The Road Not Chosen: All's Well That Ends Well

Whew, glad that's all over! I'll relay the week's events in chronological order. My Dad was supposed to have heart surgery Tuesday, but it got bumped to Wednesday. They replaced his aortic valve, which had calcified. It's a huge surgery & was a bit more complicated than they had anticipated as the valve was in worse shape than originally thought. Dad is in ICU for another day, but is doing well. I mean as well as can be expected when you've had your chest split open & you have various tubes coming out of you. I may yet make a trip to California for a few days when he gets home from the hospital to help Mom care for him. We'll see.

On to Evan's guardianship hearing yesterday. I was very curious as to how this would actually go. Our lawyer had kind of prepped us to give a rough idea of what would be done in the courtroom, but the actual experience was a bit different. Our good friend of many years, Sherry, went with us for moral support. Thank you, Sherry, for that. And for lunch afterward. We needed the laughs!

The hearing took about 20 minutes. Harold took the stand & our lawyer asked him a few questions: when did we learn about Evan's disability, how has it affected his development, can he provide for himself, were we willing to continue to care for him for the rest of his life (gulp). Evan's attorney had no questions or objections. I then took the stand to verify what Harold said was true. A letter from Evan's doctor saying that he had Down's was entered into evidence. The judge then said that due to Evan's disability and lack of mental competence, we were awarded guardianship of him & conservatorship of his assets. And with a bang of her gavel, it was official.

Sitting in that courtroom was very surreal. I awoke yesterday morning very calm & peaceful (thank you everyone for your prayers) & that carried over into the courtroom. The actual pronouncement was emotional just because it seemed so stark & harsh. Sherry told us over lunch that she wanted to say "Wait, there's so much more to Evan than this!" Of course there is & of course the legal proceeding was blunt & dry.

There wasn't much time for me to think about what had happened because just after lunch we got a call from school that Evan was sick. I brought him home and we settled in for naps. As I told Harold before he went back to work yesterday afternoon, "Well, I guess life just continues on, doesn't it?" And that it does, thankfully!

On a more ethereal note, Mark Bertrand wrote a wonderful article, "How Do The Heaven's Declare God's Glory?" Definately worth a read!

Comments

I know what you mean about courtrooms being surreal. We experienced something similar when we finalized our son's adoption, and this was three days after we found out he had some significant brain damage.

One verse that carries me through surreal times is in Proverbs 31 - "She will laugh at the days to come." My husband likes to say, "Someday this will make a great story, and we'll laugh about it."

I think you and Evan (and Harold!) should go out for sushi! Praying for you, Angela

Posted by: Angela | May 12, 2006 at 09:49 AM