by Kristen -

Cracks in the Sidewalk

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One of the appealing features of the neighborhood where my first husband and I bought our home was the sidewalk encircling the whole block.  It was a common gathering place for residents, and an ideal circuit for walkers, runners or strollers.

As a young mother I made dozens of laps along the half-mile oval from my front door and back, pushing a stroller, pulling a wagon, or walking hand in hand with my children.  The sidewalk served as a natural boundary for the kids, too; Natalie, at least, learned to stay on the right side of the walk, clear of the street beyond.

When she was about six years old, I sat on my front steps as Natalie ran down that sidewalk, eager to reach her best friends, sisters who’d just come from their house across the street.  I watched as my happy daughter suddenly tripped on a crack and sprawled face first on the concrete, landing, fortuitously, at the feet of our dentist, the neighbor girls’ father, Lenny.

It looked worse than it was.  No broken teeth, no split lip, not even a bitten tongue.  Just a scrape and a scare, tears quickly soothed in my genial, even-tempered daughter.  An unexpected mishap, soon forgotten, one of countless more to come over the course of her childhood.

For years after my son’s diagnosis I desperately craved a road map, some clue to what was coming next.  I don’t know if I feel that way any more.  Would I have had the courage to continue, to face all that lay ahead, if I knew how often, how painfully I would fall?

Years ago my daughter and I attended a “psychic” party hosted by Natalie’s stepmother, Mary.  With no strong views on clairvoyance going in, I came out a believer: with a glimpse of my palm, Deb discerned facets of my life she couldn’t possibly have known, but did: I was an insomniac, a fledgling writer; I had another child, who did not speak, and had recently lost my father.  It was uncanny.

We visited Deb several times in the ensuing years.  She was so frequently on target that I trusted her gift, although, perhaps heedlessly, never actually based life decisions on her insights.  It was all just in fun.

Two months ago Natalie and a few girlfriends scheduled readings with Deb, and drove from Lincoln Park to Downer’s Grove on a Wednesday evening during a heavy snowstorm.  Although she’d just turned 25, I couldn’t help worrying, and sent Natalie a text about eight p.m. to make sure they weren’t stranded in a snowbank.

Undoubtedly it would have been better for both of us had I not done so.  Our texting went pretty much like this:

“Andy says driving is awful so let me know when you guys get home, OK? xo”

“I will.  Anita is finishing her reading and then Ari still has hers so it’ll be a while before we leave”

“Have you had yours?”

“Yes”

“Well??”

“All positive… She sees a big move for me though in 6 months so start preparing yourself”

“Wtf?!?”

“Hahahahahahaha”

“A geographic move???” …. “Andy says ‘Maybe she’s moving back home’”

“Hahahahahahaha. Yes a geographic move.”

“Noooooooooooo! (wailing emoji face)  You can’t leave me! (wailing emoji)  Omg my life is over”

“She said you would react that way…”

“Screw that shit!”

“Oh calm down.”

“What about your work??  Your licensing???  Omg”

“Ok, you’re ruining the fun, please stop”

“Where are you going??  I’m coming with you”

“I shouldn’t have said anything to you”

(Forty-five minute break while I attempted to compose myself)

“Well still let me know when you get home please”

“I will, we’re finally heading back now”

(One hour later): “Made it safely home alive”

“Good!  Thanks for letting me know. xo”

“xoxoxoxoxoxo”

Yeah, I know.

Overreactive.  Needy.  Profane, to boot.

In the weeks since that exchange, I’ve struggled to understand my response, my utter panic at the thought of Natalie leaving the Chicago area, the seismic shift in our relationship I’ve allowed myself to imagine such a move would provoke.  My husband suggests that the changing relationship with my son makes me more sensitive to any threat to my role in Natalie’s life.

But it’s more than that.  Daniel’s disability has influenced our lives and our relationship immeasurably, but my bond with Natalie is unique.  My relationship with my daughter is one of the foundations of my life.  Losing her would be unbearable.

My mind leaps to such extremes, to all or nothing scenarios.  I imagine her taking a job on another coast, building a separate life, starting a family I’ll scarcely know.  I’ll be a part-time character in the cast of her world, cramming into rushed visits the intimacies we now routinely share.  She’ll become a whole new person as I watch, wistfully, from the sidelines.  Just as millions of moms do every day.

I don’t want to be one of those moms.

