No Rest for the Weary Parent

 

All parents worry about their children. That’s par for the course of a healthy-ish psyche. But there is a comfort to closure for typically developing children. A sort of universal understanding that though they may need you for a while at some point they can and will function without you…

…That’s why there is something so soul aching to having a child that cannot reach that point.

Yes, hopefully others will help them when you are gone, but that is the only comfort you can ever have – vicarious at best. Mostly you’re plagued by the sadness of questions like: Will they understand? Do they even comprehend death as a concept? Do they think they did something wrong and that is why daddy is gone? Where is he? Why won’t he come back? Or…will they forget you completely? Will you just have been a face they knew? One that doesn’t bubble to the surface without the constant reinforcer of your presence?

True, a typical child may wonder some of those same things, but their parent has the comfort of knowing that one day they will have a better understanding of those concepts. Instead of that comfort parents like me have ulcers, drinking problems, both, and worse.

Parents of the mentally handicapped either worry that when we die our children will spend the rest of their days wondering where we went…or, will they be better off never remembering us at all?

~Nick

12/9/14