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Because everyone can use a bittersweet story now and then [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-12-01  

Nothing political here, just a story of a young man who accomplished more than anyone imagined. Here is the link to full story, with a few excerpts below: A world of his own

From about the age of two, though, something changes. Robert and Trude cannot put their finger on it at first, but a concern for their child begins to gnaw at them. He struggles to get back to his feet when he falls. Playground obstacles become insurmountable. Robert films Mats as he stumbles and plonks to his bottom. But he just sits on the ground in his dungarees, crying and helpless. “As a parent, you know when something is wrong with your child,” Trude says. They just didn’t know what.

His teenage years are harder. His friends, inevitably, are drawn into a world of house parties and late-night cinema trips and early romantic relationships. It is a world Mats cannot enter. “No friends came knocking at the door any more,” Robert says, without bitterness. So Mats spends more and more time alone, playing video games.

Then disease takes his life at age 24, after living his short life almost totally physically debilitated.

Their grief is deepened by the knowledge that their son had lived a small, discreet life of little real consequence. He had made no mark on the world or on the lives of anyone outside his immediate family. Mats had never known romantic love or lasting friendship, or the feeling of having made a meaningful contribution to society. They log in to his blog so they can post a message letting his followers know that he has died.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/12/1/2289586/-Because-everyone-can-use-a-bittersweet-story-now-and-then?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

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