A Day in the Life of a Special Needs Mom and Dad
Sylvia Philips
My family has been through the tragedy, trials and ultimate triumph over childhood brain cancer. My daughter Bethany, underwent emergency surgery t...
Our court date was fast approaching!
This was the only day we had available to file these papers before it might be too late and our court date would be postponed
My husband, Malcolm had taken the day off work for that very purpose!
Kristin, Bethany's assistant arrived to look after her while we were out and about!
She took her place on the couch next to Bethany, who was hiding beneath her spiderman blanket!
Malcolm and I were then free to take our leave and go to the bank to get our papers notarized then filed.
Of course, when you're a special needs family, nothing can be just as simple as following the plan, right?!
When we got to the bank, Malcolm realized his driver’s license wasn’t in his wallet and we could not proceed with our plans without this form of photo identification, so we trekked back home to search for it.This was going to waste precious time!
He had no idea his license was missing, or for how long it had been missing, so obviously, he also had no idea how long he’d been driving around without his license!
We searched high and low but couldn’t find it anywhere.
At this point, I became quite distressed.
I was angry, disappointed, depressed, and despondent!
I almost had a panic attack. I had visions of this problem delaying our plans to get the application filed on time.The whole guardianship process can take up to six months to complete, so the application needed to be filed six months before Bethany turns 18, which was exactly 6 months from that day!
Since we could not find Malcolm's license anywhere, we were now going to have to waste even more precious time going to the DMV so he could order a new license.
He was issued a temporary license to use but it didn’t have his photo on it!
I wasn’t at all sure the notary person would accept an ID with no photo!
If she didn’t accept his temporary ID, we would have to wait until his new license came in the mail, which could take weeks and Malcolm would have to arrange getting another day off. He works in a teeny, tiny post office where he is the only employee and is rarely ever permitted a day off!
To make a long story just a wee bit shorter…
We got Malcolm’s temporary license and went back to the bank where the notary person did accept it and she notarized our application.We high tailed it the 25 miles over hill and dale to the surrogate court, in the county office building, where we successfully filed our 17A special needs guardianship application on time!
What a relief!
What a sense of accomplishment!
Then we redeemed the day by taking a stroll through the Fly Creek Cider Mill where Malcolm sampled some hard cider and we bought two pieces of fudge to share!
