Lynda advocated for their boys' health: Ty with Reyes syndrome; Andy with shunt and tracheotomy surgeries, besides cerebral palsy. From time to time, an angel in the guise of a therapy worker, care giver, or stranger on an elevator encouraged them.
This memoir is recommended by US Review of Books.
Lynda advocated for their boys' health: Ty with Reyes syndrome; Andy with shunt and tracheotomy surgeries, besides cerebral palsy. From time to time, an angel in the guise of a therapy worker, care giver, or stranger on an elevator encouraged them.
This memoir is recommended by US Review of Books.
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Overview
Lynda advocated for their boys' health: Ty with Reyes syndrome; Andy with shunt and tracheotomy surgeries, besides cerebral palsy. From time to time, an angel in the guise of a therapy worker, care giver, or stranger on an elevator encouraged them.
This memoir is recommended by US Review of Books.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781778832055 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bookside Press |
| Publication date: | 11/17/2023 |
| Pages: | 138 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.32(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Angels Always with Me
A Memoir of Faith, Love and Great Courage
By Thom Barrett
Trafford Publishing
Copyright © 2015 Thom BarrettAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4907-5989-0
CHAPTER 1
Hours to Live
It was the one call no parent ever wants to receive. Mease Hospital in Dunedin, Florida, was calling at 2:00 a.m. to advise us that we should come back to the hospital as soon as possible because our oldest son, Ty, age thirty-eight, would probably not live through the night.
Ty was mentally and physically challenged and had been living in a medical group home in Pinellas County, Florida, for about seventeen years.
While dressing Ty Friday morning, his caregivers dropped him, and unbeknownst to them at the time, he broke the same leg for the third time in thirteen years.
It was not determined that the leg was broken until he returned home from the day care program he attended every weekday. They had just put him in his wheelchair and sent him off. Ty had a tremendous threshold for pain.
This break proved to be too much for Ty. Forty-eight hours after they dropped him, he died.
Ty broke his leg the first time because he slipped on some food spilled on the floor in the cafeteria where he attended a day care program. The facility refused to accept any responsibility for the fall. They were also making noises that they might not be able to care for Ty with his additional handicap.
This scared Lynda and me because we knew of no other facility for him other than government institutions, and we knew that we could never let that happen.
We made a very difficult decision and decided that in order to protect Ty, we had to sue the facility. We were not looking for money for ourselves but support for Ty should they refuse to accept him in his new condition.
We met with the facility's attorneys and were informed prior to the meeting that due to the lawsuit, they would no longer keep Ty and that we were to look for another placement for him.
Little progress was being made until one of their attorneys said out loud, "What does it matter to you anyway? He is adopted and not your biological child."
At that point, everyone in the room requested a break because they knew that the attorney had offended all parties.
When we reconvened, the facility asked us what we were looking for to come out of this suit. We told them that the only thing we were concerned about was Ty's care in the future. We told them that money was not what we were looking for and if they would put something in writing that they would always have a place for Ty, somewhere in one of their homes, we would drop the suit. They agreed.
This turned out to be most important because the second time he broke his leg, which we also felt was their fault, and despite the signed document, they began to back away from caring for him after he was released from the hospital. They made us place him in a nursing home, which was inappropriate because they were not able to handle someone as complicated as Ty. They then forced us to place him in a psychiatric unit of a hospital, which was even worse.
They eventually took Ty back into their system but not without a great deal of insisting on our part and finally a threat to go to court again and have the court force them to honor their written agreement.
When Ty broke his left leg the first time, he had to go to a rehab facility where we met another one of God's special people doing angels' work, and her name was Maggie. She was to be Ty's therapist.
Ty was now twenty-five years old, had no use of his left arm, and a semiparalysis in his now broken left leg. He was speech-impaired, had a seizure disorder, and functioned about the age of a six-year-old — all as a result of the Reye's syndrome. It is said that we use only 10 percent of our brain, but Ty's neurologist said that Ty only had 10 percent of his brain left after Reye's and that he used 100 percent of it. Just imagine what he could have achieved in life if he had not had Reye's.
How do you get someone with all these complications to perform the necessary therapy to walk again when all he understands is the tremendous pain caused by therapy every time he moves?
Maggie discovered two things that did the trick. First, Ty loved to play with any kind of ball, and this helped a little to take his mind off the pain. The other thing, and most important one, was that Maggie found out that Ty loved a can of soda and, most importantly, loved to put coins in the machine and buy the can of soda himself.
Coming up with ideas to help with his therapy by playing ball was fairly simple, but how to use his love of buying soda in the machine demanded a lot more creativity.
