It Takes More Than Good Memory to Have Good Memories

Last night we ate at the Chinese restaurant in Booneville  called New China.  This was my fortune cookie message:

It takes more than good memory to have good memories.

I thought it was especially poignant at this particular time of my life.  I rarely ever get anything from a fortune cookie that even makes sense.  Tonight's typed message on the tiny strip of paper kind of gets you to thinking.

I have so many wonderful memories of Lynda and being Lynda's nana and as each day passes, I find myself with significantly less ability to remember things.  A person can have the most superb memory, yet have no good memories.  Good memories come from living life and in how we choose to accept the obstacles that come our way.  I love the quote that we see on everything now.

"Life's not about waiting for the storm to pass...It's about learning to dance in the rain!"
Lynda and I danced every chance we got.  Even with the child abuse at Millcreek.  Even the huge differences in the abilities that Lynda returned with as opposed to the little girl she was before the seizure and stroke. Even though these events changed the direction of her life for the next 30 years.  We danced.  Not at first.  Not every day but we danced before the storm stopped raging.

 We danced because we were so thankful to God that He had spared her life.  We danced because satan could not take away our family's desire to make the best of a situation that we certainly had not planned for.  While the storm rages around each one of us at some time in our life, we can give up and never dance again. We can also just splash through the mud puddles and dance right in the middle of the storm. 

It takes more than good memory to have good memories.  I like that especially since my memory is not what it used to be when I was young,  It takes living life with a purpose to have good memories. They're most likely mixed in with some difficult or even terrifying memories.  In order to kept those good memories safe from being contaminated by the lies that satan would have us believe---we have to be willing to dance in less than perfect conditions.  That's when some of the best memories are made and often we find the storm ended while we were dancing.

It's been 2 months and 1 week since Lynda left all of the storms and danced into paradise.  I'm beginning to see opportunities to dance as I listen to the music of the good memories playing inside my heart.

Pray for Missing Boy With Autism

Please pray for the safety of Avonte Oquendo who is a 14-Year -Old New York City non-verbal boy with autism. He wandered away from his school and has been missing for a WEEK.

I cannot imagine what the family is going through. Autism Speaks has gotten involved today giving the search more coverage.  Pray for Avonte, his family, and those who are searching for him.  

This was always a fear that we had when Lynda was young. I hope this story has a happy ending.

AH-CHOO....

Lynda had several sounds that she had perfected.  The sneeze was one of the sounds that she could fool anyone with.  If she heard someone sneeze instead of saying bless you she would sneeze,  Or if she just felt in the mood for sneezes, she would just out of the blue...sneeze.  She liked it best if you would sneeze after she sneezed.  It was a game.

We were waiting in line at the grocery store one day and she started sneezing.  Her sneezes were highly realistic and she was cute and little.  Little old ladies would stop and say "Oh, poor baby.  She's coming down with a cold".  At first, I would tell the people that she wasn't really sneezing.  She was just pretending.  They would look at me like I was a bad mother for accusing my child of faking sneezes.  lol   You really couldn't tell the real ones from the fabricated ones.  The laughing after the sneeze was what always gave her away.

Most of the time when someone commented about her sneezes and they acted concerned, I just thanked them and didn't try to explain.

Lynda had created her own game of Ah-Choo.  It never grew old to her nor did I ever become tired of her suddenly sneezing and waiting for me to echo it.  The look on her face in this picture very much captures her expressions as she was playing the big sneeze game.

Even after the stroke, she would sometimes respond to my sneeze with her version.  Ah-Choo.  It always got someone's attention and she loved that.  There won't be any sickness in heaven but I wouldn't be surprised if there are still were sneezes..because Lynda's there!

Lynda --The First Day at Millcreek and After Millcreek

This picture of Lynda was made at Millcreek the first day we took her on September 2, 1981.  She was healthy and could sit straight and run like the wind.  As so many people have said through the years....to just look at her you wouldn't know anything was wrong with her.  This is a perfect example.  She celebrated her 10th birthday at Millcreek on September 21st.  It just about killed me for her to be going even for respite care and then for her to be there for her birthday....well, if you're a parent I don't have to explain.  I appliqued this jumpsuit for her to match a yellow one that Kevin had.  We had a family picture made right before Millcreek and in the picture she had one arm wrapped around her Daddy's neck and the other hand up in front of the applique (of course).  LOL


After the seizure and the stroke on January 21, 1982 she was in the hospital at Magee and then in Memphis at LeBohneur.  A couple of weeks later, the photograph below was taken.  I was able to take her with me to Scott Center since I taught the multiply disabled class.  She wasn't really ready to go back to school but with this special situation, she went.  In the picture below, someone is having to hold her to make sure she didn't fall while I took the picture.  She didn't have balance.  She couldn't walk and as you can tell here, she couldn't even sit alone.  I can describe it with words but you can't really get an idea of the severity of the stroke unless you were there or perhaps by seeing a picture.  You can imagine how overwhelming it was for us to see her with such major changes when we went to Magee thinking it was only a minor thing.  A seizure.  We thought it was like all of the ones she'd had for the previous ten years.