I want my daughter, near at hand, coming here on her day off to do laundry, stock up on paper towels, and store sweaters in my attic when the weather turns warm.  I want to go to Macy’s together and buy her a lipstick, to witness her reaction as she sorts through her Easter basket and finds the “Instant Weirdo Glasses” I’ve tucked inside.  I want to be a quick drive away if she gets ill, to be the one she calls when her apartment loses power for the first time.  I want to join her and Andy at the dining room table as she completes her first grown-up tax return, to trade scornful commentary while watching The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.  I want to share salads at Panera, face to face, as she describes the young man she’s dating now, her friendships, the challenges and rewards of her new career.

For years I longed to know what lies ahead.  But if what’s ahead is the loss of one ounce of what I have with my daughter, I don’t want to know.

Of course I’m not alone in these fears, the gnawing uncertainty of what life has in store.  Doubt is normal, trust in a benevolent future hard to maintain in a world so often unkind.  I miss the unguarded trust I once held, though, during the happiest days of my life: drifting along that tree-lined sidewalk with my perfect baby daughter, rich with the fullness of my world, the profound good fortune I knew, even then, I’d done nothing to earn.  When autism threw a wrench in that trust, I never fully recovered.

The future is ripe with possibility now, especially in relation to my daughter.  She is thriving and maturing and finding her own way, the very circumstances for which I’ve been hoping to lay the groundwork for years.  Since the day she was born I’ve believed that my most essential role is to help her find her own path, yet I’m afraid to succeed if it means losing a part of her.  I want her to stay with me, right here, on my side of the sidewalk.

I remember another moment on that sidewalk, when three-year-old Natalie ran toward me, laughing with joy.  Her dress billowed behind her as her bare feet slapped the pavement with quick, confident steps, her smile clear and open and sure as she came to me, and I understood then: You will never forget this moment, Kristen.  You’ll always have this moment in time.

I’m glad you aren’t afraid to run, beautiful girl.  The cracks in the sidewalk are no match for you.

And they’re no match for my love for you, the bond sealing your heart to mine.

That bond is strong enough to stretch around the world and back.

xo

by Kristen -

Somebody That I Used to Know

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Evidently I’ve been seeing myself all wrong.

This was made clear two days after my last birthday, as I stood checking my phone for emails while waiting in line at the post office.  There, a woman about ten years older than me swept in and called out cheerily, “I just love seeing seniors using cell phones!”

I received this news better than you might expect.  Too dumbfounded to take offense, I replied mildly that I had indeed entered official seniorhood just that week, but still thought of myself as young, hardly a grown-up at all.

“You know,” I continued, leaning forward confidentially, “besides using a cell phone, I still listen to rock and roll!”  I cocked a sly brow.  “And Eminem is, like, totally awesome!”

I’m afraid my hipness failed to register, but at least the woman next in line got a chuckle from my response.

That encounter made me wonder, though, if the self-image I’ve carried for years bears any resemblance to how others see me. My son’s recent move to a new living situation has me wondering, too, what impression I’m making on his care team, a vulnerability I didn’t anticipate after years of these transitions.

His case manager has advised us to expect a change in our relationship with Daniel, as he responds to a more challenging, stimulating environment, and we give up our roles as day-to-day caregivers.  We’ll gain freedom to enjoy more satisfying interactions, and be part of our son’s life on a deeper, more meaningful level.

“Your relationship won’t be better or worse,” Aaron has said a number of times, “just different.”

It’s a spiel I imagine him giving all the newbie parents letting go of children whose needs have so dramatically shaped their lives. For our children’s development to be successful, we parents must adjust just as they are doing.  It seems to be Aaron’s gentle way of telling us to back off now, and let them do their jobs, so our children can flourish in adulthood.

Yet I fear sometimes that his parental pep talk is aimed specifically at me, that he senses my longing to reclaim the boy I relinquished to residential care over seven years ago.  I imagine Aaron watching me, wary that I’ll sabotage Daniel’s progress through my neediness, my grief at having lost him once already, a grief that has never fully healed.

Does he see a woman clinging to an ideal already gone, the boy Daniel still was to me when he left home?  Back when I was the one who knew him best, the person he needed most, the one he sought, in his singular fashion, to comfort him?

Does he see a mother, whose son has spent nearly a third of his life away from home, pining blindly for the day he’ll come back? A mother threatened by her son’s move toward maturity, who fears losing more than she’s already lost?

