not easy to work with a child with special needs, it’s easier to be a big brother to a child who is “normal”, or to go to a foreign country for one week a year to volunteer. Those make better Facebook photos. I never thought I would have to be afraid to say my son has Asperger’s Syndrome, but now due to sensationalized reporting, my son and a whole group of innocent people, have been stigmatized even further. I can only pray that awareness and education will one day reach others in society and that we stop hating a community for what one person did.