So as you can imagine our house was fairly quiet after Thomas was admitted to the residential school. Honestly I don’t remember much about the month of July with the exception of celebrating 3 birthdays. Tommy, Thomas and Alyssa all have July birthdays. For Thomas’ birthday we took him out to dinner at this Irish Pub down the road from his school. Daniella made him a cake and the waitress was so thoughtful, she put it in the kitchen for us until after dinner. When we were ready we sang “Happy Birthday” and the waitress brought out the cake with plates and a cake server. I thought that was really sweet. Leaving Thomas was really hard. He was only at the school for just over a week but there was no way we wouldn’t celebrate.
In the middle of July, Tommy wanted to get away so we stayed overnight in Wildwood, NJ. It was nice, we went to the beach and stayed at a motel right on the beach. We all had some sunburn so the next day we hit the outlets in NJ on the way home. Tommy and I were both not right but it was good to get away for a little bit.
In August we went to Myrtle Beach, SC. We stayed at a friend’s condo. We had gone there the year before after Thomas was discharged from the hospital. Going without Thomas was difficult, everything we did reminded us of the year before when he was with us. In a weird way I’m glad we went because it forced us to get over doing things as a family without Thomas.
After Myrtle Beach I don’t remember much of the summer. To this day I’m surprised at what I don’t remember. What I do remember is feeling like a failure as a mother. That after all the running around to see all these doctors and specialists, all the evaluations and medications, hospitalizations…residential school was the end result for this child I love so much. I felt like that for months. I addressed this mostly with my therapist, I mean how do you explain this to friends and family?
Menay O; mom to 4, Christian and thrift shopper on the side... 