Vandom Acts of Randall-ism. Big Sigh.

Monday, April 16, 2012
Today after Brett came home from school, he and his recuperating brother traded insults, as is their wont. And, as per their usual, Brett ended socking Rand in the leg. Rand shook it off and they both laughed. I said nothing. Nothing. About an hour ago, as I put together a batch of Alfredo sauce (with Jonathan contributing his genius culinary expertise via phone), I realized I'd said nothing.
   For the first time in fourteen years.
   I started to weep over the sauce while the sun set, and Jon murmured understandings to me.
   Since 1998, I have either had to run defense when idiots got out of hand, as happens among young men nearly every time they are in a group, or pray that the tussle wouldn't result in a hospital visit. or both. I sat on a couch with a dear friend in April 1998, and told him Randall was bruising a lot, I was worried about it. He seemed to recover, but it would only be temporary. Since then, I have been on edge.
   Since 1998.
   In that time frame I have lost my cool with an innumerable number of people. Some deserved it, because they are jerks, but most didn't. Most were victims of a terrified single mother who hasn't slept much since 1998.
   There was a period of about five years, between 2007 and now, that I chilled. A lot. Mostly because in the middle of it, I got CANCER and had to chill.
   I'd pretty much chilled out when Rand got sick around Valentine's Day.
   Randall's friends, my former friends, my friends and family have often uttered, " It's hard to be a parent /you just have to let go/ you don't need to be so high-strung." Okay.  I've had know-it-all teenagers, holy rollers, and other 'more knowledgeable' individuals, some parents -- but no one who ever had a kid with a chronic bleeding disorder -- tell me I gave in to way too much drama. Yep.  I guess when your kid gets a Make-A-Wish, reserved for terminally ill kids, you tend to have an underlying panic. You know what, my mind sure did.
     My heart and soul didn't. I gave Randall up to God a long long time ago, when I thought he had leukemia, at Community Hospital on a fall evening in 1998. I gave his life up to God to either heal and protect, or end and redeem. I did that in 1998, in 2001, in 2003, in 2012, and every time in between when he and his brothers would tussle -- and I had to wrestle with telling them to quit or letting them go, and possibly having one of them be responsible for contributing to his brother's death. Anybody ever had to think about that, every day, for fourteen years? By themselves?
   In the meantime, his brothers suffered along with him. They suffered under a panicky single mother who was terrified at some moment or other every single day of their lives. I did my best to be both mother and father. I married again, to yet another selfish person, and so I continued to be both mother and father to three boys, one very ill but all very brave. In between the Bad Days, we laughed and had fun growing up together, because every day might have been the last day to laugh.
   People who have never had a kid with a four-hour nosebleed have not one iota of the stress that we parents carry who do. Not one iota. We never get out of the infancy type of parenting, even subconsciously.
    I remember a Saturday, long, long ago after Randall was diagnosed that his dad let him go play tackle football, with a platelet count of only 10,000, but I was branded the hysterical one for pulling him out of the game. " Just let him have fun, you control freak," was flung at me.
   Randall has a mouth on him, just like his mamma, and every day of his freshman year of high school I worried that he would mouth off to the wrong football player, and get slammed into a locker for being a punk. I waited every day for the school to call me and summon me to the hospital.
   I alone have carried the burden of worrying/not worrying about Randall.
   I'm the one who got reported to CPS for TAKING him to the AFB Peds. clinic when his brothers got strep, so he wouldn't die. The chippie captain who knew everything had him Care-Flighted to Dallas because I hadn't taken him, in the last three months, to the doctor, even though I took him that day. That day.
    I alone have carried the worries about him dating and catching some deadly disease.
    I alone have felt badly that his brothers often had to take a back seat to their very sick big brother. I alone had to tell my son that I didn't know if he would live or die, and hold his hand. He's not married, he doesn't have a girlfriend like other 22 year-olds, because he has been sick.
   If I have created drama, I'm sorry. I am.
   And I'm sorry I don't have the grace that other women I know with chronically ill kids have. I also didn't have their support system. :-p
   I am also realizing how incredibly exhausted I have been for the last fourteen years, (including the two in the middle when I had cancer myself) trying to keep his spirits up, trying to make up to Craig and Brett for the moments that the Nefarious Blood Disorder stole from them, be both parents, and soothe them when other relatives were insensitive.
   I taught them how to throw a football, change a tire, replace a fan belt, bake a cake, sew a button, make coffee,  and be nice to people even if they'd been hurt by them. I also got after them for bad break-ups with girls, made them call their dad when they'd done something spectacular (which was often), and to always, always, try to see the positive in every situation. I told them to laugh like Tom Hanks when the bathtub crashes through the ceiling, shattering into a jillion pieces, because what else can you do?
    I have created way too much drama on way too many occasions, that's for sure. But I've also brought light and laughter into three boys' lives when there wasn't much to rejoice about. I didn't do THAT all by myself. That was the power of God -- when I chose to flip the switch.
    Maybe I can sleep tonight, since it has finally hit me that the 14 year odyssey has ended, and I don't have to worry about Rand any more, don't have to overdo to make up to Craig and Brett for other people's lack, and to remind them that they have the same fierce love that I have for their brother.
   This is the last Vandom Act of Randallism blog for a while. Maybe when he gets married I'll write another... God has brought about healing. Randall can write his own story from now on.
   Amen and hallelujah.