Let them Go
...at it can feel the love you have for it. Time passes and now you child is diagnosed autistic. No longer can you hold your beautiful baby, nor express how much love you have for it, because it does not understand. You are left with a child that does not acknowledge that you are his/her parent; it just looks at you as any one else. Is that parenthood? All your child needs is a body to show what they want and that’s it. How does a parent who has waited all their life for this child to grow and have kids of their own, deal with such a child? Then ask yourself, is that life? Just because they are breathing are they truly living? What if the parents knew that the baby was retarded and autistic when the child was a year old? The doctors sit in front of you and tell you your child will never acknowledge you as its parents, or experience any kind of love or happiness. Would you want to see your child grow under these circumstances? A family friend of mine cries every night because his five-year-old daughter is mentally retarded and autistic. He can’t talk his daughter without her clawing herself until she bleeds. Every so often she wants to be held by someone, doesn’t matter if it is a stranger or not, just to be held then runs off. Bill, the father of this child, wishes he could have ended this life when the doctors first told him. “Why would I want to watch my child be in this state of mind? She doesn’t even care who I am, she doesn’t understand. That’s not life, nor is it parenting.” My grandmother who has raised me from when I was two to about the age of ten is brain-dead in a hospital bed. She has been in that bed for the past month, fighting for life, but life for her is breathing. As one of her closest grandsons, I sit beside her and wonder why she is in this bed. She would wash me, cook for me and entertain me when I wanted. Not speaking English, she taught me to not only speak Farsi, but also be proud of my native tongue. A mother of seven and a grandmother of eleven, she has been the head of the family, since she was widowed at the age of fifty-eight. ...