When Life Comes At You Through A Windshield

It had been an uneventful December morning… until the school bus hit my car.

So I’m sitting at the stop sign, waiting my turn to exit our housing development. Jack was buckled into the backseat and we were flawlessly executing our weekday morning routine of getting him to class. But then a school bus turns into our development too tightly from the left. I had just enough time to think a few expletives and pray that the impact would not be bad. The yellow bus with its black lettering filled my windshield. The next thing I know, my car was perpendicular to the road instead of its former and correct parallel placement.

Little did I know when I hopped into my car to bring Jack to school moments earlier, that it would be our tiny Honda Fit’s final trip.

Life can be like that, right? One minute you’re minding your own business and then the next you are in an ambulance, on your way to the hospital to be checked out. But I was so lucky. Jack and I were fine and the bus company accepted the full responsibility for the accident. Another blessing was that all of the kids on the bus, as well as the driver were ok too. Only my car was collateral damage, but cars can be replaced. And with the serendipitously-timed Toyotathon happening right then, replace it we did.

I felt giddy in the first few days after the accident, grateful both of us were alive and well. I made bad jokes about how Jack and I were the only ones in our house who could, with 100% street cred, say they felt like they got hit by a bus and own it. Moments after getting back from the hospital, I launched into post-accident, insurance minutiae without skipping a beat.

But then, as you might predict, the adrenaline wore off. The rest of December was hard. Because I wasn’t just dealing with a bus accident. There were a few other aggravating issues Mike and I were managing as well.

One large issue was Jack’s hyperactivity and inability to sleep the entire Christmas break. When I say he barely slept, I mean that literally.

His Fitbit data tells the tale. 82,000 steps in one 24 hour period and he had a lot of such high step days over break. Before Jack, I never would have believed that was even possible. Even Fitbit stopped sending congratulatory badges to my email, almost as if it, too, was getting concerned.

I’ve written before of his wacky sleep cycles in few previous posts, so I won’t rehash it here. Suffice it to say, Mike and I were tired and scared for Jack. He was so exhausted but his body wouldn’t let him rest. Things seemed bleak and unchanging.

I’m not writing about this challenging time in order to complain or for sympathy. Everyone faces difficulties in their life from time to time—it’s called being human. I’m writing because I know you also have also have these periods of difficulty with your children.

I have yet to meet any parent of a child with special needs (or anyone else, for that matter!) who always lives their best life. It’s not that you’re having just one bad day, it’s more like hard weeks and months where you don’t know how you’re going to accomplish mundane chores, let alone anything of significance.

So you don’t.

At least I didn’t during this time. If that meant binge watching Netflix for a break, so be it.

All too often when we parent children with disabilities, our world feels overwhelming at the best of times, running parallel to a world we imagine other families with typically developing children experience. And then, when a few more unexpected difficulties arise, it can feel almost impossible to endure. But at these times, more than any other, we must remember that life, while not always changing as fast as we’d like during the bad times, does in fact, eventually change.

Like with us.

Somehow beginning in January a whole bunch of good things have happened. One of the largest miracles is that (knock wood) Jack’s medications have now begun to work in harmony with each other, due to the perfect balance for him with dosing. Now Jack sleeps at night. It is a miracle.

This is the longest period of time he has ever slept regularly. In his entire 17 years of life.

Even before his wacky sleep due to a medication, Mike or I would get up with him in the middle of the night at least a few nights per week during his “good” sleeping times. Of course we did try to sleep some when he was awake, but it was a taut, strained type of sleep, colored with guilt.

So what I’m really trying to say is this. One day you’re minding your own business and out of left field, life changes in an instant, and that may be a bad thing. But then again, the events of January have taught me that good things can happen unexpectedly too. Even if something changes in Jack’s sleep again, no one can take away this gift of a “good sleep intermission.” I will take this blessing as the cushion I need when the next (hopefully metaphorical) bus hits me. For it will happen, sooner or later. Good thing I have Netflix.

R.I.P. Honda Fit. Thanks for keeping us safe!