James

 

When it comes to the plethora of Pollocks, James is – by far – the most memorable. Many a person who has failed to name the other eight of us kids correctly was able to say which one was James with no issue. I guess that’s part of the reason why there’s an entire blog dedicated to him tonight.

 

I’ll be honest when I say that I am wading through the process of learning how to identify myself as Chosen Daughter of the King of Kings rather than Cat, James’s older sister. I’ll be even more honest when I tell you that I didn’t necessarily consider how much anger and resentment has built up in the nearly nineteen years James has been alive towards God. Resentment rooted in the reality that James has never been ‘normal’, and anger every time he was sick enough to be sent to the hospital. From the unidentified virus that swept through his brain stem at eighteen months old and left him with all the motor skills of a newborn baby to the pneumonia that nearly killed him at the age of six, and, at sixteen, the surgery on a stomach hernia that (in part through his own inability to leave anything alone) started as a three day hospital stay and turned into a three week visit to intensive care with fluid in his lungs and an infection to fight off. And autism – a hard-fought-for diagnosis when he was nine – has been as foul as any four letter curse that has ever left any person’s lips.

All of this has been my reality. I’m starting to realize how much of it has been my identity. How I’ve let myself be ruled and defined by the rage, the fear, the hopelessness the rest of the world says it is to continue down this path my parents chose when they decided to keep him home and love him instead of put him in an institution like doctors wanted them to do. I also see how all of this was twisted when I made the decision to act in love by trying to let my parents do what they needed to do to care for James instead of worrying so much about me.

 

Because I do love James. I love the explosion of laughter that bursts forth from his mouth when I least expect it. I treasure that oh-so-rare hug  where he holds on for more than two seconds. And the little moments where we just sit together, me not saying anything and him not pointing to words on his tablet are beautiful beyond words. He’s far more perceptive than I give him credit for – I think he knows me better than just about anyone. He certainly knows when all I need is someone to just sit with me, and when I need someone to interrupt what is going through my head.

 

I dare say that if he could say it, he would say he loves me, too.

 

James is a precious gift. He is a miracle. In the day to day nitty gritty of existence, that truth gets blurred a lot more often than I care to admit. But in the act of letting God be my identity instead of my brother, the dirt blows away, and it gets easier to remember. That remembrance, in turn, allows me to love James more freely than I ever thought possible.

 

And that feels like the greatest gift of all.