Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Death of a loved one and Autism

It's been awhile since I have written and it's because I have been fighting with myself to go on with my blog.
My Mom was my biggest reader, fan, and all around supporter of all things therapy and Autism related. She was dx with adneocarcinoma stage 2 then days later progressed to noncurable stage 4. This was a very hard time for me and my family. It seems like a blur now, within 90 days we went from planning the holidays to planning her celebration of life. All the while I was both doing my best to keep up with the autism mom schedule, my regular mom stuff, life in general, and being the absolute best caretaker with my sisters and brother for my mom. The day after Christmas she was placed on hospice care and we had some amazing moments, sad ones, angry ones, and some laugh your booty off memories! I was so reluctant to bring jojo to see her (we were blessed to have her in her own home through hospice) during those last weeks,  I was so focused on keeping her comfy and happy I was afraid he would be too loud or rambunctious. But I remembered how much she always tried to include Jojo in everything, so i just did it. And one of my favorite pictures is my sweet mom eating Popsicles with the kiddos. Sure he was loud, and acted like he always does but it was perfect that day. They all got a good laugh with grammy, cherished memories!

My beautiful, always loving, caring, and perfectly ours Mother passed away beautifully with all her kids around her on 01/23/15. It was too fast, and left me feeling pretty down.
I never really thought Jojo noticed what was going on. He seemed quite oblivious to it all. I chalked up his new behaviors to me being gone a lot to care for my mom.  Well, the evening after She passed, Jojo ran back n forth between his bed and my moms picture! He knew, he felt it, it hurt him just like the rest of us. I knew from that day on that he was going through the grieving process like the rest of us. Even now 2 months later I catch him with her pictures and looking at videos with her. He has such genuine feelings and loves his people, and that would be anyone who loves him back. He loved to listen to my mom every night at 8pm, she would tell him goodnight just to hear him squeak at her or a random buh bye.
I miss her with all my being, a piece of me left that day but I believe families are forever so I can go on, each day will get better. And I will continue to blog as she would have wanted me to. Plus it's an amazing outlet for me and if I can help just one person it's worth it!
Moral of this blog: children with autism do feel, they have feelings tenfold. The old  thinking that autism will rob them of emotions is not true, in our case we pushed through the "boy in the window phase" and with hard work and follow through I believe in my heart that most can learn to understand emotions. I will update our "emotions" work on the next blog. Our awesome speech therapist made us a book that helped.

Jojo all smiles, a new found happy!

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