If you have ever been in a rehab facility or nursing home, you have noticed that there are handrails in all the halls. Maggie decided to tape quarters to the handrail and place them initially about three feet apart. She would put enough quarters on the rail at this distance so that Ty could buy a soda. She would then take him to the machine and have him stand up and insert the quarters and get his reward.
Every so often, Maggie would increase the distance between the quarters, and Ty would be walking farther all the time without realizing that he was making great progress.
Ty became so fond of Maggie that whenever he heard her go down the hall, he would light up like a Christmas tree and would almost tumble out of his bed in his excitement that she was going to see him.
Maggie made an almost-impossible process fun because she took the time to find out about the person. She treated the whole person, not just the broken leg.
I used to go to watch his therapy and was in tears for two reasons. First, I was aware of the pain Ty was enduring to please his friend, Maggie, and second, because I knew how much Maggie must have loved Ty to go to such extremes to get him better.
After the second time Ty broke his leg, we believe he had multiple strokes that left him incontinent, permanently wheelchair-bound, and with very little speech.
During the recovery process, Ty was not getting his appetite back, and we were worried that there might be some kind of a stomach problem, so we made an appointment with his gastroenterologist, Dr. Howard Klein. Ty had to be transported in a handicapped van because he was in a wheelchair. When the van arrived at the doctor's office, they were unable to get the back of the van opened, so Ty could not go into the office.
When I went into the office and explained the problem to the staff, they consulted with Dr. Klein, and the next thing I knew, he was on his way to the van to examine Ty in the parking lot. I believe most doctors would have had us reschedule another appointment. Another angel. Only this one came with a stethoscope.
The broken legs only complicated a very complicated condition that I will discuss later.
Let me back up. Ty's legal name on his birth certificate is Thomas Aloysius Barrett III. This means that he was initially also called Thom.
Lynda's mother, Mildred Schmitt, was engaged, and her fiancé felt in order to eliminate the confusion of little Thom and big Thom, he nicknamed our son Ty, and it obviously stuck.
I mentioned this because my parents' first child was a boy whom they named Thomas Barrett Jr. My brother was dropped by a caregiver when he was an infant and died. I assume my parents were set on having an heir named Thomas, so they also named me Thomas Aloysius Barrett Jr., although not really the correct thing to do.
Life plays strange tricks on us when you consider that my brother, Thomas, was dropped by a caregiver as an infant, which caused his death, and my son Thomas suffered the same fate only at the age of thirty-eight, eighty years later.
While writing about my brother, Thom, I believe I might have had a small epiphany.
My sisters have always said that I was my parents' favorite and that their brother was an only child.
Maybe the fact that our parents gave me the same name as that of their deceased firstborn caused them to be overly protective of me.
If, in fact, I were the favorite child, it was not because of something my sisters did or didn't do but because I was named after a lost child. We never forget our children who die before us.
I hope people will understand our feelings at the moment we received the call telling us to return to the hospital because we wanted Ty to go to God and be freed of all the mental and physical shackles that had restricted him almost his entire life. He lived thirty-eight years, thirty-five and one half of which were hell.
As a priest friend of ours said when Ty died, he was a saint and rode the express train to the right hand of God because of the way he conducted his life and how much he taught so many people.
CHAPTER 2Ty's Eulogy
Welcome to a celebration of life for our son Ty, a very brave and courageous young man.
Ty loves all his family and his extended family, and there are many of you. This includes the loving people who were involved in his daily care, the very supportive people at the hospice, and our family and friends who have supported us through these years.
Ty loves to laugh and play all sports despite his physical limitations. He is a natural-born competitor. He knows that he can get anything he wants by turning on the charm, turning his chin into his right shoulder and giving a smile and a hug.
He loves hugs and kisses, chips and dip, guacamole, shrimp, coffee, hamburgers, and sausage cheese balls, and he loves to party.
His sense of humor is outstanding. He always gets it. Even after he lost his speech and could not express himself, you could hear him laugh at Cheers or Frasier and always right on point.
Ty is a really fine basketball player, loves tennis and going to play golf with his dad. His cousin Freddy says he always beats him at basketball and he did it one-handed.
There will be a new addition to our family in late September or early October, and this child will be Freddy's first, and they have decided to honor Ty by naming their daughter Reagan Tyler Schmitt.
When Ty and I played tennis, we would stand across the net from each other in the service boxes and hit the ball back and forth. If Ty missed, he would throw his racquet down and say with a smile on his face "Me McEnroe."
He loves to ride in the golf cart and drive. I would give him a target to drive at, and he would head off at breakneck speed. Braking was the only problem. Not a concept he really understood. Many a time, our friend Morris would have to jump out of the way to avoid being run down if I didn't get control of the brake soon enough.
