It was only a few years after Marc was born, and we had learned about some of his health challenges, but at that time, by no means all, Marc’s late maternal grandfather emotionally announced that he was going to write a book about Marc.
We had no idea what he intended to write, and in truth, I knew him more for writing poetry rather than a story. He was a proud Scot and was never phased by any of the illnesses Marc suffered from. Sadly, he passed away before he put pen to paper, and we will never now know what he had mentally scoped out to write.
That may well have been my initial inspiration to write, contemplating what a story based on Marc’s challenging life could have been like. Since then, I have written unrelated technical articles for my workplace and contributed more associated pieces to the National Autistic Society about Marc’s struggles with autism and how we found ways to support him, even before we knew he was autistic. The diagnosis did not arrive until his late twenties, but once it did, it clarified much of the difficulty he faced in his early years.
As I put pen to paper (so to speak), encouraged also by many here, and I started to write my memoir, I did not think about Marc’s grandfather’s wish to write. It was not until I was about halfway through that I remembered those conversations I had with him.
I do not know if the book I wrote is anything like what he had hoped to write, and I never will, but I do hope that, in some way, it would have made him proud and that he would be pleased with what I have created.