As Daniel transitions into a new life, and the future I want for him actually seems possible, my relationship with him feels more tenuous than ever, and I know I am that woman, whether Aaron sees me this way or not.

It’s taken me the two months since his move to acknowledge that my relief and joy at Daniel’s encouraging start is tempered by an ache for the days when he was truly mine, before autism tore us apart; when his days began and ended with my voice, my touch, my assurances of a love that would last forever.  I recognize that a part of me has been waiting seven years to get him back, even as I’ve known this will never be so.  The son I once knew is gone for good.

I want to assure Aaron that he needn’t worry, that I’m an old hand at this:  I know all about letting go, the wrenching loss of doing what is best for my son.  And I know, too, the blessed, coveted freedom from the demands of caring for him, the opportunity to breathe again, to have my life again as my own.  I know that freedom, and I know its cost.

It is the gradual unraveling of our relationship, the fabric of our lives worn thin by time, by distance, by the insidious disorder that brought us to this place.  It is clutching the frayed edges of a bond that in all its mystery was once close and touchable, woven thick and warm and comforting through years of ordinary, intimate moments spent together, routines we made uniquely our own.

It is the recognition that in many ways my son is now a stranger, that mere visits couldn’t fully bridge the gulf between us as Daniel grew from child to young adult, miles away from home.  It is the sense that the best days with my son ended seven years ago; it is fearing that the lyrics of the Gotye song I so often listened to on my drives home from Wisconsin now apply to my own child:  Now you’re just somebody that I used to know.

Maybe Aaron sees me as a mother desperate for a time gone by.  He wouldn’t be wholly wrong.

But I am also a mother who has transitioned along with her son for over 20 years, a mother able to do so again.  I’m a mother profoundly grateful for this fresh chance, willing to learn a new way of connecting with my son, ready to be whatever he needs me, now, to be.  I am a mother who understands that love is not always enough, yet love remains more powerful than grief.

It’s Aaron’s role to ask us to step back and let go, to allow his team to guide my son toward the goals we believe he is capable of achieving.  And it’s my role to do so, to let go of the boy of my memory, and embrace the young man he’s become.

But there’s letting go, and there’s letting go.

My heart will not surrender all that has shaped our lives together, or my most cherished role as his mother.  That woman will always be right there, behind him.

I can’t see myself any other way.

by Kristen -

New Light

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When my son was ten years old I read an essay by Chicago writer and educator Robert Hughes, “Getting to Know the Family Savant.”  He described the painful process of abandoning the “great cosmic myth of compensation”: that autistic people are automatically gifted with some extraordinary genius — a talent for music, an aptitude for languages, a startling, photographic memory.

Instead, Hughes gradually realized that his son Walker’s true gift was simpler, but no less valuable: his exuberance for life, his innate, irrepressible joy, visible “…on the face of the beaming boy himself, the knack for happiness he had then and has still.”

I was so moved by the essay that I wrote Mr. Hughes an embarrassingly long letter, thanking him for helping me recognize that, despite the devastating diagnosis of autism, my son, too, was happy; he was, in fact, the happiest person I knew.

I held that belief for a long time.  Despite his ups and downs, his extreme behaviors and outbursts, Daniel still seemed, for many years, satisfied with his life, unconcerned with what the wider world had to offer.  I consoled myself, believing he was content, secure, and confident that he was loved, that his autism even insulated him from the conflicting and messy emotions the rest of us regularly endure.

Over the last few years, though, my faith in that scenario has eroded.  As the degree and frequency of his outbursts increased, as his quirks became rigid, limiting obsessions, as the scope of his world devolved with each passing week, I began doubting that he could possibly be happy at all.  His behavior was screaming otherwise.

****

Never than in the past twelve months have I felt more powerless to help my son.  After an exhaustive search for his adult home, last January we selected a highly recommended care agency with a reputation for success with difficult behavior cases like Daniel.  As an added bonus, we knew the house director from Daniel’s previous school in Wisconsin.  Everything pointed to the positive and forward-moving experience we so wanted for our son.

Yet it didn’t materialize.  We soon recognized a pattern of erratic response from management to our questions and requests, from the very house director in which we’d placed such faith.  From home maintenance to haircuts to implementing the active and engaged lifestyle promised for Daniel, nothing panned out as planned.

