What do you do when your child becomes
something to remain behind the caution
tape for longer than the time the doctor
says he needs to be? What happens when
instead of being in a contaminated room
with doctors and nurses in hazmat suits
the walls build up around you and your child?
It’s like we travel back in time, and ET
is real. Steven Spielberg didn’t just
dream up a movie script. The specialists
walk through tunnels made like an old
vacuum hose. The one he loves stays
only as long as life beats in the heart
that experts see as only a body part.
But there isn’t any “E.T. go home.”
There’s only the walls around us, and
emails go out that your child’s been
asked not to return to camp for longer
than the doctor recommends.
Only no one had called you and told
you because after all your son
has only become another number,
a statistic on graph rising up, up, up,
and the heart is only something that
pumps. “E.T. go home,” they say.
Do you know my son is the reason
my heart still beats? There’s no
outer space to which we escape, and
the rain drips on the windows of my
daughter’s room. When I read words
that are never spoken to me after I’ve
battled nightmares all night and seen
my baby, over and over, die; I think of
how I’ll tell my son, “You can’t go back
to camp …” even after the doctor said
you could because other parents may
pull out because you’re the one who
got sick, the program may lose money
because you’re the one who got sick,
and we don’t matter anymore because
you got sick. I’d never say those things,
nor blame my son, but I know the reasons
why. He says to me, “Maybe the
COVID-19 will take my autism away.”
Then I really don’t know what to
tell my son because he’s already
dealt with so much from the day
his sister’s soul left the Earth.
Is the heart only a body part,
some beating membrane, or
something more tested to see
how much more it will take?
By Rebecca T. Dickinson
Corrie's Season 