After several years of dealing with my autistic son, it became very clear my marriage was heading toward the rocks. It’s kind of what you would hear when a couple experiences the death of a child. The couple soon falls apart because the stress and hurt of losing a child is so deep and hard, nothing else really matters.

It’s clear from my current state that I’ve never really dealt with this loss. Yes, I still have my son, but it’s the loss of what most people would call a ‘normal’ son. He’s now nearing 30 years old, but still not able to carry on a normal conversation, can’t work because he can’t get along with others and he just isn’t ‘all there.’ It breaks my heart. It’s like I have a son, but I don’t really.

So in those earlier years, Mark (autistic son) was very hard to deal with, but as he grew older, things became even worse. He became stronger and faster. He would hit others when he was not happy and would run away more frequently. No one could keep up with him.

In the meantime, my marriage was on the rocks, Mark was getting worse, my other two children were also feeling the strain and my husband lost his job for which he never explained to my why. Things were about as bad as they could be, but one good thing was that my husband did find a job in a nearby city (70 miles away). So, we packed up the house and moved to our new location.

Although we were initially really excited about the school Mark would be going to, it ended up being the worst thing that could have happened to him. They totally ignored him and left him out of school activities. I was never so angry in my life. I quickly called his old school and explained our problem to them. I told them I would bring Mark to school everyday under the assumption we would move back to our old city as soon as we could find a house. Unbelievably, they allowed us to do that.

So everyday, I traveled 70 miles one way just to take Mark to school. During the day I would drive around with Kathy to look for houses. The moment I found one it would seem it was sold out from under me. It was a seller’s market and you had to write up a contract almost immediately if you wanted a house.

I finally was able to do just that and got a house that was in the right school district. I signed it without my husband even being there. But it was wonderful little house on a court where we could bring the kids back. In the meantime, I was still traveling 70 miles one way back and forth every day. It was becoming exhausting.

We finally were able to get into our new house and it was my husband who had to commute back and forth, not me. This lasted only a little while because once again my husband lost his job. I was becoming very suspicious as to the nature of his leaving several jobs now and couldn’t understand what the problem was.

But there we were in the new house. The kids had neighbor children to play with. Mark was settling in and I was trying to paint and decorate the house. Things were going okay, I guess, when one day in the afternoon the fire department and police knocked on my door. They asked me what the emergency was. I really didn’t know what to say because I never called them.

They said they had received a call from this address/phone. My mind suddenly opened up and realized that Mark must have been playing with the phones. The police would not leave until they saw him and knew everything was alright. We all went upstairs to the bedroom Mark was in and we peeked around the corner to find that he had the phone in his room and was sitting on the floor. Marked looked up and saw the firemen, smiled real big and said, “Help is on the way!”

I apologized to the police and explained the situation. They had no problem with it, other than the obvious and asked that we monitor the phones more closely. I promised I would. Apparently that day at school, the kids were taught to call 9-1-1 in the event of an emergency. Although I was happy to see that Mark knew how to call, I was equally concerned at the newest potential problem we now faced.

To sum things up to this point, Mark was getting not only faster and stronger, but smarter as well. Kathy and David, my other two, were getting along well with the neighbor children. And I was enjoying my 10th wedding anniversary with my husband who brought me home a basket full of roses that was formerly a centerpiece on a table at a conference he attended. I was never so hurt. My marriage just took another hit. It wouldn’t be long now.

Until my next post, God bless you.