Goodbye Room!

I wasn't gonna do it.  I swore I wouldn't cry.

I told myself not to go back into the house.  But, I had to let Carsen say goodbye to just one room.

His therapy room.

We flipped the lightswitch on, and Carsen took some complicated steps to get across the large room.  He didn't want to walk, so he plopped down in the middle of the room.  I, plopped down too.  This room was so significant in our life for so many hours, days, years and moments.

I remember spending up to 3 hours straight for a couple of years in this room.  Working on perfecting our goals.  Constantly teaching hand over hand, four point, crawling, standing, side sitting, putting objects in a bucket, learning to push a button, pointing and talking.

I was overwhelmed with the amount of therapy we did together and broke down because a lot of that we never accomplished.  We worked so hard and didn't ever get them completed.  How frustrating.

We sat in the middle of the empty room.  I held him as he cuddled in close and I cried.  I told Carsen over and over how sorry I was.  How sorry I am that we never did learn to crawl, or point or walk or talk.  I am sorry that life is so hard.  My heart is so heavy.

I am so sad to leave this room.  This is where I learned unconditional patience, love, how to giggle at the small things, where I learned to care for a child with special needs, to take the small things in life and praise them, and how to be courageous.  I learned that we would get up to that room, and not accomplish what we wanted, but would try again tomorrow and the next and to be hopeful that someday we would celebrate those successes.

My most valuable lesson that I learned was this.  Even though we didn't accomplish anything big, focus on the small things.  They are the things that other people don't notice.  But, are the things I still taught him and that he worked so hard on.  He worked his little butt off and I won't allow those things to be dismissed.  Carsen learned to sit up, scoot on his butt, stand at a table, pick up a small toy in each hand, then clap them together, turn pages in a book and how to have a blast just playing around.

We leave the room with no more tears, just a few goodbyes and we walk out of the house to no further tears.

Onto new goals and hard work we go.  We will continue to have courage and keep trying.