He is so aware of everything that is going on. Once we were involved in a conversation with Andy about a situation he was in and Andy was having a problem understanding. Suddenly Ty piped up with "Andy, wake up and smell the coffee." He broke us all up. Another time he was on a roll talking a blue streak and Andy interrupted and Ty said, "Me talking now."
Ty is now free from a body that held him back, and we believe that he is in heaven with his loved ones, running, jumping, and hitting 300-yard drives at the golf course.
We will miss your physical presence Ty, but you will always be in our hearts. We look forward to sharing a full life in heaven with you. You are our hero and the wind beneath our wings. We will all do our best to complete our lives with as much dignity as you have shown.
CHAPTER 3Lynda
Before I escort you through our journey, I would like to give you some insights into the character of our ship's captain, my wife of forty-seven years, Lynda Schmitt Barrett. I also need to give you some background on myself.
Lynda passed away in June of 2013. She died of complications of multiple fatal diseases. She was a saint and never presented as ill as she was. She had great faith in God and believed that he is always with us no matter how bad things appear.
Lynda always had a strong sense of family and friends that started as a young girl. Lynda spent all her summers growing up at a beach house in Hampton Bays in Long Island, New York, and, as a result, had a great love of anything connected with the sea.
At ten years old, she could bring their boat through the locks at Shinnecock Canal by herself so that she could fish with her father and grandfather in Peconic Bay. She also loved to go clamming off the beach in front of their house.
February 5, 2015, was our forty-ninth wedding anniversary, and it has given me another opportunity to reflect on our life together.
Lynda was the most unselfish person you would ever meet. She always placed her needs after those of family and friends. If someone needed something and it meant she had to give something up for them to get it, she did it with a smile. I know that this gave her more pleasure than if she had gotten what she wanted. I learned a great deal from Lynda about giving.
While working on Everywhere an Angel, it struck me how much our lives are based on small building blocks that might seem inconsequential at the time.
In 1945, Lynda's father nicknamed her Winnie based on the book Winnie-the-Pooh. In 1968, I named our sailboat Winnie. All this so I could use "Gone from My Sight" in Lynda's eulogy and pull it all together with "Bon voyage, Winnie" in 2013.
Water skiing and sailing were among her favorite things to do. She was accomplished at both of these, and I am told she even skied on her neighbor's shoulders once.
Lynda was extremely competitive in sports and loved field hockey in college and tennis as she got older. She was told at her first tennis lesson that the backhand was the easiest shot in tennis, so she had no apprehension using it as opposed to most people who will run around to avoid it. Pity the person at the net when Lynda returned a shot from her backhand side.
The competitive spirit proved to be most beneficial when she would advocate for the boys. She was aggressive in pursuing every benefit available to them, and I liked to call her the velvet hammer. She got it all done with a smile, which was disarming.
She was a successful businesswoman and was always fair in all her endeavors.
Religion was very important to her, and when she signed the agreement to raise our children in the Catholic faith, it became a lifelong plan for her to see that the boys get the best Catholic training she could find for them. I cannot count the number of times she was the leader in the family when it came to getting the boys involved in their faith, and if it had been up to me, I probably would have let it slide.
Her friendships were very important to her, and everyone who got to know her loved her.
I have tried to come up with some special things that she did for us and am having difficulty isolating things she did, and I believe that is because they were always done so casually and without fanfare. She made them seem so natural and effortless that you wouldn't notice that it required sacrifice on her part.
Although Lynda sensed that my mother was not her biggest fan, there was never a question as to whether my mother would be included in our lives whenever possible. Lynda decided from day one that she was not going to let Mother deter her from seeing to it that our boys know both of their grandmothers. Lynda was always the one to remind me that it had been a while since I called my mother and would mention it until I did so.
During all the years our mothers were alive — her mother lived to be eighty-three, and my mother died at ninety-nine — the only times I remember them together were at each of our fathers' funerals, and those didn't go well.
I can't remember if it was at my father's funeral or her father's, but Lynda and I both spoke to our respective mothers and told them that they must call each other by their first names when greeting each other. They both agreed, so when they met at the funeral parlor, my mother said, "Hello, Mildred," and Lynda's mother said, "Hello, Mrs. Barrett." Lynda again stressed that she was to call my mother Helen, so when they said good-bye, Lynda's mother said, "Good-bye, Helen," and my mother said, "Good-bye, Mrs. Schmitt." Another attempt to get them together in the same room was never made. The only time I can remember them being together is when the boys were sick and they knew that we had enough trouble in our lives at the time, so they behaved.
During the last week before Lynda died, she told me who among our single friends would make a good companion for me after she was gone.
Lynda was always the first one to point out to me the most attractive women in the room wherever we went. She believed that just because I was on a diet didn't mean I couldn't look at the menu.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Angels Always with Me by Thom Barrett. Copyright © 2015 Thom Barrett. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing.
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