His challenges became more entrenched than ever, with alarming new behaviors, like “elopement,” or bolting from the house, emerging after just a few months.  His day program, designed to provide purposeful, satisfying activity, fell through as his beverage-stealing obsession disrupted staff and clients alike.  By August he remained at home almost all the time, with little stimulation to channel his energy or the intelligence I’ve known for years he’s possessed beneath his unpredictable exterior.

No one in our family was satisfied, none of us willing to accept that this was as good as it would get for our cherished son and brother.  As parents in our situation understand all too well, however, the “obvious” solution — move him — was anything but simple.  Resources for people with Daniel’s challenges are scarce and hard to secure.

And even if we found an alternative, what impact would another move so soon have on Daniel, tearing him from the day to day caregivers whose devotion to him was never in question?  How would he react to another transition of this magnitude?  And the most haunting question of all: what if it still didn’t get better?

We’d given this agency more than a fair shot at managing Daniel’s needs, though, lending our support in every way possible. Waiting and hoping that life would improve for him there was no longer an option.

As it happened, another agency we’d seriously considered a year ago had kept in touch, their case manager checking periodically during the past twelve months on Daniel’s progress and adjustment to his new situation.  When our advocate from Wisconsin’s Department of Aging and Disability inquired in early November about Daniel’s possible transfer to their care, the case manager was enthusiastic, and immediately set the complicated application process in motion.

The ensuing weeks passed in a cascade of emails and phone conferences; discussion with the new agency and tours again of their facilities; a follow-up visit and in-person reassessment of Daniel at his current group home; and anxious, breathless days of waiting, of questioning and speculation, of daring, again, to hope that we might find the right path for our son.

In mid-December the case manager delivered the news: the new agency in Racine, an hour closer to both my husband and me, and Daniel’s father and step-mother, was willing to rearrange their current staffing and housing openings to accommodate Daniel, and offered him a place at one of their adult family homes.

They actively wanted our son.  They saw his potential, and believed they could help him achieve a fuller quality of life.

****

It’s been two and a half weeks since the bitterly cold day Daniel’s father and I said goodbye to him at his new home, a well-maintained, carefully decorated house on a quiet residential street.  His bedroom had been outfitted with new furniture, bedding, and artwork on the walls, a flat-screen TV and DVD player set up and waiting.  Staff was in place to welcome him, ready to manage whatever behaviors he threw their way, their philosophy of inclusion, of continual activity, stimulation and involvement in the community, regardless of challenges, an encouraging change from the restrictive environment Daniel had grown accustomed to in the past year.

Just hours later I received a “selfie” of Daniel and his case manager, Aaron, the man who had, in the week before the move, twice traveled an hour and a half to take Daniel on short excursions, so Daniel would know him and be more comfortable in his presence.  I couldn’t tear my gaze from that photo, Daniel’s face bearing the hint of an intrigued smile, as though he and Aaron were already sharing an adventure, something new and exciting and worth exploring.

The very next day Daniel went to an indoor water park, an activity he hasn’t enjoyed in years.  An emailed photo showed Dan waist-high in the pool, Aaron’s hand resting on his arm, guiding him, literally, through new waters with gentle, calm assurance. One week later, another pool photo: Daniel smiling broadly, confident, on his own in the pool, his face open and sparkling and alive, his eyes radiant with joy.

He’s made successful trips to restaurants, to Target and Sam’s Club and Starbucks, to a local museum; he navigated a company-wide “social” at a roller rink, only moderately distracted by the concession stand, which once would have derailed him completely.  These modest outings are huge for my son, whose compulsive behaviors had just weeks ago nearly eclipsed life outside his group home.  They are the activities we’d imagined for him, chances to discover, to grow, to be part of the larger world.

****

I approach hope sideways these days, wary now of plunging recklessly into the shimmering light of dreams, of believing too soon in the possibilities I want so desperately for my son.  The last year cured me of that, trusting in a shiny new beginning that became instead a slow-motion crash, each incremental slide more devastating than the last.

Yet there is no mistaking the new light in my son’s eyes, the expectation and curiosity that’s been missing for months.  He seems to recognize already that he’s on a new road, a different journey he is eager, now, to travel.  He is responding to staff’s repeated assurances that he is their “great guy,” their “kind guy,” their “happy guy.”

I hardly dare to believe it, but it seems to be so.

He is my happy guy again.

 

Robert Hughes responded to my letter in 2002 with a thoughtful letter of his own.  His kindness encouraged me to keep writing ever since.  His memoir about life with his son, “Running With Walker,” is available here.

by Kristen -

Train Wreck

train

My husband’s parents sold their house last year and moved to a condominium nearby.  We’re relieved that the move is behind them, and they’re no longer burdened by maintaining a home more spacious than they need.

