Yesterday was the anniversary of the day that Sammy moved in with us. It’s hard to believe it’s been 8 years, and how different our lives are now.



The memory of the day is still as vivid as if it happened yesterday. It was hardly the peaceful, serene day that you would want for a move.

At the time, I still had a full time job outside of the house. I was an insurance agent, and I insured my Grandfather’s business. My father called me that morning to tell me that there had been an accident at the plant. I quickly finished dressing to get preliminary plans in place for the clean up before picking up Sammy. I made all the calls to the insurance company that needed to be done.

We drove to Sammy’s home, and went through a very difficult good-bye. He was fine with leaving his foster parents, but he was living with his biological brother, and leaving him was heartbreaking.

We loaded Sammy’s stuff (packed in the garbage bags) into the back of the pick up truck, and made the one hour drive back to our home. I was on the cell phone most of the way back, checking on how things were going at the plant.

We stopped at the plant once we arrived back in town. I was greeted by one huge disaster. A section of racking that they stored finished product on had collapsed. Sections of magazines were scattered everywhere. Every time you tried to move something, it caused another avalanche paper. God was with everyone involved. The accident happened at shift change, so no one was injured. Had it happened 15 minutes in either direction, someone probably would have been killed.

This is the chaos that greeted Sammy. He had met my parents, but other than that, we kept his visits very low key. He was suddenly inundated with people he had never met, but most certainly knew who he was. As I mentioned, it’s a family owned business, so people know who we are. As proud parents-to-be we had shared his picture with friends and family. It was a lot for him to take in.

When we were finally able to make it home, and unloaded Sammy’s stuff. We hung his clothes in his closet, and put all his stuff away to get him settled. We kept it pretty low key after that.

Fast forward 8 years and we spent most of the day on the road transporting him to/from the RTC that he’s in, and dealing with a rather serious issue that came up at RTC.

This is not anywhere near the life I imagined when we started this. We thought that love and stability would help our child “heal”. It’s amazing how far off we were.

However, my son HAS come a long way. He may never be a “normal” person, but he has some awesome traits and characteristics. Most of the time he can let people love him, and give the love back. 8 years ago he didn’t trust anyone. I believe that most of what we are dealing with now is the “combo platter” of mental illness that he has. While we can’t change that, how he handles it can be changed.

I still allow myself hope some days, but I try not to do it too much. I’ve burned too many times, and still try to protect my heart. With any luck, in 8 more years my son will be nearly graduated from college. I know he has the intelligence to do it. The rest may be up to God.