So long since I have posted, but you have never left my heart or thoughts. Your little face lives in my memory forever. I love you though I never knew you. You remind me so of little boy I worked with at my sister's rehabilitation center who has CP. He was a little angel like you from a poor family. The school system in Selma Alabama tried to send my little sister to a school my parents were afraid of after visiting. They tried to fight the school system there and of course lost as we were also people of modest means. The problem for her was she was the only person in the public school there for multi-handicapped persons of her age in a wheelchair. I still cannot believe how unfairly she was treated.
However, my parents would not accept this, and after fighting and losing moved one hundred miles to Birmingham Alabama where she was placed in the most wonderful public school program with wonderful teachers and we could not have asked for her to be treated better.
The sad part is, about a year after we moved here for those reasons, I was told by my mother that although my father had asked her not to even tell me, they had learned a little boy who I loved and had worked with on a volunteer basis in Selma, had been sent to the same school my parents fought for my sister not to be sent to. He was thereafter left on a bus in hot weather to die. He could not speak. He could not move his arms to knock on a window. He was helpless. I have relived this in nightmares more times than I can tell you. He looked so much like Adji, it breaks my heart, although that does not matter really, it just makes it closer to me.
While I have had a hellish life for the past several years with my own son, my only son, and have not been able to put all the energy I would like into Adji's case, I did try, but I will never feel like I did enough as so many more here did so much more for so much longer.
Thankfully, the Lord has seemed to answer my prayers in finally saving my own son from his demons, and allowing me to think of anything other than him for a change. I would hope that others are still thinking of Adji. I know it seems hopeless, but miracles happen, and if nothing else, I do hope and pray some resolution can come to his poor family. Bless all of you who cared and tried for so long as I'm sure you still had your own lives and trials to deal with and I am not alone in not having a perfect life, although maybe I am not as strong as some of you. Let us not forget Adji. God bless and take care. Jennifer
Where are you, little Adji??? We're all still pulling for you!
