Hierarchies

I once had a debate about this with a friend after he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, he felt strongly that there is no hierarchy of suffering that although his entire life was in countdown that he had a duty to still give his full empathy to person who was grieving their own recent loss of a loved one but for the person complaining about their allergies not so much! He highlighted for me a very weird set of emotions about suffering and comparisons and perception. In the school world of disabled kids it ultimately mirrors any other school life but with the unifying comfort of being all in a community that doesn’t judge achievements and for the main part offers only support. But I live in the real world, I have another child, I have to engage socially so how do you listen graciously to your friends tales of how hard it has been for their kid to get into their first choice of university when your kid can’t write their own name, I’m not so unpleasant or bitter a person that I can’t feel joy for my friends genuinely nice kids and their achievements but if I’m being brutally honest there is always an underlying twinge of what.. sadness/jealousy/anger ? maybe all of them that M will simply never have that problem. The crucial part of parenting a child like M is acceptance that your child is not a problem to be fixed, a standard to judge by, a puzzle to be solved, a comparison to be made, it’s why the lack of a diagnosis while fascinating to me is not a problem. Find the joy that is always what it comes back to. fotografica.com/2013/05/fotografo-captura-universo-especial-de-su-hijo-autista-en-proyecto-fotografico/ I was sent this link by various friends and saw it shared by several of M’s teachers, initially I was captivated by this series of images that a father had made of his autistic son but then felt weirdly let down when I read a more indepth interview with him describing his kid who goes to a regular school and gets good grades but who has nonetheless been diagnosed as ‘on the spectrum’ so the more I read, the less magic the images held for me, for sure they are arresting and beautiful but, for the parents of I suppose more severely autistic boys like the ones M goes to school with, I wonder if their admiration for his ability to capture their childrens affinity for small enclosed spaces, sensitivity to noise, fascination with light, the love for trains and organized lines will be touched by that same twinge I mention above when they read of the good grades and collaborative process between father and son, where they discuss the set up. The boys I know in this world would never be able to function at that level so something made me feel momentarily cheated but only in a fleeting sense, the old hierarchy at play again and sharp lesson in perception. I need to be aware that this project will stir up similar emotions and that it is quite ok if it does, those pics ultimately are unquestionably the work of a parent trying to understand his son, in the same way we try to understand M.