I miss that house, though.  It was stunning.  When Andy and I got married nearly 15 years ago, his parents hosted our reception there, the elegant foyer with its wide, curving stairway providing an idyllic backdrop for toasts and tossing my bouquet.

I remember the first time I took my children to that house, on Christmas Eve a year before Andy and I were married.  I was still getting to know his parents and two sisters then, seeking my place in their family and hoping they liked me as much as I liked them.  They’d met Natalie at a family party the summer before, but were meeting my son for the first time that Christmas Eve.

The evening had all the makings of a magical Christmas, especially for my children.  The house was glowing with lights and decorations, full of welcoming family members eager to include us in their celebration.

The Christmas tree, 14 feet of Fraser Fir soaring in the two-story foyer, rivaled those on display in Marshall Field’s Walnut Room.  A life-sized stuffed tiger with a red ribbon around its neck sat waiting for Daniel under the tree.

Andy’s father had added a new component that year, an electric train set he’d always dreamed of, and set it up to encircle the tree, an engine and six quaint cars chugging along the 25 foot perimeter of the handmade tree skirt.

“We better keep an eye on Daniel around the train,” Andy murmured as we arrived at the house.  “It’s sort of Pop’s pride and joy.”

Wonderful, I thought miserably.  I was already anxious about his family meeting Daniel, my beautiful but erratic little boy, whose unpredictable behavior kept me constantly on edge.  Andy’s parents had no grandchildren, and I imagined my son barreling across their pristine, polished floors, shoes scuffing as he knocked vases from pedestals and grabbed gum drops from antique candy dishes.  Now I had to worry about him breaking an expensive toy train I knew he’d find fascinating.

But it wasn’t only Daniel’s behavior that had me so anxious that evening.  I recognize now how vulnerable I was back then, struggling to find my footing as a divorced mom, a role I’d never dreamed I’d end up playing.  My father had died a year earlier, and my mother was showing the first signs of Alzheimer’s disease.  Keeping my little family together on my own was exhausting, balancing the disparate needs of my children while trying to salvage the stability we’d rob them of when their father and I divorced.

The pressure I put on myself to make this happen was crippling, but I thought that was my role to play.  The least I could do, my most important job in the world, in fact, was making Christmas happy for my children.  Christmas had to be happy, it was supposed to be happy, and I would make it so if it killed me.

But playing my other new role at the same time was almost too much for me: the new girlfriend, this time with kids, one with special needs.  Fiercely proud of my son and daughter, I was still hyper aware of their behavior, and my own, measuring our conduct by a self-imposed standard of respectability and gentility I so wanted to achieve in the eyes of my boyfriend’s gracious family.

As the evening wore on, I was hanging by a thread, smiling, nodding, my most charming self on display for these people whose approval I sought, while inside I was screaming, breaking apart, desperate for this God-forsaken Christmas to be over so I could relax and let my guard down at last.

So much of those early years was like that for me, trying to control the events of my life but often tainting the very memories I wished to cherish.  Holding so tightly to the reins, I sometimes lost sight of where I had wanted to go.  Many times I succeeded in spite of myself, holding it together for my children, providing the experiences I had always wished for them.  But the cost to my psyche was high.  Anxiety became an integral part of me, and letting go of it, especially around the holidays, is still a work in progress.

As it happened, Daniel did enjoy the train that Christmas, watching intently as it made its way around the track, wiggling his fingers in front of his face as he does when he is happy.  He did nothing to disrupt its smooth operation.

But I did.

Leaning close to the tree to admire an ornament, my toe collided with the train’s engine, pushing it and the next three cars off track, bringing the whole happy unit to a halt.  The laugh was on me after all.

And I’m glad.  It was the first real laugh I had all evening.

by Kristen -

One True Gift

Holding hands

As the parent of a teenager learning to drive I was an utter failure.  When Natalie took the wheel I was such a basket case that she soon banned me from accompanying her.  Instead, my husband took over, guiding her on trial runs in the St. Patrick’s Church parking lot, hopeful, perhaps, that God would protect them both.

Natalie proved to be a fine driver, however, while I remained a lousy passenger and unhelpful critic, clutching the dashboard and hissing in alarm as we neared other cars.  It’s a testament to her self-confidence that Natalie learned to drive at all.

