Currently This

Right now, kids I have known most of their lives are graduating high school. They are walking across the stage, accepting their diplomas, flipping their tassels and tossing their caps in the air. They are yelling and laughing and hugging their friends, all of them celebrating having passed the tests and surviving childhood. They have, for the moment, forgotten the stress of how to get into the college they want to go. Right now, their lives are exactly as they should be, preserved in perfect slices by loving parents with new cameras.

But not my kid. And I feel the loss of this moment like a blade across my arm. I hate the other parents. I am so jealous I can barely breathe.

My middle girl, who would have graduated today with all her friends, people she has known most of her life and whom she had planned to celebrate with, missed all of the last year and a half of school to this mystery diagnosis. She was on track - in honors in some subjects, struggling in others, but on track - to having not only graduated but maybe even earning a scholarship to the school of her choice. Instead of sitting there with the other parents, I am tonight just grateful that the pain isn't as bad as it was last night.

That's a lot to be grateful for. Don't get me wrong, that's nothing to shake a stick at. But my kid has been robbed and I am mightily pissed off.

How does she feel about all this, you ask? Well, there is a story to tell there, but it isn't my story. Listening to me yap about how I feel will have to suffice.