One of my favorite lines from a movie is in "Spanglish". A wife tells her husband she has slept with another man and he describes a sound he heard when she confessed her affair as "a crack in the planet." I know what that sounds like. I heard a "crack in the planet" about 6 years ago. I was sitting in the office of a child psychologist after a lengthy evaluation of my oldest son and she said ".....I'm calling it autism for now." CRACK! I remember clearly her words up to that point and then nothing else she said after that. There was only the deafening popping, crashing and creaking of the earth seperating beneath my feet to reveal a deep hole where all my hopes, dreams and ideas about who my son was would fall into never to be seen again. "A crack in the planet", what a horribly perfect way to describe the sound words make that change our lives forever.
What has me thinking about this today is part of a documentary I watched about a deaf couple in their 60's who were receiving cochlear impants. They interviewed the woman's father, now in his 80's, about having a daughter who is deaf. When he was talking about receiving his daughter's diagnosis he began to cry. "....we knew then that she was deaf" he said with tears in his eyes and a lump in his throat. Some 50+ years later I think this father could still hear echos of that crack he heard when a his daughter's life and his life changed forever.
I found it upsetting that this father still grieved for the loss of his daughter's hearing. Will I still tear up when discussing the details of the first moments of Bear's diagnosis when I'm 80? Unfortunately, I think so. Once your planet cracks, it doesn't seal up again, you just learn to live on one side of the divide or the other. Everyday I pray I'm on the right side............
Monday, May 12, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment