As the 25th anniversary of Dad’s death approaches — April 29 — and as Autism Awareness Month, 2022, winds down, it occurrs to me that my father (Mike Royko), more than 25 years ago, was very aware of autism.
I had gone to his office at the Trib to tell him about Ben. When I finished, he said,
“You have a child with special needs.”
It was the first time, and to this day, maybe the only time, I heard those exact words directed at me. Yes, it was a statement of the obvious. But it focused everything.
“You…” Yes, it was me, sitting there at that moment, like it or not.
“Have…” The fact, not a ‘maybe’ or a ‘what if.’ It was real, no denial allowed.
“A Child…” Ben, our son.
“With…” This is what Ben has and what he, and all of us, will have to deal with.
“Special…” An extraordinary, life-changing condition.
“Needs…” Profound, severe, and our responsibility to help him with them.
It was our family’s new universe being described in the most simple, precise, direct — and profound — sentence. Like Mozart’s notes, not one was expendable, and together, they perfectly hit the mark. They weren’t said in a ‘well, of course’ manner, but softly, empathically.
They summarized everything I’d been describing for ten minutes in disorganized, distraught and depressed bits and pieces, as he sat, looking deeply concerned, for Ben, and for me. And perhaps paradoxically, his words mixed a touch of comfort with the between-the-eyes arrow of heartbreaking reality.
He got it.
His next words were,
“Anything you need, you’ve got.”
He meant it.
And for 21 months, he did it. That was all the time he had left. Dad died on April 29, 1997, at 64. His words — at the same time empathetic and practical — summed up my Dad.
They also summed up “Mike Royko.” And at that moment, as in most moments, he was both.
And today, I am thinking hardly at all about what he meant to his readers, and to the world — which was plenty — but what he meant to me.
And to Ben.
And how much I’ve missed him. That’s what his fans tell me all the time. They miss him. And, of course, they always wonder, “What would Royko say?”
He was the same in his column, writing to readers about somebody confronting tragedy, as he was when I walked in that afternoon and told him about Ben.
Dad cared deeply, he felt the pain, he understood, he wanted to help, and did everything he could, generously and with no thought to pay-back.
The term, “pay it forward,” was one I never heard him use, yet he defined it. Dad did it for readers every day.
And for 21 more months, with tangibles and intangibles — like love — he did it for Ben.
Damn Dad, I miss you. And so does Ben, more than either of you can ever know.
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Originally published in April, 2018 — and revised today.