It was only our second trip together in over two years, my son and I, back to the Social Security office in Trenton. The first time was traumatic. Today was just routine.
How could it be “routine”? My 24 year old son has schizophrenia. There is nothing routine about that. Our first visit was back when I was trying to secure his disability status. SZ is, the doctors say, a permanent disability. Diasbled citizens can apply for disability supports like Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Support Income (SSI). Usually applicants fail on their first couple of tries. Back then we were lucky. My compulsive attention to administrative detail, honed from years as a corporate banker, managed to get my son accepted on the first go.
I remember the time. It was late one September afternoon. Mrs. Zim, a weary case worker, poured over our papers and clicked information into her computer. My son was having a bad day. His newly admininstered medications still out of balance, he started to have a psychotic episode right there in Mrs. Zim’s work area. Keeping one eye on Mrs. Zim’s paperwork, my other was rivetted on him as he jumped up impatiently from his chair, frustrated by the bureaucratic necessities. Then, it had only been six months since he was first diagnosed. And it seemed like I hadn’t sleep for the whole half year, either.
While my son too-ed and fro-ed, twitched and fretted, Mrs. Zim finished her work. Then she tersely uttered what seemed like a secret password… “I think we’ll take him.” Social Security would declare my son disabled! What a throat-choking moment. On the one hand, I was crestfallen that he would now be a ward of the state, a government dependent for life. On the other, I was elated that he would now be safe, secured by the safety net of being a government dependent for life.
And so now we were back. All things considered, my son has made excellent progress. He is stable, medically compliant, insightful and even accepting of his illness (as most afflicted with SZ are not), working part-time, driving a car, living relatively quietly at home with us, his parents. Since the initial onset, we have high and we have been low. As Mrs. Belgowan, a different case worker this time, recorded mundane information about my son’s change of address and latest work status, I was gratefeul to God that we were still together and that he was doing much better, at least for now. It was, remarkably, good enough so that I could consider having him along on the visit, and even for him to begin learning about the Sisyphean sojourn to secure his support structure. (Of course, his personal psychiatric journey is the more truly Sisyphean.) And for me, after what is actually a very short period in an SZ journey, to have have knowledge sufficient to record my own experiences so that other kindred souls with afflicted loved ones might benefit from knowing earlier what was long and hard for me to learn about “The System”.