The child I talk about in the third paragraph of the following post would have had her birthday a few days ago.  I recently lamented that I hadn’t done the right thing by Hoss in a timely manner, that maybe if I’d undergone testing and treatment and medication and such years before, maybe we wouldn’t have face an expulsion and a stay in the mental hospital.  Now I realize that I need to just be grateful that I was finally able to figure out something to do so I wouldn’t lose him for real.  Maybe he sometimes hates me, and maybe some other people don’t understand why I do the things I do to parent him (or my other offbeat offspring), but at least I  have the chance to try my best.

Lost (originally published April 8, 2009 on Mamakaren.com)

I lost Hoss in a parking lot once.  I put him in the van and came around to the other side door to connect Little Joe’s baby seat, and Hoss took that brief moment to climb out and run away.  For a moment, I froze.  I couldn’t run around to look for him without leaving my other children unprotected, but I couldn’t stay where I was.  Thankfully, I was coherant enough to be able to describe his build and looks and clothing to the passers-by who heard me screaming his name, and one of those kind hearted folks led him back to me before he had a chance to get hit by a car or wander back into Target or anything more worrisome.  I learned my lesson, and watched him more closely when we were out, and I vowed that I couldn’t think of how badly things couldn’t have been.

Hoss’ issues seem very similar to those exhibited by one of my cousins.  Jamie is an adult now, but during his teenage years, he hit depths that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.  I suspect that the research that exist today, the studies that have come to light about bipolor disorder and ADHD and all those other “disorders” with the capital D’s, the information that wasn’t available a few decades ago about how a kids’ mind might be working when he’s not a typical kid, might have prevented some of the misunderstandings and hard times and issues that he faced.  The rift between him and his parents has long since mended, and we all know that the pain he caused himself and those he loves were not coming from any place of malice or bad intention (in fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a more deeply caring person than he is).  My Nanna told me years ago that she felt, in some ways, so much more strongly for Jamie than for some of the rest of us.  She described him as being a lost soul, and prayed that he’d find his way back, and I’m guessing that she now says some prayers of gratitude that he wasn’t lost forever.

I’ve seen today a huge series of tweets and blog posts and online bonding over a loss experienced by a woman I have never met, and do not even know in a cyber-sense, much less a real-life one.  I’d link to the information, but the traffic to her blog is so heavy right now that no links work.  In any case, I saw the Twitter posts, and figured out very quickly that this beautiful, precious 17-month old had succumbed to what I assume is RSV.  It seems to me as though it happened quickly, probably in a mind-blowingly surreal whirwind.

I’ve never read this mother’s blog, never followed her tweets, but seeing this gripped my heart in a way I can’t fully articulate.  The fog I lived in for those weeks last month, the fatigue and numbness I felt when I came back from visiting hours, and the bursts of tears I had when I let the numbness wear off, all of that is nothing.  Hoss is here.  He’s here and he’s breathing and he’s laughing.  And this woman’s baby girl is not.   For the rest of her life, she’s got an invisible wound that never quite goes away.  And she’s got support and prayers and life will go on for her, for her husband, for the rest of her family.  But she’s never going to regain what she lost.