Just for Matt: A Story About Life, Love, and Down syndrome

By JoAnn Breitling

The Breitlings story continues, as Matthew has grown up! He is now 31 years old and he is Uncle Matthew to 13 nieces and nephews. It is the Breitlings wish to continue to share their very personal story, as Matthew was diagnosed with Achalasia in 2013, and again, they almost lost him. But Matthew is such a gentle soul, but with a fighting spirit, he survived in 2013 and he continues to be an inspiration to all who meet him!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 24, 1992
• ISBN: 9781483535869

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INTRODUCTION

THE FOLLOWING story, Just for Matt, centers around our son Matthew, who was born with Down syndrome. But it is much more than just a story of a mother and her son. It is a story about love, about this miraculous gift of life, and all the webs of emotion that we weave each day, just trying to live with one another. It is a story about a family, my family, and how God truly does know our needs before we ourselves sometimes know them!

Just for Matt was lived and written before Down syndrome was brought to public attention via a hit television show that ends happily each week. It was lived and written at a time when doctors were negative and fears were real. Down syndrome is the leading cause of mental retardation in the United States today and affects over a quarter of a million people. It is a chromosomal disorder occurring at the exact moment of conception, and there is no known cause.

I did not know any of these facts when my son was born. All I knew was that I had just given birth to a baby who had some very severe birth defects. The story depicts the hurt we felt and a love that evolved as we grew. Matthew’s story emerges not only as a victory for Matthew, but a victory for all of us as well!

I have learned more from Matthew in the last nine years than I managed to learn about life on my own in the thirty three years prior to his birth. Yes, Matthew is retarded. His vocabulary consists of maybe two dozen words. But Matthew does not need words to communicate. He communicates with his actions, which are as normal as yours or mine. I learned that Down syndrome is not the end of the world, as I thought it was on that sunny day in March so long ago, but only the beginning of a world that is larger and more meaningful. Children with Down syndrome are just that — children first. Limits cannot be placed on their abilities. They can learn and can lead normal and productive and worthwhile lives filled with love, quality, and dignity. That is what I hope for my Matthew. That is all any mother can hope for any child.

1

I WAS BORN in Dallas when the city was small. There were no malls or McDonald’s, and most mothers, including mine, stayed at home during the day and were proud to be called housewives.

I was ten-months old when my mother took me to the pediatrician for a cold, and he promptly gave me a shot of penicillin. It was the wonder drug after World War II, and doctors used (and abused) it for everything! My mother had driven home and laid me in my crib when convulsions set in. I am told I was dying. My father called an ambulance and then fell to the floor, crying and praying at the same time. My mother was the more physical of my parents and could not stand idly by listening for the sound of the siren as it drew closer. She picked me up by my feet and began to swing me wildly, finally splashing a pitcher of ice water in my face.

By the time the paramedics arrived I was very wet but breathing once more. At the hospital they told my mother that I would have died if she had not done something (CPR was unheard of in those days). After that day my daddy devoted the rest of his life to trying to spoil me and my mother vowed to never let me out of her sight. She always made me feel very special, that God had spared me for a reason — a big reason. I have spent the last forty years searching for my purpose.

2

WE ARE ALL such products of our environment and I was no exception. It was easy for my parents beliefs to become my beliefs. It was a strange decade, the sixties—a time of change in American families. My mother firmly believed that men needed an education in this world, so my brother was sent to a private university and became a lawyer. She also firmly believed that girls needed a husband, and I was groomed to find one. By the time I was a senior in high school, finding Mr. Right was my only goal in life.

One chilly Sunday afternoon, my best friend Carol and I went driving in my Mustang, stopping at the local burger shop for Cokes. A cute guy in a shiny red car pulled in next to me and I promptly announced that I thought I had just met my destiny! The driver came over. He was Polish, with three given names that made him sound like he should be a Pope. I called him John. He asked me out for the following weekend and I could not say yes fast enough. It did not take long for me to fall in love with John, or at least as much in love as an eighteen-year-old can comprehend.

John was Catholic. I had never been to a mass before, but John bought me a lace headpiece and took me to mass with him. I was hooked. I fell in love with the church itself. Having grown up in a Protestant church, the Catholic church seemed so mysterious and reverent. I now decided that even if I did not marry John, the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with needed to be a Catholic. John and I dated daily until he went away to college. Then I went to spend as many weekends with him as I could afford. At the end of the semester his sister invited me for coffee one afternoon. She explained that she was paying for John’s education and that he was flunking out of college because of me. In so many words or less, she said, Stay away from my brother.

I was positive that it was some horrible mistake, that John would not let a sister control him. But I was wrong and I was also to be hurt by this relationship. I enrolled in junior college the next semester and tried as best I could to get over him.

Like a good daughter of the sixties, I went to college to be a secretary. By March ofthat year I had had all I could take of playing secretary for my professors. I quit college and began an all out job search. If I was going to type and file all day long, I at least wanted to be paid for it. I went on interview after interview after interview.

One night, I stopped at the convenience store where my daddy worked as a second job. He took me behind the bread counter. See that guy over there, Daddy whispered. He wants to come home with me tonight to meet you! He’s very nice, Baby. I looked at the guy. He did look cute. Even though I was exhausted that day from job interviews, I relented. I had a hard time ever saying no to my father.

See you at home soon, Daddy whispered. Oh, his name is Sam!

Sam came over at ten that night and we talked for five hours. He was Irish and Mexican, the oldest of six children, and a Catholic. He had just gotten out of the Navy, and had come to Texas to find work and a wife. One thing I can say about Sam is that we were both looking for the same thing at the same time — someone to marry.

We had dated for two months when John called. He wanted to see me. It had been a year since I had seen John and I knew I had to see him one last time. My mother went with me, driving 200 miles to the college town where he lived, We had a wonderful dinner on Friday night, staying up until four in the morning playing catch-up on our lives. On Saturday we swam and played in the pool at the hotel all day. We were the only ones in the pool. John teased me with kisses and we had water fights. We played and we laughed, until I finally broke down and told him that I had met someone. John said that he could tell — I was different.

It was in the pool that afternoon that I finally realized that John was not to be my husband. It was as if a part of me had died, but another part of my soul was given life and I knew when I returned to Dallas that I was ready to marry Sam. We went the next weekend and put our wedding rings in lay-away.

One month later, after a courtship of less than three months, my parents drove Sam and me to a neighboring city where we were married by a Justice of the Peace. Sam cried on the way home—I never was sure why—I have never seen him cry from happiness. As I looked at him I suddenly realized that I had just married someone I did not even know! I did not know his mother, or his father, or any of his friends, or brothers, or sisters. I told myself that I would have the rest of my life to get to know Sam. It was a thought that would come back to haunt me many times over.

3

By THE TIME I was twenty-years old, I had the all-American dream of a husband, a beautiful baby daughter, a mortgage, and a new car. Sam joined the Dallas police force one year after we were married. Gina, our first daughter, was born two months after that. There was always excitement in our lives. Sam was very old-fashioned and Mexican in his beliefs, so he wanted me to be at home with the baby. Sometimes, he wanted me to be at home, period. He would leave for work, saying, "You don’t need to go anywhere today. You