The Shared Nightmare

I had a nightmare a couple of weeks ago. It was the kind of nightmare where you wake up hoping, praying with every last ounce of yourself that it was in fact a dream. The kind of nightmare that evokes feelings/emotions so real that you have adrenaline running through your veins when you finally open your eyes. The kind of nightmare that keeps you up the rest of the night.

We all have a select few nightmares that we will remember throughout the course of our lifetimes. The ones that make your stomach drop and your heart hurt to even think about. The cruelest tricks of memory that make you remember and relive pain that (praise God) never actually happened…at least not to me. And I pray every day (every minute) that it never does…but this is my fear…all of our shared nightmare…because for some…it is reality.

We were at a party…in some Inception-like combination of our house, my parents’ house, and some large building I’ve never seen before. Kellen asked to go into the backyard. I let him out what looked like my back door. I followed him into this huge expanse (that is not my backyard), and then I went to check the gate. Because I always check the gate, because the gate is always closed, and so I check it anyway to see it closed, because I have to, because the gate has to be closed, it has to. So I check it and of course it’s closed, but as I turn around, I see that this is not my backyard, not my fence, there’s another opening…far, far away. And that gate is open…and through that open gate, I see a busy street, and beyond it, what I can only describe as a busy city and wide open space in one. Kellen was gone, he went through the open gate, and for that brief (but felt like an eternity) moment, I glimpsed what so many parents like me have had to actually endure. My child was gone, my child who lacks the ability to communicate, who lacks a healthy fear of dangerous situations, who lacks basic survival skills…gone...and my world collapsed.

And then I woke up…Woke up crying, shaking, panting. Woke up to frantically check the video monitor and see him snuggled in his bed. I woke up from hell...but not everybody gets that chance.

Since I had that dream, countless children with autism have wandered and been found, but in just the past couple of weeks, 3 children with autism, all pre-verbal, were found too late…all having drowned. This is the fear that ALL autism parents live with. This is the life we lead, trying to stay one step ahead of the worst. I know many parents that have faced this fear head on, more than once. They are amazing parents, and you cannot imagine the precautions that they take. It’s not a matter of if your child will wander, for most of us, it is when. The lucky ones will find their child in the backyard playing in the middle of the night. The unlucky…those are the nightmares.

We don’t get to be normal parents. It takes only seconds for them to get away. I joke about my helicopter parenting tactics with Kellen, but it’s a necessity. It is for his safety and my sanity. The security system on the house is 10% to keep people out and 90% to keep Kellen in…how would we sleep otherwise?

Our saving grace is Larkin. She watches him, she tattles (Kellen’s opening the door to the garage! Kellen is trying to climb the upstairs baby gate! Kellen is trying to open the fence gate!), she helps me be more places at once…if not, I’d never get a chance to shower when Patrick is gone.

I share all of this with you so that you can be aware. So that you can not place blame on these poor parents that have lost their children too soon and instead offer prayers of comfort to the parents of Mikaela Lynch, Owen Black, and Drew Howell. So that you can continue to pray that few of us will ever have to experience this pain.

I’ve seen cries for better alert systems specifically for children with autism, and I’m all for it. Normal rules don’t apply here. The timeline needs to be tighter, the search tactics need to be different, throw the normal rules out the window and start over. Because I don’t have the luxury of being with him 24/7. Because these kids that were lost were with their parents…the people who know them best. Because it takes just seconds for them to break through our carefully laid security plans. It takes just seconds for nightmares to become reality.