“Welcome to Carrabba’s.  Have you dined with us before?”  The young waiter with the perfectly parted hair looked at me eagerly for a reply.  Instead of answering, my eyes drifted past his right shoulder to the last time I had dined there.  I imagined Troy, Dalton and I sitting and laughing.  We had just picked DD up from basketball practice and had decided to grab a bite to eat.  I remember Dalton had been wearing his blue and white basketball practice jersey that said Spartans.  His face had been pink from working hard at practice and his hair was sticking straight up with sweat.  I asked him what he wanted to eat that night and he had replied with “bread and dessert.”  After a brief argument with him about nutrition, the discussion ended in its typical fashion.  He was going to eat bread and dessert for dinner.  So as the waiter stared at me waiting patiently for my drink order, all I could do was bury my face in my hands.

Occasionally I play a dangerous game in my mind.  It is called the What If Game.  It starts with the day of the accident and works backwards. What if we had had a different doctor in the ER?  Might he or she have been more capable of resuscitating my son?  What if I had gotten to the scene faster?  Could he have heard my voice and fought harder to live? What if we had insisted that Dalton stay off the ranger that day after seeing how fast he was driving?  Would that have made us better parents?  What if we didn’t own all these ATV’s?  Had we not allowed a 13 year old boy to drive underage and inexperienced, would this accident have occurred at all?  If Dalton hadn’t been cut from the Augusta Middle School basketball team, would he have met Tyler and the other boys at Wichita Collegiate?  Would he have been in a different type of accident with a different friend?  And finally, what if my past sins created this tragedy?  Was God punishing me?

I am struggling with the whole grief process.  What stage am I really in?  Acceptance?  Denial?  Much of it lately seems to center around guilt.  If I have too good of a day, I feel guilty because I must have forgotten I am in mourning.  If I have a terrible day, I feel guilty because I have lost my perspective.  It is arduous to have hope every second of the day and believe my son is in a better place.  Speaking of guilt, today I recalled attending a funeral for Colton’s friend nearly a year ago.  Hunter was another kid gone too soon.  The five of us had gone to the funeral and then off to a dinner that night.  We spoke of Hunter’s passing, but only briefly.  After dinner we carried on with our evening without ever taking the time to really think about how Hunter’s mother and father were coping.  Before I crawled into bed, I remember telling God how much I was thankful that my own children never suffered from a chronic illness.  Looking back, I feel ashamed.  What exactly was I saying?  Thanks, God, for taking someone else’s kid instead of mine?  After DD’s accident, did anyone thank God it was my son and not theirs?

We attended Mass this morning at St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church in Grove, OK.  Directly in front of us sat a family with a boy around the age of ten with a serious special need.  He shouted outbursts all throughout church, sometimes becoming physical, and otherwise acted in a defiant nature towards his parents.  With the true face of an angel, I watched this beautiful mother rub the back of this boy and whisper in his ear.  She never looked frustrated at any point.  The father didn’t quite have the patience of the mother, yet he continued to stroke the hair of his son when whispering a correction.  Even the younger sister (who obviously has taken on the role of older sibling) would gently tap his hand when he would pick at the buttons on the church pew.  Contemplating this family, I was fascinated with how they seem to have embraced their situation.  It isn’t ideal.  Beginning a family, they probably didn’t imagine administering around the clock care to their child for what is most likely his lifetime.   They have been dealt a rough hand in life, but accepted it without feeling as though it were burdensome.  I pray I can find peace always in the hand I was dealt and understand the best is yet to come.  “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace.  In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”  (John 16:33)

Being a parent is one of the hardest yet most rewarding job a person can have.  Things often don’t go the way we plan.  For much of the pre-teen and teenage years, our children think we know nothing.  A couple years ago, I remember telling Dalton to brush his teeth on a Friday night and he looked at me like I was an idiot and he said, “Mom you know I don’t brush on the weekends.  Or over Christmas Break.  Or summer.”   Ask his friends.  They know this about him.  It used to gross all of us out so bad.  His lack of personal hygiene and repulsive eating habits made us all nauseous.  Somehow, he managed to maintain a lot of friends.  But that was just DD.  He has been unique like that from Day 1.  We babied him at times and let him get away with things Colton and Keely wouldn’t have ever gotten away with.  Many times he should have had his mouth washed out with soap and grounded for weeks.  Instead often I would laugh at his inappropriate jokes and his grounding would last about 2 hours.  I guess the way I look at it now is totally different.  I see a family who loved a boy for 13 years that was on loan to us from God.  We filled his life with love and opportunity.  And he responded as being all-boy, ornery and stubborn.  It is okay to allow your children to be their own person and make their own decisions.  Of course you are there for guidance.  Parents, do me a favor if you will.  Let your child order just bread and dessert one day.  It is okay.  Just promise me you will think of my boy.