Our sweet Lynda with actual bald spots on the side of her head.  This happened before the stroke.  Mine is beginning to look a lot like this since July 30th when she went into the emergency room in Oxford.  It's amazing what stress will do to your hair.

I want to urge anyone with a child with special needs who cannot tell you what is going on at school or daycare to take notice of any thinning of his or her hair.  This was our first clue that something was going on.  The body's reaction to stress is often to shut down the growth stage of hair and prematurely force the hair into the resting stage.  Where a person usually loses 100 hairs a day, forced premature shedding causes about 300 hairs a day to fall out.  It can be caused by illnesses, medications, or stress from schedule changes for children with autism or situations considered abusive.  Please let this information help you identify situations that may be causing your child with special needs to  experience stress.  It may not be anything that would cause us stress but for a particular child (work that's too difficult or they don't understand) it can cause all types of health issues, behavioral issues or something you might not equate with stress;  hair loss.

I hope this is information you will never have to use but maybe knowing what we've learned the hard way will benefit some other parent in detecting stress in their child and get whatever type help is needed.

God's Transformations into New Creations

God always saves the best for last.  The first 10 years Lynda was like the little caterpillar.  Moving from one thing to the next (and usually taking a bite out of any and everything she could find).

The there was the stroke and she was in a resting stage for 30 years where she could no longer explore like before but God wasn't finished with the little caterpillar while she waited in the cocoon.  He was working his miracle of transforming what went into the cocoon into something miraculous and beautiful.


                                                                         Lynda spent a long time waiting  and waiting....and then when God's timing was just right He transformed her into a perfect creation.  Like the butterfly, Lynda will have a new body and is a new creation.    Thank you Father for giving Lynda a new life and for her transformation in Paradise.  We praise you for Lynda for all of the phases of her life you have protected her through.

What A Difference A Day Can Make

Every afternoon after we leave work, we go by the cemetery and take a big watering can and water the grass on Lynda's grave.  If you've been following Lynda's blog, you've seen it grow from a few sprouts.  Yesterday we went and put more grass seeds on the spots that weren't growing as fast as the rest.  We thought it was going to rain but back to the water can.

When we got out of the car, I could see a brown grave instead of green.  As we got closer, it was obvious that someone had mowed our tender new grass and gouged out big holes.  We had so tenderly tended it trying to get the grass from the sides to fill in on the sides of the new grass.  Russ called the woman that is in charge of the cemetery who tired to explain how the guys with the weed eaters must have come along behind her when she raised the blades and went over the grave.  It was pretty easy to see tire tracks.

Lynda and William Together at OCDC and Millcreek

Lynda went to school at the Oxford Child Development Center when we moved back to Mississippi.  We moved back just a few months before one of Lynda's classmates became of full-time resident at Millcreek Rehabilitation Center in Magee, Mississippi.  William was a beautiful little boy diagnosed with autism also but unlike Lynda,  William would lay on his mat at nap time and recite his alphabet to the adults who would sit beside him as he marked time during naps.  I think it was rare that he slept.  It was rare that Lynda slept either but she wasn't so polite as to lie there and quietly recite the alphabet or a song.  Lynda was more into playing catch me if you can.

Both children were five years old in the picture.  William and Lynda both were at Millcreek together when Lynda was admitted in September, 1981.  William had been a resident since 1976.  I knew that he was at Millcreek and that was one of the reasons that I felt that as an alternative to NMRC who had no respite slots at the time, Millcreek must be a good placement because William had been living there for five years.  Lynda would probably be there for a maximum of five months.

Life is full of ironies and paths crossing in ways that we don't understand. 

Lynda experienced a massive stroke as a result of negligence on the part of the Millcreek staff who didn't find Lynda having the seizure until she had suffered irreparable brain damage.  She was paralyzed on the right side and no longer recognized anyone or anything she had previously known.
This happened on January 21, 1982.  For the next 30 years she lived without being able to speak and had limited mobility.

While William was on an Easter Egg Hunt on good Friday with the Millcreek staff in Magee, William was allowed to wander away from the group.  With no supervision, he crawled under a fence and into a creek.  He drown on April 9, 1982.

These two beautiful children were ten years old.  Both families had every expectation to believe that their children would be supervised and would be safe.  It is chilling to realize how few days there were between Lynda's life-changing stroke and the day William perished. 

Children in the Class Photo:

I can remember all of the children's names except one and I'm sure Wanda Dean can tell me his name.
Back row:  Gloria, Michael, Jonathan, William, and ?   Their teacher was Diane Horan.
Front row:  John, Rachel, Angie, Willie and Lynda.  Gloria and Michael passed away as a result of complications of their disabilities many years after this picture was made.