somewhere over the rainbow....

Blackbird's post today made me think about N. My wonderful, brave brother. With whom I talk so much less than I should, whether on the phone or when I'm at home. Who someday will be my responsibility. Someday, I will have to make choices about his life, with his input of course, but ultimately, legally, it will be up to me to decide what is best for him. Despite an CA ID card, despite getting to vote this year for the first time, he will never be, legally, an independent adult. Because he'll always need the medical support we can't afford, and because it would be so easy for someone to take advantage of his trust to take away the small amount of money he might ever have, he cannot be. And this terrifies me.

I have to be fiscally stable. I have to be somewhere in easy traveling distance. I won't be able to just get up and go, move to somewhere exotic and far away. My parents sometimes talk about finding a Central American country with good health care, nice people, and a less expensive life style and moving there. It's a dream - it doesn't exist. No one speaks enough Spanish to make it work, and no matter if there is a state health system, he'd have to become a citizen first.

The hardest part is that no one knows what he wants. He can't straighten out what he thinks is best from what Chuck tells him is a good idea, and as much as Chuck has done for him, taking out a mortgage on a prefab house and moving out on his own is not feasible for N. N wants his own life, he wants the life the people who were his friends before the accident have. He wants a girlfriend and a car and a job and college. Staying in high school an extra year gives somewhat of an illusion of that, in its essentials, even if it's lacking most of what high school means to the rest of us.

But what happens after this last year of high school? This second last year of high school? Apparently there is some sort of program he can join a couple days a week in Eureka that teaches life skills and works on math, reading, art, etc. with brain injured folks from the county. But what about the rest of the time? I can't think of any sort of job he could hold down with mental and physical handicaps, and neither can my mom. He can't just stay home all day, but we don't live near a bus route and he can't drive, so he has no freedom of movement. We talk about junior college somewhere south of home, but apparently, with the budget crises of the past years, the programs they had have been cut. I suppose we just have to keep hoping that something perfect will present itself. My mom is constantly researching and talking with the therapists, but it may take a while. I just don't know.

So it sits in the back of my head and I ignore it in the flurry of reading and writing and cooking and tv that has become my life. Academia is something I love, but it's also an easy out, an escape from what lies ahead. As my parents get older, mom turned 60, it grows more urgent, but I just have to think that they'll be around many years more. Enough for me to find that necessary stability. And enough that maybe he'll keep improving and be able to live at least somewhat independently. Because that would be what would make us all happiest. Him especially.