Why Life on Mystery Lane?

A couple of people have asked why my blog is called Life on Mystery Lane.  The reason, of course, is because of Jackson’s diagnosis. 

There are days in our life we won’t ever forget – wedding day, birth of a child, death of a loved one, and if you are the parent of a special needs child, the day you received the news your child wasn’t going to be who you thought.  I won’t ever forget that day.  I’ll never forget the doctor’s office, the little slip of paper he handed us with the name of Jackson’s disorder (which I recently came across and for some reason felt it needed to go in his baby book), the shock, confusion and the devastation.  They say you go through a grieving process when you learn you have a special needs child and it is true, you do.  It was like the doctor told us the Jackson we had for 14 months just died, but they were going to give us another baby who looked just like him but would face physical, developmental and medical challenges his whole life.  It was hard to comprehend.  To top it off, the doctor had no answers for us.  He told us that we probably wouldn’t find anything on the internet about his disorder because it was very rare.  He said “He may walk, he may not.  He may talk, he may not.  He might have severe mental retardation, he might not.”  And on and on.  The only thing worse than getting the diagnosis was being told Jackson’s future was one big mystery.  Later I remember thinking how ironic it was.  I love mysteries.  Mystery TV shows (real and fiction) – love ‘em, mystery books – love ‘em, real life mysteries – love ‘em.  But here I was being handed the biggest mystery ever to come into my life and all of the sudden I’m thinking “God I hate mysteries.”  So I had to learn to accept this life altering news, and learn how to live with a giant question mark following Jackson around, presumably for the rest of his and my life.  It’s not easy some days, but what Kevin and I soon realized is that sitting around crying and mourning the loss of the little boy we thought we were going to have doesn’t do anyone any good.  I still have my moments when I wish I could look into a crystal ball and see what Jackson will be like 1, 5 or 10 years from now.  But since they don’t sell those crystal balls at Costco, I guess we will just enjoy our life on Mystery Lane.