I wonder if I have made a huge mistake.  For the past four years, I have had this huge ache in my chest that nothing can ever take away.

I made the painful decision to have my daughter, now 18 years old, placed into a home for the severely handicapped.  At fourteen (and now, at the present time),  Miranda (also called Mandy) is unable to talk, walk, dress (or feed) herself, and is incontinent: she required care upwards to 24 hours a day.

There isn't a day where I don't think of her.

I had her placed into The Home because I couldn't deal with her disabilities.  Her needs severely altered my life as I knew it: she took up a lot of my precious time and it truly angered me.  I decided I couldn't "take anymore", so I, more or less, "threw her away", and now I am regretting my decision to this very day.

It's as if my daughter died because I still grieve for her.  She is not dead: Mandy is very much alive, but the pain I feel in my heart is as if she had died.  I feel as I have failed her and I feel as if I have failed myself because I gave up on her when Mandy needed me the most.

I now know that it isn't Mandy's fault that she born the way she is: it was just an ugly, nasty incident that didn't have to happen and now because of the negligence of a doctor, her future has been forever changed.  (I sued that doctor and won; the doctor has since had his medical license suspended, but his mistake cost my daughter a normal life.)

Christmas for us has been hard. We haven't really had much to celebrate, not without our precious Mandy.  Mandy doesn't deserve to be in a home with strangers caring for her needs: she deserves to be here with US, her own family!!  We haven't had a tree up since Mandy left and we aren't even sure if she even knows it is Christmas time, so we never really bothered.

I have been seeing a counselor about my ongoing depression, but it doesn't seem to be doing much good.  I wonder if it would be too late if we could change our minds and take Mandy out of The Home and have her come back to us, where she belongs.  We could try again and try to make her life just a little more enjoyable; she may be severely disabled to a lot of people, but Mandy desrves to have a good life!

~To be continued.~