The Mighty Viking

“Hi, I’m Sean’s mom”

The words carried the kind of lilt that only a mother can give them. A precisely indeterminate kind of lilt that sweetly invokes your middle name and implies unspecified doom if you don’t pay careful attention to whatever comes next, all at the same time.

The doctor smiled back, knowing already two things before he had finished closing the exam room door: first, that Sean, whoever he might turn out to be, was someone special and second, that the wee lad had a special mom.

“Hi, I’m Sean’s mom”

In the next weeks, and months, again and again through a maze of specialists, technicians, and departments, she spoke in that space where Sean’s voice should have been, but could not be. There were no text books for Sean, and he had no words of his own to tell them.  And so, she simply became his voice.

“Hi, I’m Sean’s Mom”

The words pushed back against a wave of busy educators, who mistook Sean for a child without a Voice.  The determined invitation of her voice caught each one, so they listened again, and looked again, and what they discovered in that second look at Sean changed them – that beautiful Being that had almost been overlooked, simply because he couldn’t speak for himself.

“Hi, I’m Sean’s Mom”

Over the years, Sean met the grocer, the baker, the teachers at school.  He met folks at the local pizza joint, bowling alley, the Church and the pool.  And each person, when they heard her voice, saw Sean afresh, as a person.  They learned to converse with him with other senses than their lips and ears.

“Hi, I’m Sean’s Mom”

it was a plea, a demand, a push – sometimes gentle but always firm – that drew people in to experience for a moment a kind of person they’d never witnessed before. They learned how to skip over the choreographed lies of social interaction and just be together with someone.  People experienced Sean only because of her.

“Hi, I’m Sean’s Mom”

Doctors said they didn’t know anymore what to do for the seizures that took from him strength and years, and paid him in pain.  She spoke at once as Sean, and as a dedicated mother.  She told of his symptoms, and interpreted his movements, made him real to the doctors and nurses.  And once they had truly met Sean this way, most would try a little harder to feel, to see more in their patient than flesh, bones, computer blips and beeps.  Each one of them uncovered themselves a little bit, and re-learned what it is to be human.

“Hi, I’m Sean’s Mom”

In the hush of the night a prayer escaped her heart, as it had ten thousand times before, for the relief that Sean could not pray for.  And at the insistent voice of her grief at his failing body, Heaven wept.

“Hi, I’m Sean”

A young man walked innocently into the brilliance of a new Spring Morning.

And the Good Lord smiled back, and said, “Yes, I know.  You’re Dianna’s Boy.  We’ve heard all about you.”

“We’ve been waiting for you.”

The peal of Sean’s laughter radiated with that Morning light across the heavens like through a prism, setting them ablaze with color.