The Hard Way

Last year, I got one of those phone calls every parent dreads.

It was the police.

Before they took my twenty-five-year-old son to jail, one of the officers called me personally. He explained that my son had been arrested for misdemeanor trespassing and assault. Then he paused for a moment and said something that I’ll never forget.

“Sir, it’s pretty obvious your son isn’t a typical adult. We wanted to make sure you knew what was happening.”

My son is more severely affected by autism than many people realize. One challenge he struggles with is understanding consequences and connecting actions to outcomes. It can be very difficult for him. Sometimes lessons that most people learn naturally have to be learned through experience.

As I listened to the officer, my heart broke.

But I already knew what I was going to do.

Years earlier, before my wife Shelly passed away in October of 2021, we had discussed this exact possibility.

We both loved our son fiercely. We knew he would need extra help throughout life. But we also knew that if he ever got arrested and we rushed in immediately to rescue him, there was a good chance he would conclude that jail simply wasn’t a big deal.

Dad would show up.

Mom would show up.

Everything would magically go away.

So together we made a difficult agreement.

If he was ever arrested, we would let him spend the night.

Not because we wanted to punish him.

Not because we didn’t love him.

But because we loved him enough to let reality teach a lesson that words might never accomplish.

Now, years after Shelly’s death, I was standing alone with that decision.

The police and jail staff were incredibly understanding. After I explained that my son was a vulnerable adult, they agreed to place him in a cell by himself rather than with other inmates.

Knowing that helped.

But only a little.

That night was one of the longest nights of my life.

Eventually I drifted off to sleep.

And then I had a dream.

In the dream, Shelly was furious with me.

Not mildly upset.

Not disappointed.

Heartbroken.

Furious.

She looked at me with pain and anger in her eyes and said words that felt like a knife through my heart.

“I am done with you.”

I woke up sobbing.

Tears running down my face.

I sat there in the darkness completely devastated.

My chest felt like it had been crushed beneath a mountain.

What have I done?

That question echoed through every corner of my mind.

Maybe I had made a terrible mistake.

Had I done the wrong thing?

Had I failed our son?

Had I failed Shelly?

My family?

The next morning, as soon as I was allowed, I rushed over and bailed him out.

But my suffering didn’t end there.

For days I was consumed by guilt.

Ever since Shelly died, one of my greatest fears has been that I would somehow undo the beautiful family we built together.

We raised six wonderful children.

We built a life full of love.

We created something precious.

And after she died, I constantly worried that I would make some terrible mistake that would damage what she and I spent decades creating.

For several days, I wondered if this was proof.

Maybe I had made the wrong choice.

Maybe Shelly was disappointed in me.

Maybe that dream was somehow a message from beyond the grave.

The thoughts tortured me.

I could hardly think about anything else.

Finally, after several miserable days, I found myself kneeling beside my bed.

I wasn’t praying eloquently.

I wasn’t trying to sound spiritual.

I was simply broken.

I begged God for forgiveness if I had done wrong.

I begged Shelly for forgiveness too.

I promised I would do better.

I promised I would keep trying.

I promised I would continue doing my best to protect the family we built together.

That night I had another dream.

And this one was completely different.

Shelly appeared again.

But this time there was no anger.

No disappointment.

No accusation.

She walked toward me, kissed me gently, wrapped her arms around me, and held me.

Then she told me she would love me for eternity.

When I woke up, I felt like a different man.

The crushing weight I’d been carrying was gone.

The fear was gone.

The guilt was gone.

For the first time in days, I felt peace.

Looking back now, I think I understand both dreams.

I believe the first dream came from my own subconscious mind.

Even though Shelly and I had agreed years earlier to let our son spend a night in jail if he was ever arrested, I know something else with absolute certainty.

If Shelly had still been alive, there is no way she could have slept knowing her son was alone in a jail cell.

None.

She loved that boy with every fiber of her being.

The thought of him spending the night there would have broken her heart.

I think my subconscious knew that.

I think it was wrestling with the conflict between honoring the agreement we made and knowing how much pain it would have caused her as a mother.

The second dream felt entirely different.

Whether others agree with me or not, I believe that was Shelly’s real message.

I believe she was telling me she was proud.

Proud that I kept going after losing her.

Proud that our six children kept living, loving, and finding happiness.

Proud that the family we built together survived one of the greatest tragedies imaginable.

Most importantly, I think she was reminding me that love doesn’t end when a life ends.

As for my son, spending that night in jail appears to have accomplished exactly what Shelly and I hoped it would.

It got his attention.

It taught him a lesson that years of warnings never could.

He learned the hard way.

And so did I.

He learned that actions have consequences.

I learned that sometimes doing the right thing hurts.

I learned that guilt isn’t always evidence of wrongdoing.

I learned that grief can distort our thinking.

And I learned that honoring the promises we made to the people we love is sometimes harder than we ever imagined.

Some lessons are learned the easy way.

Others are learned the hard way.

My son learned his lesson in a jail cell.

I learned mine on my knees beside a bed.

Neither experience was pleasant.

Neither was painless.

But both changed us forever.

And sometimes the lessons that hurt the most are the ones we never forget.