She’d had her license for several months when she offered to take Daniel for ice cream one evening.  I stood on the grass as she backed down the driveway, shouting advice and directions, gesturing like a crazed traffic cop as she veered toward our neighbor’s lawn.

“You’re not helping!” Natalie yelled out the driver’s window as she inched toward the street.

“Be careful!” I cried redundantly.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” she yelled back, waving me off.

“Both hands on the wheel!” I bellowed in reply. “I mean it now!”

As she shifted from reverse into drive, I observed Daniel in the passenger seat, eyes scrunched tight and hands over his ears, desperate, no doubt, to block the din of our banter.  But as I teased Natalie later, it was as though he couldn’t bear to watch as he placed his life in his sister’s hands.

Eighteen months later our mood was less jovial as we moved Daniel to a residential school an hour and a half from home.  He was fifteen years old.  Seven years ago today I let go of my son, placing his welfare in the hands of people I barely knew, relying on faith that we were doing the right thing for our cherished, special child.  It was the most painful thing I’ve ever done.

I had several months to prepare, to accept that he could no longer be educated through conventional special ed channels, or safely cared for at home.  The school we’d chosen was highly regarded, known for its success with students with behavioral issues.  We toured and met the staff, asking every question we could think of.  I talked to friends whose own son resided at the school, comforted by their positive experience.  We were as confident as we could be that we were making the best decision possible under difficult and heartbreaking circumstances.

Yet there was no real way to prepare Daniel for the life-change ahead, to explain that our actions had his best interest at heart, that we’d done everything we could and it was still not enough.  Words could not convey to our non-verbal child our profound love as we left him, in an unfamiliar place, his care now in the hands of others.  My dark fear that he’d believe we’d abandoned him almost broke me as I clung to the fragments of my tattered, trembling faith.

After Daniel’s move I rarely practiced that faith, traveling to Wisconsin most Sunday mornings to visit him.  In truth I was glad for the excuse to leave the church behind.  My parents were both gone by then, their memories filling the space they helped build before I was born, the church of my childhood now imbued with more sorrow than comfort, awash in reminders of all that was lost too soon, the old hymns and liturgies haunting in their constancy, vestiges of what I once believed invulnerable.

A few weeks ago my nephew Ted was scheduled to read scripture at that church, which he attends regularly now, and Andy and I went, too, to be with him.  It was the first time I met the new pastor, installed just six weeks earlier.

“They say ‘America’s Got Talent,’ but I beg to differ,” she joked in her sermon, noting that reality TV rarely depicts a truly useful skill, a precious gift, or a worthwhile endeavor.

“The high school teacher who makes algebra come alive—that’s talent,” she continued.  “The farmer who coaxes seed into food.  The musician who brings tears to your eyes.  The parent whose children know they are loved.”

I missed much of what came next, suddenly back seven years to the third night after we’d left Daniel in Wisconsin.

We’d spoken every day to his floor manager, Kip Kussman, whom Daniel had taken to immediately, learning of his first days without us.  So far he’d adapted remarkably, Kip told us, better than most new residents.  We’d been advised not to visit for thirty days, but Daniel was adjusting so well that Kip thought we may be able to come sooner, possibly for Christmas.

My voice broke with relief and gratitude as I thanked him.

“Daniel is going to be fine,” Kip assured me.  “He is secure in a way I don’t see very often.  This is a child who knows that he is loved.”

I doubt Kip will ever understand how much those words meant to me, that they remain the most meaningful thing I’ve ever been told.

For all the ways I felt we’d failed him, we had given Daniel that one gift.

He knew that he was loved.  He knew that we would come for him again.

It’s been a turbulent few years with my son.  I wonder sometimes if he still knows the depth of my love for him, how I treasure him despite the distance that separates us, if he remembers the love I could once demonstrate each day, waking him in the morning and seeing him to bed at night.  I wonder what my weekly visits evoke in him, if they are like the old liturgies of my childhood, stirring memories of faith once held without question, the melodies now echoing both loss and promise.

Does he know me, still?  Does he remember?  Have the seven years he’s been gone blurred his sense of me, or do I remain one thing he knows to be true, to be constant, no matter what?  He asks for me, but what is he seeking now? Does the memory of my love wound in my absence, or is it one true gift that distance cannot diminish?

I don’t know the answers for sure.  But I keep faith that he does know, that he has always known, that I am with him, that he will always, always be loved.