There is a lady pushing her son (?) in a stroller. The son is severely, no, violently, retarded. That sounds awful, and I'll be the first one to call myself insensitive, but let me finish my point, first. I use the word violently because his appearance seemed almost surreal in it's disfigurement. My first reaction was "Jesus, what happened to that kid?" Not, "Oh, he's severely handicapped, and probably mentally challenged." I mean, this poor kid was fucked up. Again, I'm trying to make a point here, if you, dear reader, will let me. Yes, I am an insufferable jerkoff for not being sensitive and politically correct, but lemme finish. I'm a pretty squeamish dude when it comes to messed up kids.
So, then I realize the "kid" is probably 17 or 18 years old. His voice has changed, and he needs a shave. But, he's screaming bloody murder because he wants something from Mom; what, I have no idea, but he's freaking screaming and it sounds like a grown man, and his face is all twisted up, and his teeth are kind of in and kind of outside of his mouth, and I'm not sure his mouth closes all the way, and there are big patches on his face that look like open sores, that might have been self-inflicted wounds, and his hands look like they're attached backwards, and his left eye is certainly blind, and I don't want to stare at him, but he's screaming and freaking me out, and I'm a little stoned and trying to be understanding/politically correct/niceguy but it's not working, because he's fucking screaming like a grown man and moving around with his under-developed chest and legs that are both really hairy, and I start to leave and then his Mom speaks to him:
"Paul, it's okay. Be quiet, honey. Mommy's here."
Paul quiets down and looks back at Mom pushing him and Mom smiles and puts her hand on his head, and Paul, with tears in his eyes, makes a whooshing sound and Mom kisses him on the side of his face, and pushes him down the aisle.
This is everyday for this woman. This is her reality. This is her son that she loves and is taking care of until she is either too old, or he dies. She loves him.
That woman is my new fucking hero. She makes me believe in people again. She is being a Mom and doing her job, and taking the pain and anger that I'm sure she's felt over the years, and not giving a shit about what the people in the store are saying and how many are avoiding her, because she is enjoying a day shopping with her son, and fuck all those people in the store because they don't know what she's gone through, but she's not pissed off, she's just being a mom and kissing her son on the cheek. Mom is fucking awesome.
Paul is my new hero too. Paul is my hero because he's so fucked up and might not even know it. But, he is just alive. He is just living his life, and not worrying about why he is so messed up. He's not blaming anyone. He's not concerned about me, a little stoned, freaking out on the other side of the kitchen utensil aisle in Ross Dress for Less. He's just quieting down because his mommy told him to. He was being a good boy. Fucking right he is.
It makes my day-to-day shit pale in comparison. The amount of bravado I need to scrape up to make it through the day is so wasted. My little problems with money and time and money again just seem silly compared to Paul and his Mom.
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I had almost the same thing happen to me!
Now, I wasn’t at a store, I was visiting my doctor at CIR, where they taught me how to live after a spinal cord injury. So it wasn’t a store, and there was less of a chance of me seeing “temporary able-bodied” (TAB for short) people there than handicapped ones (of every variety).
That day, Corwin and I were fighting. It was something where he had hurt me emotionally, but didn’t find out until later, and was punishing himself for it so much I had to console him. It made me angry to have to console him for something he did. Just as I’m sure he would have rather not known how he’d hurt me.
When we first entered the place, things were quiet, like a normal waiting room. Among the various patients there was a woman there with her handicapped daughter (I assume, they looked to be family and the ages seemed right). The daughter was in what appeared to be a stroller, only larger to accommodate the size of the young woman. She looked to be in her early twenties. Things were normal (for a visit at CIR) at first, until the daughter began to cry.
Crying doesn’t begin to describe what came out of her mouth. She wailed. She was in such sorrow and despair; it was painful to listen to. To make matters worse, after a while her tears were beginning to choke her, so she was wailing and making drowning sounds.
No one helped the poor woman. Her mother sat in a waiting room chair, with her daughter’s chair in front of her, their heads about a couple feet apart. The mother simply read a magazine. She didn’t comfort her child with words or even touch.
The only similarity with your hero is that she didn’t give a damn what anyone thought! She also didn’t give a damn about the suffering of her own child!
I was at the front desk dealing with paperwork and insurance and co-pays, when the wailing became choking. I asked if there was anything anyone could do to help. The receptionist told me no.
I didn’t want to get into an argument with the mother of the wailing woman. Anyone cold and calloused enough to read a magazine while her child was literally drowning in tears was not a woman to mess with.
Instead, I asked the receptionist if it would be ok for me to wait outside. I felt like an asshole for doing it, but the pain I heard coming from the young woman was too much to bear. I told the receptionist I wasn’t a bad person, on the contrary, I wanted nothing more than to soothe the woman, I was a mother myself and I just couldn’t sit in a confined space and be witness to such inhumanity in the form of that mother!
That last part I tried to whisper, but we practically had to shout to hear one another.
Corwin was already outside. Asperger’s is a mild form of autism, remember? Well, noises like what issued from the handicapped daughter’s mouth were enough to make him unable to think. He practically ran out of the room the moment I told him he didn’t have to stay, I could handle the paperwork myself.
After we argued some more outside on our personal matter, they called us back in.
The woman was still wailing. We could hear the snot and tears getting in the way of her keening. She would have to stop sometimes, gagging on the snot. Her mother was still reading a fucking magazine! The nurse lead Corwin and I back to a room to await the doctor. We could still hear the woman screaming, but it was distant, more like demented background noise.
Corwin was still arguing with me when I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I said, “ENOUGH OF THIS BULLSHIT!”
I opened the door to the room we were in and the screaming became louder, no longer background noise, but human agony. “That is misery, that is despair, that is indifference! What we are discussing and going around and around with is nothing more than an intellectual exercise in making ourselves miserable when there is no need! The past is in the past! Quit this bullshit!”
Eventually, they took the handicapped girl away and we didn’t hear or see them again. I still feel terrible for not having the courage to help her. But at least she helped put Corwin and my life into some perspective.
I hate it when people come up to me to tell me what an inspiration I am. I actually had a woman tell me that she was having a shitty day, but seeing what I have to live with made her feel better. If I’d not been so shocked by the rudeness, I would have done some kind of violence upon her!
So it’s with a heavy heart when I admit the woman’s suffering helped stop mine.
I don’t know what it must be like to be the wailing woman’s mother. I can only hope that the people around me don’t become immune to my misery when I’m in pain, whether emotional or physical. I have a long history of having terrible things happen to me. God, fate, or whatever, ensures torment is part of the package deal of being me.
I cheer for your hero! She could teach the mother of the crying handicapped woman a thing or two about being human, about finding a small bit of happiness while caring for a handicapped child. The one in the waiting room found relief, or escape, in the form of a magazine, but no witness to her indifference could call her happy.
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