The Sounds of Graduation

When the four graduates came down the aisle of the gym in their caps and gowns (different colors representing the schools which represented their home district), to the traditional graduation march, a tiny knot caught in my throat and I felt the heat of tears well up in my eyes. They weren’t kids I knew, I was there for my daughter, who unbeknownst to her was getting an award for “Most Improved.” The room was full of the cacophony of special needs kids and their parents. care-givers, teachers and friends. I smiled to myself to hear all of the sounds, which my daughter would complain about later and call, “attention seeking behavior” or ASB. Her “ASB-ing” as she would call it, has been in check for awhile and so she has been less tolerant of it in others. While these particular graduates were unfamiliar to me, I knew something about the steps they may have taken prior to the short walk down the gymnasium floor. The nights of flying books and lamps, food splattered in rage on the walls and ceilings, late night tears and assurances that “even though you are different, you are still ok.” As the advocate for my special needs daughter, I recall the countless begging conversations to public school personal to let her go on the class trip, the museum outing, and the final school dance. I remember the countless meetings, the goal setting in her Individualized Education Plan and the trips to mental health personnel to seek answers. I regret the nights I lost my own temper with her frequent but inconsistent outbursts over something someone (often me) said or didn’t say. I remembered the nights I held her as she sobbed about being different. We are an army of un-unified advocates in this room. Adoptive parents, grandparents, birth parents, foster parents, reunited parents and relatives, sharing the room with teachers, behavioral support personnel, school administrators, youth support specialists and counselors. We haven't always seen eye-to-eye in how to help the children we love, but when it comes time to honor the little award winners in each class, we all clapped and many of us cried together. This special school is a hodgepodge of students with a variety of challenges; many have started out their lives, as their guest poet shared last night, “learning about life the hard way.” Neglect, abuse, and poor parenting are commonplace. Some of the youth in the gym with the graduates are still struggling with finding consistent care-givers. These are the kids still in the state’s foster care system. A girl in my daughter’s class won two awards, one for kindness and caring to others and another for leadership. Still in the foster system, no one and everyone clapped especially loud when she retrieved her awards. Some kids at this special school are not victims of poor parenting but were born with autistic spectrum disorders of some kind, challenges that public schools just can’t handle very well. Others developed some of those same challenges because of non-existent parenting or early child abuse and neglect. At the end of the night, the four graduates stood in front of the room and moved their tassels to the other side of their mortarboard and walked proudly out to the computer generated graduation march. Some of us cried, some of us cheered, and some of us let out our best Attention Seeking Behavior sounds.

Beyond Big Grief

What is the kind of grief that takes your breath away? Is it the suddenness and then the shock of it? It seems like that kind of grief is the most difficult to accept. I’ve known the kind of grief that seems to kick you in the chest and make it hard to breathe for a while. But I also have known the road back. Today, my life is filled with many people I might have lost track of if not for Facebook. Twin daughters of one of my best friends when I lived in Kansas City just lost their father. He wasn’t old, only 60, or sick. I don’t know the circumstances but he died suddenly. He was a gentle man. The first time I met him he was playing the guitar on the front porch of a battered women’s shelter. He had a big toothy smile. He sounded like a Kansan, not quite southern, but not quite northern either. My friend eventually married him and they had two really sweet twin girls. Since FB I have gotten to learn about their lives again after losing track of them first when they went to grade school and then again when they were in their later primary grades. The last time I had run into them was around their 10th or 11th year. They were decked out in their softball uniforms in a Panera with their grandfather, who I had met many times. They had those big smiles. They are out of college now, making lives for themselves. I was grateful I had the chance to know them when they were first born through those very early school years. Tonight I remember them as the busy little girls they were, playing on the couch, watching TV, and laughing. Tonight too, I am remembering my own experiences of that take your breath away kind of grief and the day-to-day effort it takes to breathe normally again. It does happen after awhile and there will always be that remembering of the big grief. But past that breathless place, is the joy and for them, the man with the big smile.