You know I have been contemplating a lot of things lately. One of them being who are the mentally challenged? Is it the folks that are labeled this by doctors or is it folks like myself who think we are normal?

I take care of 4 "mentally challenged" adults and am responsible for the care of a fourth who does not live in my home. One of these adults is my uncle Tommy who just turned 75 this year. He sometimes has the mind of a child and sometimes he can be a very wise old man. It depends how he feels that day. He calls me Sis.  I also take care of my aunt Barb and she is 65 this year. She is almost always a childlike lady who calls me Mom. Both these dear souls were physically and emotionally and mentally abused for years by another brother who had them in his care. I took them away from that in and have never been sorry since. How could I, a survivor of many kinds of abuse, leave them to live in abuse?

At the time I took them I was single and on my own and had just found myself after 2 years of counselling. In the beginning my hands were quite full with my aunt Barb as like any child she had a hard time adjusting to a different life and she gave me a very rough time. Myself on the other hand had a hard time at first because although they acted like children they were in adult bodies. With the help of a lady from the mental health unit I learned that they needed guidance and routine and responsibilities and they needed grounding just like every other child, when they did not listen to me.

When I first took them I decided that they no longer should have to do any of the menial work that they had been subjected to where they lived previously. No more wall washing--no more dishes--no more housework--no more waiting on someone hand and foot like they had to do before!!  So I took it all upon myself and would not let them do anything. I learned through the mental health worker that what I did was wrong !! I turned to her one day in exasperation and said  "I do everything for them and they are so ungrateful and uncaring and Barb is so hard to handle" "I do not know if I can do this" "It's too hard"  I thought that somehow I had failed in what I thought was a nice thing to do by taking them into my home and being nice to them. The worker taught me that they needed to feel useful and what I had done by taking all the work away was making them feel useless instead.  (How many "normal" people would feel like this ?)

Well after a turbulent 2 years things finally started to smooth out. I learned that filling their rooms with a colour tv and stereo of their own and giving them everything they asked for was not what they needed. What they needed was me. What they needed was love. What they needed was respect. Mostly what they needed was for me to keep every promise to protect them from harm. What they needed also was some feeling of self worth. So I figured out easy chores and handed them out each day. Things like washing or drying dishes or dusting something. Things that they could do to help me. From that day to this we all work together to keep our home clean. We became a "family united"

I can't tell you how many times I would call my oldest daughter and say "what shall I do with Barb, she did this or she did that". She wisely answered: "what would you have done with me if I did that as a child?"  Finally a bell went off !

I watched what my aunt and uncle liked to do best. This gave me an idea of what to "take away" as a grounding punishment. So if my aunt swore at me, argued with me, wandered away or threw a tantrum  etc... I would take her colouring book away for a few hours as punishment. Or I would unplug her tv so she could not watch cartoons for an hour. I instituted time out time for her and I spent hours and hours telling her I loved her and I would never leave her and no one would ever hurt her again.

Finally after years she has come to learn that I mean what I say and that I love her dearly. Today  years later she is the sweetest best behaved young lady I know. She is endearing and helpful and loving. When she calls me Mommy I do not care who hears her. In fact one day in a grocery store this lady was staring at us as Barb kept getting excited at the pretty colours on the cereal boxes. She would grab my hand and say "look Mommy" "Isn't this pretty Mommy" "Oh Mommy see the captain on the box". Well this lady looked at us like we were from outer space. I finally asked her if she had a problem and she replied something of the nature that retards should be left inside. I was so angry!!! The words retarded and dummy are forbidden in my home!!  It had taken me 3 years to stop Barb from calling herself "dummy" because that is what her brother had called her all her life!  I informed the ignorant lady that my Barbie was not retarded and that if there was any retardedness going on it was from herself !  From that day forward Barb calling me Mommy is like sunshine on a cloudy day to me. Because I am her Mommy in her eyes. Her mother died when she was only a babe in arms and she knew no other.

I'll never forget the first time I heard her laugh. Her laugh is infectious and you can not be near her and not laugh as well. She laughs till the tears pour down her face or she has to run to the bathroom before she wets her pants!! She loves music--she loves colour and pretty things that sparkle. Like a "normal" young lady she loves beauty.
My Barbie loves my  daughters and my  granddaughters beyond belief. My daughters treat her like she is just as normal as everyone else. She holds my grandchildren in her arms and when they are sick she worries like they are her own. She would have made a good mother I think. Given the chance. Her biggest delight is making me a tea and I am seldom without a fresh hot cup beside me regardless of where I am in the house.

Tonight I came down to the rec room to tell Barbie it was her bedtime and there she sat rocking my puppy in her arms in the rocking chair. Why? Because my puppy had a bad dream and Barbie just knew that rocking her back to sleep would help. :) What a wonderful sight!!! 

My uncle Tommy is one of my greatest loves in my life. He is the most endearing old fella you could ever meet. Lord help anyone that he hears say a word against me! They feel the wrath of his tongue so fast they are in Thursday before Tuesday has passed!!  He is stubborn as an old mule at times and his favorite line is "I was here before you were even borned" or "I deserve respect!! cause I am old". Well he is right.

He loves to colour and he loves to look through picture books. He loves hockey and he loves animals. Before he goes to bed at night he has to kiss each dog and the cat and will search the house for them to do so. He never goes to bed without kissing me goodnight and he never forgets to say his prayers. I can not  tell you how I felt the first time i walked into his room and saw him on his knees beside his bed. You see, Tommy is crippled. One leg is nearly 4 inches shorter then the other and his hip is badly twisted . He limps and has huge scars on his poor hip and bad leg from a bungled surgery when he was in an orphanage in his youth. He had a wooden wheel chair and was told he would never walk. But he did !!! He was 11 years old the first time he actually walked on his own. What an accomplishment! Can "normal" people accomplish so much out of sheer determination?

My aunt and uncle cannot read or write and they are not educated. Neither have ever attended school. What they know they learned with life. A life tougher then most of us have ever known. I could tell you stories that would make your hair curl but I won't as their privacy is utmost in my concern.

Anyway--my point in writing this is something that happened to me tonight. My uncle had a nightmare and he woke terrified that his brother had broken into our home and was going to kill my aunt. After we talked and I assured him that never ever would I let anything happen to either of them and how much I loved him--he looked at me and bent and kissed my cheek and went happily off to colour me a picture, the dream forgotten. I sat as tears streamed down my face and as I realized that even after 10 years of no abuse of any kind his old mind still had nightmares of the past.

No these folks cannot read--they cannot write--they do not know what time it is or sometimes what day it is--they cannot figure the simplest things out sometimes--they cannot cook--they cannot do a lot of things. But they can love and they can take care of me on my worst day and love me no matter what mood I wake up in. They believe there is nothing Mom cannot fix and sometimes that is a hard one for me to handle. They have faith in me and respect me and sometimes when my day is tiresome because they argued all day or spent the day so confused they have even confused me and I have sent them to bed for the night--I sit and wonder what life would have been like if I had not taken them. Well I know what it would have been like--Boring and empty!!   I thank God every night in my prayers for them. Now and for always.

In closing again I ask--who are the mentally challenged?  Is it my aunt and uncle or is it the ones along the way that abused them and treated them so cruelly that they still have nightmares sometimes? I will tell you one thing--if I had my druthers--I would prefer to be more like them then many of the so called "normal" folk I have met.