We recently took our family to a fundraiser for Anthony's school. Although I am certainly supportive of the idea of bringing in money for the school, I have to get past my own reluctance to attend.

I am of course used to being around Anthony. I deal with him all the time, and I frankly don't think about him very much. I suspect that sounds somewhat unfeeling, but I don't know another way to cope with this human being that should have had his place in our family as the eldest child.

I try to let his birthdays slip by without notice. I avoid associating him with life events that other boys go through, and I minimize any time spent comparing him to his siblings. I no longer have a dream I wrote about previously, by the way.

But when I go to Anthony's school, I see many other children for the first time, and I have two emotions. The first is, perhaps surprisingly, sadness for the parents of those children. This is a circumstance in which I think misery does not love company. The second, however, is a resurfacing of buried feelings toward Anthony. It took a few years to get over the realization of what we had with him; seeing others similar to him only provides me with an unwelcome reminder.

I suspect that I am not the only parent with these issues, because my wife and I have noted that the attendance at these events falls far short of reflecting the number of children at the school.

On a slightly different but nevertheless related note, though, I am extremely impressed with the capacity for caring that the administrators and staff at this school have. I am also aware that there are those who work with special-needs children because they have one or more such children themselves. I don't think I could find it within myself to regularly deal with others in addition to my own.