Susan Senator

Here is more of the same thing. I am in so much pain about Nat going. I am probably going to run away today, to someplace where I can be soothed.

This is of similar magnitude to the days when he was diagnosed, or perhaps, to the days before he was diagnosed, when there was something I dreaded but couldn’t name, that lay in wait for me. Anticipating his move-out is the same dread, a dread that feels like waiting to vomit.

But this time, it is not about finding out that “something’s wrong” with my child. It turns out nothing’s wrong with my child. I have a name for the challenges he and we face, I have an understanding, somewhat, about how to mitigate them. But as for Nat himself, this is so much about how much I love him, and how much I don’t want him to go. How I can’t imagine living day-to-day without him. Yes, yes, he is going to be “fine;” I do not take that for granted, that is wonderful. Yes, he is going to learn so much and make friends with the guys in his house and have so many more activities than he has here. That is all good. I am lucky. He is lucky. It is a lovely place with lovely people.

But this isn’t about luck, not this bit right now. This is about my pain, a mother’s pain, pure and simple and mixed and complex. I love that guy, even if he rarely speaks to me, even if he has outbursts I can’t understand, even if he makes our lives miserable at times: what kid doesn’t??!! I just love him, and I love his sweet presence, his way of commenting with sing-song talking (I am no longer going to call it “Silly Talk,” that suddenly seems so insulting!). Today I told him I was calling in a prescription to refill some pills and he said/sang, right away, “Huh-pills, hills, huh-peels.” He listens to everything, and if you listen to him, you can detect this.

There is nothing that will take away my pain right now. So many of you have been just so amazingly kind and lovely. So many of you are strangers, yet you offer me these fantastic cyberhugs and love. I am warmed by that, and it helps.

But I have to go through this, like the build-up to childbirth — where the pains get worse and worse until they are just about unbearable. Where there is pain that rips through you, and literally rips you open, blood and screams, so that something utterly important and necessary can happen — this is how I will get to the other side.