Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Ordinary #AtoZChallenge

Some of us crave the unusual.

My autistic brother in law, Bil, craves the ordinary.  The routine.

Definitions of Ordinary: Normal.  Commonplace.

In 2015, Bil's world was turned upside down.  He had far from an ordinary year.

He had lived all his life with his mother. For over 15 years, it had just been the two of them, in a house that once had held a large, growing family.

The house they lived in was a split level, meaning there were stairs everywhere.  Stairs to the bathroom.  Stairs to the bedroom.  Stairs to the kitchen.  His mother could no longer navigate the stairs.  She was developing congestive heart failure, too.

She had fallen several times.  Her injuries were piling up.  Each fall was harder to recover from than the last.

And, she was running out of money.  The house hasn't started out in an expensive location, but it was now.  She couldn't afford the taxes.  Her closest child had to move in with a friend because of unemployment, and moved some 40 miles away.  Her support system had been strong, but was weakening.

So she had to sell the house and move.  And Bil would be moving for the first time in his conscious life.  Moving some 150 miles away, to an apartment he had never seen, for a reason he perhaps couldn't understand.

It would stress any of us out.  But Bil made it.  How, is a story for my R post, in my Journey Through the Unknown.

4 comments:

  1. Good for Bil - he does sound resilient if nothing else - poor chap - but the family are coping ... Cheers Hilary

    http://positiveletters.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/o-is-for-orkney-islands-adapted-breeds.html

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    1. I think he's capable of a lot more than we think. Learning his limits will be one of our tests.

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  2. Ah yes, that's a good reminder that some people really do thrive best with the ordinary. That sounds like it would have been quite difficult for him to move. I'm sorry. :-(

    Visiting from the A to Z Challenge. See my "O" post here: https://lydiahowe.com/2017/04/18/o-is-for-outsider-atozchallenge-plus-a-vlog/

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    1. Thank you for visiting. In some ways, the way he perceives his world (vs. how we perceive it) would make a fascinating memoir, if he could ever write it.

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