When is it going to stop?

 I had hoped and planned to write a blog entry about the final episode of This Is Us, and I may do that at some other point.

Today, my heart is too heavy to share those thoughts.

Instead, I find myself with a heart broken for 21 families in Uvalde, Texas, a place that until yesterday I only knew as the birthplace of entertainer Dale Evans and hometown of US Vice President John Nance Garner (who famously described the office of Vice President as “a bowl of warm spit”.)

As I understand the story, the 18-year-old shooter crashed his car in the parking lot of Uvalde’s Ross Elementary School, and then — dressed in body armor, like the shooter in Buffalo 10 days (?!) ago — ran into the school, barricaded himself into a fourth grade classroom, and started shooting. 

Nineteen children in that classroom died. So did both of their teachers. 

It took an off-duty Border Patrol agent to stop the killing.  At the risk of his own life, he ran into the school and shot the shooter. The agent was wounded.

In order to identify the bodies, parents had to be swabbed for DNA because the bodies were so riddled with bullets that it was possible the parents would not recognize them. 

Last night, Joe Biden, angry and heartbroken, demanded to know, when are we going to put a stop to all this carnage?

I have two simple words, Mr. President:

We aren’t. 

My son was two months old when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold ran into Columbine High school and murdered 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves in the school library. 

He turned 23 in February. 

Nothing has changed. 

We “lather, rinse, repeat” with our “thoughts and prayers”, give ideas about what we should do, yell at each other on social media (and sadly, I have seen Christians do this to each other) . . . and then it all dies down until the next mass shooting.

According to an article at newsnationnow.com, the US has had more than 200 mass shootings so far this year. Their statistics come from the Gun Violence Archive.  The Gun Violence Archive (at gunviolencearchive.org) defines “mass shooting” as “four or more people shot or killed, not including the shooter.” There is no one accepted definition of  “mass shooting”, and the GVA website mentions that even the FBI does not define “mass shooting”. 

I don’t have the energy right now to figure out how many mass shootings have happened between Columbine and now, how many hundreds of people killed, wounded, traumatized for life.  I’m selfishly glad that my son is no longer in school. But he works in a supermarket. The Buffalo shooter shot up a supermarket. My family attends church weekly. One of the most recent mass shootings happened in a church in California. And I can think of at least two or three more that happened in churches. 

Last night, Joe Biden demanded to know when we were going to stand up to the gun lobby. 

In 1968, when Robert Kennedy lay on an operating table after being shot in the head, ABC broadcaster Howard K. Smith made editorial comments about gun control and about how powerful the gun lobby was. 

That was 54 years ago.

Nothing has changed. 

The gun lobby remains as powerful as ever. 

British columnist Dan Hodges commented on Twitter in 2015 that Sandy Hook marked the end of the gun control debate. “Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.” 

I am at the end of my rope. Like a counselor friend of mine has said, I’m exhausted. I do not want to be fearful when I go to church or to a grocery store. 

But as long as “my freedom,” “my liberty”, and “my rights” are trumpeted over our responsibility to society at large — especially its most vulnerable members, the children, elderly, and disabled — we will see this happen over and over again. 

This morning, I listened to a Christian radio station waiting for the top of the hour news update. The song playing asked, did God move every mountain? Yes, he did. So he can. 

And all I could think of was how hollow that must ring in the ears of the 21 families whose children and loved ones will not come home, ever again; whose resting place will be underneath a gravestone or in a columbarium, or in scattered ashes. 

When, dear God, does it stop? 

When will Rachel stop weeping for her children? 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Twenty years

Twenty years. 

 

Two decades. 

 

240 months. 

 

1,043 weeks. 

 

7304 days.  

 

175,312 hours. 

 

10, 518, 723 minutes. 

 

631,123,380 seconds. 

 

That is how long my husband, son, and I have lived since I sat in a doctor’s examining room at about 4:30 p.m. on May 20, 2002, and heard the words, “Your son has pervasive developmental disorder, which is on the autism spectrum.” (The hours, minutes, and seconds are timed from 4:30 p.m. on May 20 to 8:30 a.m today, which is the time I began this entry.) 

 

We’d known for a while that something was up with Matthew. We’d been asked too many questions at his three-year-old checkup that we’d answered “no” to.  I’d been asked if Matthew had had his hearing checked. I’d been warned about his behavior in Sunday School. I’d been told by a close friend that I might want to ask his doctor about his speech because he was behind other nearly three-year-olds.  

