Life Happens Next by Terry Trueman Page A

I thought I knew Debi. I wasn’t even close. I know that I’m smart. Debi is supposedly stupid and Rusty’s a dog. Yet they both figured me out. Maybe it’s because this whole business of knowing someone and being known by them is different than I’ve thought. Maybe my assumptions based on how “normal” people, even my own family, treat me have led me down the wrong path. There’s a lot I still don’t know. But if Debi and Rusty and I can all connect more deeply, what does that say about how we can connect with everyone else?
    It’s been a while since Debi told me she knows I’m smart. Now, whenever I see her sitting and staring, I know what’s really going on. She is gathering info about Mom, Cindy, Paul, and Ally. It’s amazing to feel understood by her and to want to understand her in return.
    I’m sitting in my regular spot in my wheelchair by the window when a seagull flies past, low, gliding. It’s dark gray, with hardly any speckles at all. Watching it, I think about how much this seagull’s gliding flight reminds me of when my spirit escapes my body. I start to think, “Maybe someday after I die, I’ll get to come back as a seagull, a beautiful, gray ghost bird soaring.” I laugh inside my mind, thinking, “No, given my luck, I’ll probably return as a fly or cockroach.”
    Debi, who is across the room, laughs. She says, “S-S-S-Swan funny.”
    Mom asks Debi, “You mean Shawn’s arms?”
    Debi says, “He funny.”
    Mom says, “Shawn’s arm movements just happen to him sometimes—he doesn’t do it to be funny.”
    â€œNo,” Debi insists. “He funny inside … good funny.”
    Mom nods.
    Arm movements? I didn’t realize that my arms were moving, flopping about like wings trying to lift me up as I was thinking about flying. I had never put the two things together, that my body was actually working in connection with my brain.
    Debi says; “S-S-S-Swan funny lotta times … funny t’ings inside.”
    Mom asks, “You mean you have funny thoughts about Shawn?”
    I scream silently, “No, Mom, inside ME! Debi means that my thoughts are funny, things that I think about, that’s what she is saying! She understands me!”
    Debi smiles but remains silent. Mom doesn’t say anything more either.
    Debi has changed things for our whole family. Despite her handicaps, or maybe because of them, she shows us daily that her feelings and thoughts are real. It’s not that Debi loves me more than Mom or Cindy or Paul do. She simply has time to focus, while others, so-called normal people, are always rushing about and tend to see things only on the surface.
    It’s not that the other people in my life are self-absorbed. They aren’t—my mom especially. But they’ve simply never been trapped in their own bodies. They’ve never been seen by everyone else as unaware and lost in themselves. From their perspective, there isn’t much reason to believe that I’m highly functioning in here. But what if Mom and Cindy and Paul—anyone who is paying attention—could see my wheels turning for just a moment from a look in my eyes, or wonder if my arm movement might be connected to something I was thinking? I wonder what they’d feel. I know this probably won’t ever happen.... Then again, never say never.

26
    I am lying in my bed, waiting for Mom to come get me up. It’s Sunday morning, so there’s no big rush to feed, bathe, and dress me.
    A seizure starts. I relax and let it carry me away.
    I arrive in a room, an unfamiliar room, and in the dark shadows of the corner is the figure, the one who keeps showing up in my dreams. The figure has no clear outline of the body, as if it’s wearing a cloak or huge coat made of darkness, but for the first time I sense that this figure is a woman. She is not menacing. I