Warning: Long livejournal post incoming.
So, as you know, I have an autistic son and there's an non-profit that really helped us when we first got the diagnosis and I'm forever greatful and in their debt for it. I try to help them out in whatever meager way I can. I donate to them, donated a car to them, help them in their fundraising and such and from time to time I do little informal sessions with some of their autistic teens about how to be good at conversations in both professional and personal settings (think what I do with Pallo, except these kids listen). So yesterday I'm sitting at my office and I get a call on my cell from a number I don't know. I pick up and a lady introduces herself and says that she is a client of this non-profit org just like I was and that she had heard from people there that I was the best conversationalist they knew. I laughed and said that just meant that they didn't know very many people. The lady takes a very serious tone and asked, "But are you good?" I was a bit like "WTF?" and told her about how there was a time when I was young that I couldn't converse very well with anyone and I made it a life goal to be able to talk to anyone, anytime about anything. Whether I was good or not was subjective, but I had been working on the goal for over thirty years so I at least try.
The lady then starts to cry. Again I'm like "WTF?" She tells me that her son was born with a terminal illness and given about 3-4 years to live. He's almost 3 and it's obvious with the state of his health that his time is almost at an end and that with thanksgiving and the holidays coming up she knew that all her conversations with her friends and family would be about her son and his imminent death and even when they didn't discuss it she knew her friends and family just looked at her with pity. She said she loved her friends and family for their concern but after nearly 3 years of this she just longed for a normal conversation. Not a conversation with someone trying to distract her, or tell her it's going to be OK (which it wasn't) or someone that was taking pity on her. She had been going to meetups and late night chatrooms to try and get that but she said either the conversations were awkward and stilted or once they found out they were like "You poor thing!" and the whole conversation was derailed. She said she just wanted to feel like a normal adult having a normal conversation and when she brought this up to another client in the non-profit they told her that I had helped her daughter learn about conversing better and suggested she call me because "Puppy could get a pizza to tell him its life story". So she called and she asked if I could do that for her. I told her that I believed that good conversation is born in the space between the thoughts of your inner dialogue and that inner dialogue is driven by your circumstances and it was impossible to be going through something as monumental as she was and have it not creep in at some point, it was inevitable. that was probably why her attempts at other conversations had not worked. She said that at least I was honest but could we try, like right now. I told her to give me a sec and cancelled my meetings.
We talked about everything. She was a cheerleader. Married a bad boy (dumb choice), who left her once her son got the diagnosis. She has an older son that is 5. He doesn't really understand whats going on and she doesn't get much time with him. She's worried about how they will reconnect after her younger son passes. Because her husband left her, she had to move back in with her parents, which worked out because they're closer to the medical facilities. She took up knitting to help her relieve the nervous anxiety she has because of all this. Even though she tries to be as bubbly as she was when she was a cheerleader, she's put on weight and let her looks go because of her situation. She's tried to get the weight off, but she knows she'll never get back to that size. She hasn't had anything like romance in several years (her husband was already on his way out when she got pregnant). She tried some dating sites just to see what was out there, but the guys interested in her weren't attractive to her. She admitted that she had coasted by on her looks when it came to dating, she was hot and young and she didn't have to try very hard to get a date, all she had to do was say she was available. Now she's not hot and she's older and has kids and she doesn't know how to navigate that. Not that she could now anyway, but its obvious she wants to have a sense of normalcy back in her life. We talked about Star wars, boobies, Harry Potter, sex, religion, holiday traditions, and yes her dying son did come up from time to time, what it was like when she found out, what the therapy was like, how she felt that she and his therapists had put all this time and effort to teach him skills he was realistically never going to use and how she didn't know if she was greatful she had done that or if she regretted it and only did it because no one knew what else to do. After about an hour and a half she said she had to go get her son ready for an appointment and thanked me for the first normal conversation she's had in memory. I told her she had my cell number and that she could call me anytime. She thanked me for the offer but with the events that were to come in the next few days and weeks it seemed unrealistic that she would call, but she would keep it in mind and then she hung up.
After it was over I just sat at my desk sobbing for god knows how long. thank god my office has a door. I can't even imagine the horror this woman is living through, watching your child slowly die, knowing you can't do much, knowing they wont get a chance at a full life, watching them and yourself and your other kid waste away emotionally while this is going on and doing that all on your own? I can't get that conversation out of my head. And I feel like such an asshole. Conversation to me is always a bit of a game. I take out little snippets of humor or stories or lessons and mentally catalog them for future use. It's almost like the FF fanfare could go off after I'm done with a conversation. And here was someone just so starved for any of it. I feel like I've been gorging myself on every scrap of food I can find and then just ran into a kid that hasn't had anything to eat in weeks. My whole approach to conversation is in upheaval. On one hand, I don't think I could have had that conversation without viewing conversation the way I do. On the other, I'm obviously a very, very selfish man when it comes to conversations (even if people don't pick up on it) and I'm not proud of that. The whole thing haunts me and I can't get it out of my head and I can't really talk about this with my wife yet. She's the better part of me and will insist we go out and find this lady and do something for her, which is exactly what she doesn't want. She was very clear about that. I guess this is my best attempt to get the thoughts out of my head.
Just hug your kiddles a little tighter boreans.
