Oh sweet Noah, I am sitting upstairs listening to your daddy make you and your little brother laugh and squeal. Your daddy is just your world right now. He always knows how to make you happy. I love all three of you so very much. You had a really great Thanksgiving. You were able to eat small pieces of jelled cranberries and I pureed you a dinner with all the trimmings and chocolate cheesecake for dessert. You loved it. You looked on at your little brother with such curiosity and joy as you both watched your train go around the Christmas tree. These are the things memories are made of, Noah. I watched a documentary this year titled the "Life of a Turkey" on PBS. Many people probably would have found it a bit boring and maybe odd considering the timing of it so close to Thanksgiving and the fact that millions of turkeys are slaughtered across the world to find themselves on a dinner table for this holiday once a year, however I didn't really give it much thought that we'd also be serving up a turkey in relationship to watching it. To me it simply had some great messages about life. As mentioned in the documentary, as humans we fail to take life one day at a time, we rarely find the joy in each second - other creatures are able to do that. They aren't planning what they are doing today, tomorrow or even next year. They exist only in the moment. And because of that their worries are few, and their joys abundant.
I look at you and think you are a lot like that. You aren't planning your today, or your tomorrow or your next year. You have that joy about each moment you are here on this earth, you have something many of the rest of us don't have - a sense of enjoying what you have today, making the best of whatever it is. I wish we all had the ability to live in the moment, but we simply don't. You see I will always have to plan, to make arrangements, to figure out what comes next for you. That doesn't mean that I won't ever find that peace and pure joy. It just means my peace, joy and contentment will come from a different place. It means I have the hope that someday I can rest knowing your needs will forever be taken care of, that I have done my job to bring about the most independence I can for your life, to provide you with all the tools at your disposal to be all that you can be. Then when that happens I can sit back and exist only in the moment.
I can't exactly remember how the conversation was brought up, but your grandmother was telling me the other day of a bad time in history, during the Holocaust, where they killed thousands of disabled children in their Child Euthanasia Program. I learned of course of the Holocaust in grade school, but I don't remember them teaching us about that portion, some things in this world Noah are so horrific, that no one wants to talk about it. I of course didn't remember learning about it - so I came home and read up on it and sure enough your grandmother was telling me correctly - indeed thousands of children just like you were killed just because they were different. They deemed them "Life not worthy of Life - or useless eaters" implying heavily upon their burden to society. I don't understand humanity - how anyone could ever think that about someone like you. You are not a burden in anyway to this world. The world is a better place because you are in it. You are a blessing - a gift to this world Noah. Although these events occurred as early as 1939, I grieve years later for all the families that lost their special children. There are not enough tears in the world that express the magnitude of that pain. I am mad, sickened and filled with tremendous sadness all at the same time. The world must never ever let something like that happen to special needs children ever again.
I refuse to let you ever be mistreated by this world in anyway. I will fight through the stares, the mean comments, those that lack compassion and education. I will fight for you until my dying day to make sure that this world is appropriately kind to you. I will never give up on that mission. Your little brother will stand by your side always, he too will defend you long after your father and I are gone. He too will make sure that you will always be okay. We will stand by your side always.
Love,
Noah's Miracle by Stacy Warden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.