 

I’d even suspected autism; I don’t know when that word crawled into my brain. 

 

I only remember a few things after that: the PA checking Matthew’s reflexes, the doc saying that we needed to get him set up for speech therapy and needed to figure out if insurance covered it; my snappish remark, “You know what? I don’t care.”  

 

I remember a dinner at McDonald’s, asking my husband, “You know what this means, don’t you?” while Matthew played in the PlayPlace. 

 

I remember a phone call from a friend advising me to take some Tylenol PM so I could sleep that night. 

 

And I remember lying in bed, wanting to cry. 

 

What did it all mean?  

 

Well, for one thing, it meant starting school at three years old, it meant speech therapy, and it meant that the plans and dream I had for Matthew would be changed.  

 

I write this with a mixture of emotions.  When a parent hears a diagnosis such as “autism”, it’s a titanic shift in the way you think about your child. Most of us imagine our kids going to school, to college, getting married, having kids, getting a halfway decent job (although in this day and age, that seems harder) . . . and outside of school, none of that was going to be happening for my son.  

 

I’ve dealt with a mixture of grief and pride, of sorrow and joy, of anxiety mixed with a struggling faith in these last twenty years, however you break it down.  

 

I remember IEP meetings, speech therapy sessions, occupational therapy appointments, talks with teachers, doctors, bursts of frustration in my own therapy sessions and with friends. I remember frustration over lack of child care so that my husband and I could get to therapy sessions. I remember fear of the future, battling with the state over the Katie Beckett waiver, applying for guardianship. Currently, I’m in the waiting period for Matthew’s SSI and suspect it will be another fight there, as well.  

 

And I still wonder about the future.  

 

I feel sorrow over loss of “regular” school, over loss of college, the loss of a possible marriage and the loss of potential grandchildren.  

 

But I would be lying if I said that autism came and stole and destroyed.  

 

The week of Matthew’s diagnosis, I got three phone calls in a row – all on the same day -  scheduling speech therapy, testing for special education, and making an appointment for a brain stem test.  

 

Friends came out of the woodwork with support.  

 

We learned that Matthew could be left alone in the waiting room of our therapist’s office, as long as he had something to play with. 

 

A friend gave us a Game Boy to keep Matthew busy.  

 

Teachers cared about him and cheered his progress.  

 

A dear woman volunteered to help Matthew in Sunday School, and other Sunday School teachers pitched in.  

 

A wonderful youth minister and his staff gave their time and energy to making sure that Matthew would be part of their youth group. That youth group pitched in and surrounded him.  

 

A teacher nominated him for an award, calling him “a joy to teach”. 

 

He learned to do his own laundry and to cook because his high school teachers emphasized learning skills.  

 

He walked in a graduation ceremony.  

 

Four years of college were replaced by four years of a special program to teach him work skills.  

 

And as of today, he’s been in a job for nearly ten months.  

 

Autism, a supposed thief, unleashed a kind, caring little boy who his parents loved and who was loved by those around him. It shaped and formed a man whose tastes range from fast-food chicken nuggets, to meat loaf, to “birthday donuts”.  

 
As I write this, he’s humming the “Law and Order” theme while catching up on “Law and Order” in his room. He watches the Law and Order franchise along with the Chicago franchise, New Amsterdam, and The Good Doctor. The Good Doctor opened many conversations with Matthew about autism; in fact, it was this show that caused Matthew to ask the question, “Do I have autism?” My answer was a (hopefully!) matter-of-fact, “You do.” 

 

He loves Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, and mourned the death of Alex Trebek.  

 

And he still holds a soft spot in his heart for Blue’s Clues and Bubble Guppies.  

 

In an hour and a half, I will send him off to work.  

 

In these twenty years, 240 months, etc. I’ve had plenty of tears and anger and worry and anxiety . . . and many more of happiness, pride, elation, and laughter. I’ve often said that life at our house is many things, but one thing it is not, is boring.  

 

There are still questions about his future, mainly, what happens when his dad and I are gone? We are looking into arrangements to answer that question. We deal with the day to day challenges of autism, of understanding his behavior, of understanding his language, of trying to explain the world to him in ways he can grasp.  

 

But, when all is said and done, Matthew remains what his first name means:  gift of God, given to us in answer to a mother’s prayer for a child.  

 

We don’t know what the future holds for Matthew. But we do know that God holds his future. 

 

Just my.04, adjusted for inflation.