Autism, One Parent to Another

From Lisa Belkin's Motherlode blog at The New York Times.

Among the subjects I wrote about yesterday was a book, Following Ezra: What One Father Learned About Gumby, Otters, Autism, and Love from His Extraordinary Son. It is, as the title indicates, the story of one parent’s journey — and it brought a question in the comments from Mir Kamin, who also has a child with autism, and who wrote:
I’m reading “Following Ezra” right now, and I would love to see you do a follow-up with Tom Fields-Meyer (or maybe he’ll write something to share here?). Granted, I’m not done with it yet, but as much as I’m enjoying his book, I’m still bristling over the whole assertion that he never needed to mourn. If that’s really true — and if I get to the end of the book and he’s still never for one moment had a bit of grief over the cognitive dissonance between what he expected and what he got — then he’s a lot more self-actualized than I am, and I tip my hat to him. But as a fellow autism parent, I can’t help feeling that a piece of this story was brushed aside because it didn’t fit the feel-good theme.
I thought that was an excellent idea. So did Tom Fields-Meyer. I sent him the question, and here’s his reply: