Ian Brown’s son, Walker, was born with a vanishingly rare genetic disorder, Cardiofaciocutaenous Sydrome. Life raising a CFC-affected son is challenging to say the least.
Brown has written a series of essays for Canada’s The Globe and Mail entitled The Boy In the Moon, chronicling life with Walker. There’s video and pictures as well.
There’s a lot of stuff here, so it’s a time commitment, but in this season of goodwill, I urge you to read or watch at least some of it.
I’ve long felt that it’s inappropriate to judge one’s own suffering in relation to that of others, that such hierarchies of suffering do no one any good. Still, it’s important to maintain perspective, to understand that suffering isn’t all, that even in the deepest and darkest of nights, there are flashes of brilliance that make all the difference.
We’ll all continue to deal as best we can with our own individual Armageddons. Hopefully, stories like Walker’s will help us all meet our problems with grace and a sense of meaningfulness.
