What if the purpose of life was to be kind, loving, patient, firm, creative, consistent, and serving?
What if our society highly valued people who have a special knack for treating people with intellectual disabilities as normal human beings?
What if we all had the eyes to see the the calming genius of a gentle caregiver?
If these things were true, we would honor people like Gloria with magnificent awards, massive signing bonuses, and we would name buildings after her.
Gloria has been in Josh's life for a very long time. She's gone through almost every kind of crisis with us. She knows what kind of product is good for Josh's skin. She can tell when something is wrong.
She's the person that we trust to be with him on the few times that Alex and I have taken the girls on vacation without Josh. Long ago, another couple who had a son with autism told us that we would need to take our typically developing kids on vacation without our special needs kid and I almost laughed. How could I do that? Well now, I'll tell you how; Gloria.
Going to Trader Joes on Tuesday afternoons with Gloria is one of the greatest pleasures in life for him. Gloria makes an event of it, giving Josh choices to buy ingredients for his dinner that night and one special treat, such as spicy dried mangos or ketchup flavored potato chips. But these days, Josh sometimes forgets to ask to eat those treats when they get home. I think that his treat is to hang out with Gloria. Josh always remembers which days Gloria comes and announces in the morning that it is a Gloria day. I feel relief on Gloria days. I know that Josh is more likely to be calm on Gloria days than on non-Gloria days. Gloria is the closest thing to a really good friend that Josh has or has ever had or would ever want.
Josh has been the reason that we've gotten to know many, many wonderful people in the past 23 years. That kid has had a myriad of amazing caregivers, educators, aides and other service providers in his life. Gloria is one of the absolute best of them.
Happy belated birthday, Gloria. Today, I honor you for being who you are!
