Judson’s Last Ride |
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Today is a day I’ve dreaded for over a decade. At around 6:20 a.m., we’ll get my oldest son Judson up, give him a bath, put his safety harness on (don’t worry, we’ll dress him first), and then watch him amble down our driveway to the school bus, as we have almost every school day since fourth grade. He’ll go through whatever class activities he has, come to the end of the day, and get ready to ride the bus home, as he has almost every school day since fourth grade. His teachers and aides will wipe their eyes, put him on the bus, and off he’ll go, just the same as he’s done almost every school day since fourth grade.
Judson is a senior in high school. He also has profound autism. He’s 18 years old, and while he blessedly has some capacity for speech, I’ve never had what you would call a conversation with him. And I assume (though I can’t really know) that he has no clue that today isn’t just any old school day like he’s had since fourth grade. Today, Judson Hancock Trende will have his last day of class. He’ll get off that bus, and he’ll never get back on. When his schedule-obsessed brain prompts him to seek reassurance by asking “school tomorrow?” on Sunday, the same way he has every Sunday for well over a decade, we will have to figure out a way to let him know that, no, there’s no school tomorrow, and not the next day or the next one. Not ever.
Judson came into the world on Aug. 5, 2007, a little spark of joy unnoticed by most of the world, but who quickly became our entire world. He was our first child, and as I liked to brag, my first son. All parents irrationally believe that their babies are as special to the rest of the world as they are to them, but it seemed that way to us. The first year was the usual parental sequence of late-night feedings, stressing out because we had forgotten to wash the bottles on sanitary (ha!), play dates, and the general exhausting joy of the first year of the first child.
I don’t remember exactly when I started to notice things weren’t right. He was a rough eater and had to be bottle-fed earlier than expected, but hey, he’s just a rough-and-tumble growing baby boy! When he would squirm off my lap as I tried to read to him at night, crawling over to open and close the closet door repeatedly, I thought he was just a little engineer at heart, trying to figure out how things worked. Sure, his speech was delayed, but family lore had long said my parents were worried about my own delayed speech until one day I spurted out, “Mommy, turn the light out.”
All doubt was removed on Dec. 2, 2009. As I like to tell people, we went into a doctor’s office wondering whether our son might one day be president. We walked out wondering if he would ever potty train. We also learned that his therapies would cost around $3,500 per month. My initial response was “there’s no way that we can do this.” My wife – an absolute visionary who is behind almost every good thing that has ever happened to Judson – made it clear that we would figure it out. RealClearPolitics helped cover the cost, for which I’m eternally grateful. My wife gave up her lifelong dream of being a stay-at-home mom to go back to work at a law firm. We realized our agreed-upon goal of five children was likely not going to be realistic, given the attention and resources Judson would probably need.
Judd started his ABA therapies in a small private school that met in a church basement. We owe so much to the couple who started this school, and to his aides who helped us learn that “different, not less” wasn’t just a slogan. When people talk about “everyday heroes” who don’t realize the impact that they had on people’s lives, we get it. We’ve been blessed with a multitude of them. Miss Jen and Miss “Kwisten” helped Judson learn........