Of Cabbages and Kings

 

I don’t want a funeral.

Why are so many autistics introverts, or hate crowds?

Because we’re quick learners.  Most of us, unless we live a very sheltered life, are expected to interact and play with other kids from a very young age.  After age two, or so, this takes an ever darker turn for many of us.  We still want to have friends. We still feel the need to be liked.  We still want acceptance.  Instead, what we find from the other kids is violence and being ostracized.  Being around each other is where children learn the unspoken language, body posture, non-verbal clues, status, and for want of a better term, where you are in the pecking order.  Autistic kids (at least speaking from my personal experience and the experience of my sons), not only don’t learn this automatically, we usually have no idea it’s going on at all.  So we speak out of turn, we violated the status of the high ranking kids on the playground.  The reaction usually progresses from shoving, to maybe pinching, hitting or even biting.  At first most autistic kids will fight back, some even win.  My youngest boy was in 3^rd Grade before his older brother came home and said, “that kid took him down.  I’ve NEVER seen anyone take him down before.”

The real pain involved is understanding that the other kids don’t like you, but having no idea WHY they don’t like you.  Eventually, you become inured to the treatment and come to expect it.  As a result as we reach school age we start to dislike being put into proximity with other kids, because if you don’t think the violence continues while in school, you’re very much mistaken.  In my mid-teens I once had a football player punch me repeatedly in the arm, harder and harder each time, until I turned on him and he saw the look on my face.  Yes, he may have destroyed me if I went after him, but my expression said I didn’t care and was about to go for his throat.  The teacher was right in front of the room and there were no obstructions to her view.  She did nothing.  Another guy at the same school, in a different classroom, coated my back and head with chalk dust by pounding me with an eraser, while I was in the front row and directly in front of the (different) teacher.  Again.  Nothing.  No calling him out, no directive to go to the Principal’s office, no detention.  They had made me into a non-person.  Anything done against me wasn’t visible to staff, apparently.  This was in the mid 1970’s, but it was still occurring during the 10-15 years ago my sons were in high school.

So yes, we do not like crowds.  We do not like being put in with strangers.  We do not appreciate being made the center of attention.  Praise, for excellence in school, or achievements at work can result in repercussions from other students or co-workers.  They can be overt or subtle, but a price is often paid so we like to avoid the limelight.  That is, we do, when we are being “ourselves”.  Give us a character to play, or a persona to adopt, and we can become actors, stand up comics, directors (stage or screen), and so on.  Because our inner self isn’t the one being seen on the screen or stage.  It’s a construct we made.  A character.  Many people in show business have acknowledged their diagnosis on the spectrum over the past few years.  No doubt more have been diagnosed who keep it to themselves.  All of this plays back into my major point in this post. 

I do not want a funeral, memorial service, or other gathering after I am gone.  I left one exception on the table for my wife to take if she wants to, a real old fashioned honest to God Irish wake.  That I can support, where people get together, gather a few wee drops o’ poteen, and cry Slainte (slawn-che), which means health, in Gaelic. I also view it as being “to life”.  On my Mother’s side, we had ancestors who emigrated from Northern Ireland in the late 1700’s.  My father’s side they came mostly from Sheffield. I guess saying “cheers” would be ok as well.  To me, any other kind of gathering would be too likely all the people out there who truly dislike me (and there are many) would show up to gloat over my demise, or make nasty comments to my family and few friends.  Not something I want to leave them with, and it’s not like I’m actually going to be there in any form other than ashes in an urn. 

Call it an echo of childhood trauma, call it overblown Imposter Syndrome, call it any damned thing you like, just don’t have a funeral.  I’m not religious in any real sense, so a rite from a church seems sort of in poor taste.  I have virtually no friends, other than a handful, most of whom live thousands of miles away.  If they want to do something, then just get on Zoom and drink from home.  No designated driver needed.  Besides, any public gathering is likely to be too risky for years to come.  If we manage to get COVID under control in the next 5 years I will be shocked, but not as shocked to be here 5 years from now.  I’ve had a heart attack, lived on dialysis for 11 years now, pneumonia so bad it came very close to killing me, and I’m on my 3^rd round of cancer.  The first two were “cured” by removing tumors.  Those were kidney cancer.  This time I have lymphoma, so there actually is treatment, and I’m getting it, but between what that does to me and what dialysis has and continues to do to my immune system, even a bad case of the sniffles from someone else may kill me yet.  If they hadn’t caught the lymphoma accidentally looking for something else, I would be dead now.  They caught this in late September, and if they hadn’t I wouldn’t have made it to Thanksgiving.

One day at a time.  That’s all I can do.  That’s pretty much all any of us can do, it’s just that some of us have a starker view of the train coming through the tunnel.