A Touching Story

[Guest guest]

Except for the drawing the boy described in this story is so much

like Tristan.

From a column in the Mineola Monitor Newspaper in Mineola, TX

By

A couple of weeks ago we buried the foundation of my life, the

inspiration

for my successes and my hero... my Dad. Along the way I discovered a

very

special person in our family and his name is .

can best be described as 11, going on 30, going on five and

he's

always a mystery, not only to us who see him infrequently but much of

the time to

his own parents. He is one of those children born into a world only

they can

live in. He is autistic.

When I first met several years ago, adults were still in the

progress

of figuring out just who was. Oh, they knew he marched to the

beat of

a different drummer, shoot, he marched when there was no drummer. He

didn't

need any outside help, all he needed dwelt deep within his mind,

locked forever

behind those beautiful clear, deep black eyes of his.

I didn't understand then what pictures may have been playing through

his mind

as he bodysurfed across our coffee table, nor did I handle it very

well when

he bit his mother, my niece, leaving very deep marks on her skin.

That was then and Friday was now, and by then I'd had the privilege

to live

in the same house and share the same moments with for several

days as

we prepared for the Friday service.

I found that once I took the time to understand, that I, not ,

had to

be the one to adjust, it opened an entirely different world for me.

On the one

hand there was the family grief of having lost a husband, father and

grandfather. On the other hand there was .

He communicates mostly with one word sentences. " Thank you, "

and " Grampa " are

two distinctly different sentences and are sometimes issued in

passing

thought to acknowledge he knows someone has done something for him or

that his

grandfather, my brother-in-law, is present.

Within his world there is one way seems to express himself

very

clearly. He draws. He draws about subjects people are talking about,

although he

appears to be doodling and not listening.

Somewhere in his world he listens to us and I tasted, if ever so

briefly, the

magic within that child and it will remain with me for the remainder

of my

life.

The minister had been warned that should become verbal during

the

service that it was okay with family, and that he should just keep

preaching,

that those who understood could deal with it okay.

As the service progressed, began to talk, sometimes quite

loudly. As

he talked he drew with a pencil and as his father would suggest he be

quiet,

would simply repeat the word " QUIET " and it was always loud

enough to

almost echo. To those who don't know very well it would have

been easy

to think he wasn't listening, that he didn't know why we were there.

As the service came to an end and the family filed out of the chapel

found a moment of his own to walk to the closed casket and there he

created

for me the moment I will take to my own grave someday.

He simply laid a drawing, the drawing he'd created while talking to

himself

during the service, of a dog with a human hand laying gently on the

head of the

dog, as though to comfort our dad forever.

That little drawing on the casket surrounded by the mountain of

flowers sent

by family and friends from Texas and beyond, will be the memory I

cherish for

years to come.

I no longer question why or wonder if is listening.

It took a funeral for me to slow down long enough to understand that

is simply and that he will never be the kid next door... and

that's

okay.

Because of the autism, can be a burden and a joy and

sometimes all at

the same time.

But I've come to realize he and the thousands of others like him,

understand

us better than we understand them, and if we'll give them half a

chance they

can enrich our lives more than we can theirs.

For 11 years he's been Rudy and Tammy's son . Now he's

, a

child I can't wait to see when we visit them at Christmas.

It seems so far away.