Disabled Dreams

I met a boy named Logan. Logan is 10. He is about 3 and a half feet tall and weighs less than 50 pounds because he lacks the mental capacity to eat food and must therefore receive all his nutrients through a tube in his stomach. Logan is severely disabled. He can walk, but not far. He can make sounds, but none of them recognizable as speech. He understands simple instructions, but doesn't always follow them. He is often upset, which he expresses by crying, rocking, or curling up into a ball and humming to himself. He needs active help to maintain daily existence, and because his family is poor, he's often left in the care of poorly paid government employees. This isn't to say that Logan isn't cared for or loved, but I wonder if he can tell how unwanted he is.

Of the thousands of children born every day, most have the physical and mental capacity to grow into independent functioning adults. A few need help to overcome some disabling feature, but only a few are born with such a situation as Logan, wherein they will never be able to live independently.

Some have said that every child is a gift, and every ability is special. The truth that we all know somewhere, though, is that disabilities are not something "special" about a certain child. Disabilities are problems, imperfections, brokenness, that can at times give us enlightening perspectives, but are most often burdensome. No one wants to have a disability; no parent is thrilled to receive a diagnosis of autism or cerebral palsy. No matter how sunny an outlook on the topic, a disability is always a setback, not a blessing.

The differentiation must be made, then, that the person with the disability is not the disability. It is the autism, not the autistic person, which is the burden. But how can we separate the two when the disability is only present when the disabled person is present? How can we include someone, but not their disability? In some cases it is possible, but Logan will never be seen as a person rather than a person with a disability.

There is a common feeling that the world would be a better place without people like Logan. That we should be able to do away with disability forever. Life is hard enough when one is able to live and be successful at basic life skills, but to be totally reliant upon others for daily existence is counter to survival of the fittest philosophy. We of course dream of the day when modern medicine will advance to the extent that we won't have disease or disability anymore. So many advances have been made that we've neatly doubled the predictable lifespan of most first world citizens, but we have not escaped death and pain altogether. We can take endless bottles of Tylenol, but the pain still comes back; sometimes it had only faded dully. And while we can say that at the end of the day, at least I'm not like Logan, the pain of living in a broken body is difficult to bear.

I had a dream last night. I dreamed that I was hanging out at an incredibly well-lit school filled with cheerful Christmas crafts and letters to Santa. I walked outside on one of the last warm days of autumn before the rain and the snow hit, and I dreamed that Logan was on the playground healthy and playing kickball with the other third graders on a huge grassy lawn. No one was sick; no one was crying; no one was unwanted. It's an impossible dream, really. But I hope that that is what heaven looks like, because I'd love to play kickball with Logan there.