I think you have it all wrong.
Richie spoke. Knew people from childhood and knows people now. Calls people by name. Liked to take rides in the car. He called them beely rides. He adored his father and mourned his loss more than anyone. He likes blankets with satin. He liked peanut butter when he was young…still does. He used to love to sit in the sun in the yard. He loved the way the sun felt. Still loves to be taken outside in the sun. Loves one of the aids at the home he lives in and waits for him to arrive every day. He never knew he lived? Really?
Maybe he hasn’t lived like everyone else. He doesn’t have a car payment or a mortgage he can’t afford. He doesn’t go everyday to a job he despises. If he doesn’t like someone, he doesn’t deal with them. He doesn’t have to fake it….or kiss but to be liked nor does he care if he is liked. He is a human being with all the feelings you and I have, (bet on that) without all the social garbage that makes us assholes.
Most “normal” people like to think people like Richie are without emotion, without thought process, without knowledge or tangible things and events. But other cases where a person who is affected but can communicate tells us differently. There recently was a 9 year old girl who has never spoken and most thought was so severe that she never would. Someone handed her a communication device. She immediately began ttyping and telling her parents things. Things she remembered from childhood, things she liked and things she didn’t. She taught herself to read at an early age…when the experts thought she was not learning a thing. She was “living” and she knew it. But the experts tell us she wasn’t “living”.
If you ask those who knew him, those who took care of him before and those who take care of him now what they think of him…..he has touched their lives. Touched them because he was handed a plate of struggles and keeps on keeping on. He has an inner strenght that nobody can explain. He is cranky, yet funny. He has withstood alot of things that those who “know thy were alive” couldn’t, yet he continues living and loving. Most of “those who know they were alive” would be suicidal at best. He has touched many lives and most won’t forget him. He has brought the best out in people; their caring, their sympathy, thier happiness at his happines. Will the end of your days be the same? Will you have brought the best out in the people in your life? Or will you be the lonely man who never knew he lived? Just some food for thought.
