A Family's Story

A family, with two parents and a son.

The son is disabled. The family is very close.

I'm not referring specifically to Jim and Charlie and me though those three sentences are all true for our "tight team of three."

I'm writing about Neil and Kazumi Puttick, who lived in the UK with their 5-year-old son, Sam. At 18 months old, Sam was seriously injured in a car accident. His spinal cord was severed and he was paralyzed from the neck down. He needed 24-hour-care; his father had left his job and the family lived in a farmhouse that had been specially converted (with insurance money from the accident) to accommodate Sam's many needs. Today's Times notes that Sam was attending school and was a "regular visitor to the country park and enjoyed following the woodland trails in his wheelchair, visiting orphaned lambs and eating chocolate cake in the tearooms." Back in January, his parents had described him on a blog as "'the happiest boy in the world.'" Photographs on a website showed a smiling Sam celebrating his 5th birthday.

Sam died last Friday of pneumococcal meningitis; he had been admitted to the hospital last Tuesday. After doctors said that there was "no hope of recovery," he was discharged to "end his life at home."

This is in itself is too sad. But then, the Times reports:

Police believe that Mr and Mrs Puttick, overcome with grief, killed themselves by jumping off the cliffs [of Beachy Head] at on Sunday night.

Two backpacks were found beside the bodies, one containing Sam, the other some toys.

I have only heard about Sam and his parents yesterday when I read about their deaths and I know little beyond what I've read in the Times and other news sources, and on their Stuff4Sam website (the Putticks had set this site up to raise funds for equipment for Sam).

Sam's disabilities were far greater than that of my son, who can do many things that Sam was left unable to do after the car accident. Yet as the parent of a son with disabilities, I do feel that bond.

Charlie requires intensive care of a different sort. He can never be left alone. He's the center of Jim's and my life. Sure it is not easy and we've had to change everything in our lives to provide him with what he needs. We love being together and doing things together, all three of us.

Charlie has plenty of challenges. He's had a string of good days after a quite long spate of really tough ones, in the midst of which our school district again starting talking to us about a "temporary residential placement and enjoining us to go look at a place and put Charlie's name on a waiting list. We've been working more and more on integrating schedulesschedues throughout all of Charlie's day and perhaps it's the sense of order from these that have helped. Or something else.

Charlie has been in a peaceful easy feeling way, and despite quite a bit of commotion yesterday including a lot of loud screaming and splashing at the pool (a bunch of other kids; we were in the lap lane) and an expected trip to another town to pick up Jim and a friend at the train station (New Jersey Transit's equipment "lost engine power" in the Meadowlands). The swimming and the driving round Jersey were the sort of little adventures the three of us have plenty of, and that have been the basis for some of my happiest memories. They are really what life is all about.

In other words, life with my son anywhere but with Jim and me----that is not the story of our family.

In memoriam Sam and to his parents, Neil and Kazumi.