by Lex Thomas
Over the past few decades, adult students all the way from 30-somethings to retirees, have flocked to high school and college campuses in growing numbers. Some return to the classroom to advance career options, others to resume educations disrupted during their teens, and a lucky few return to indulge unfulfilled dreams or ambitions, or purely out of a desire to learn something new. Many adult students report approaching their studies with a focus and motivation they lacked earlier in life.
For Susan Rindfleisch, 52, a Holden native and resident of Sterling for the past 19 years, returning to school in September 2013 was an act of courage, hope, and desperation, motivated by her love for a disabled son that had run out of available support channels offered by the state, and her determination to improve quality of life for him and for others in similar situations.
Rindfleisch’s 24-year-old son Joshua Reeves carries multiple diagnoses, any one of which present daunting challenges to both the individual and his caregivers, including extreme bi-polar disorder with psychotic tendencies, Asperger’s Syndrome, PTSD, and anxiety disorder.
Although fairly high on the spectrum insofar as functioning, Reeves nonetheless requires round-the-clock care and help with routine tasks and decisions.
“He’s a 24-year-old man stuck inside the mind of a 10-year-old,” says Rindfleisch.
Reeves’s disabilities began to surface early in life. “When Josh was in kindergarten, while other kids were drawing pictures of houses and families, he was drawing castles with blood dripping from daggers,” she says. “Clearly, something was wrong.”
In time, his symptoms grew from disturbing drawings to behaviors, sometimes out-of-control, and sometimes curled up in a fetal position for hours on end, that became impossible for Rindfleisch, then a single mother with two young children, to handle on her own. She realized residential care was the best option for her son to get the care he so obviously needed.
She took out a loan to hire a special education advocate. Together, they fought unresponsive medical and education systems that largely washed their collective hands of kids that couldn’t be readily treated or categorized, and finally got Reeves, then 13, admitted into Perkins School in Lancaster, where he remained for two years. In 2008, Reeves transferred to Devereux School in Rutland, Massachusetts.
“I sent him to Devereux so he could get an education in a trade,” says Rindfleisch. “They pushed him along from grade to grade, but he wasn’t getting much out of it.”
When Reeves turned 22, he timed out of the Devereux program and was sent back home, with no ongoing treatment or support plan in place.
“Once a resident turns 22, the school won’t pay for them anymore, and Worcester Regional School District says they’re no longer responsible either,” says Rindfleisch. “Devereux was supposed to set up a plan for him to follow when he left the school. Instead, there was no plan, no support system for him, no psychiatrist for him to see, and no support system for me. He was literally dropped on me with no resources in place. Suddenly, I had a new 24/7 job. On top of all that, I was having a lot of health issues myself, and had just had surgery the week before.”
At the time, Rindfleisch was employed full-time at Dollar Tree, where she says her manager was always helpful and cooperative in accommodating her sometimes sporadic schedule, so that she could spend alternate weekends and some holidays wither her son. But finding that there were essentially no services or day programs available for Reeves, she had no choice but to quit her job. She and Reeves lived off his $750 monthly SSI benefits, of which $300 went to pay rent.
“I’ve never been a quitter, but at that point, my life was falling apart,” Rindfleisch recalls. “I was distraught and depressed, but I kept going. I made dozens of phone calls trying to set something up for him. Josh needs so many meds that even our primary care physician didn’t want to get involved. I was doing everything I could think of, but I felt like I was getting nowhere.”
Rindfleisch finally got her son into a day program after seven months, but she still couldn’t return to work.
“No two days are alike for us,” she says. “If he has a bad day, I need to stay home with him. I can’t leave him alone for more than a couple of hours. How can you hold down a job under those conditions?”
Instead of seeking a job she couldn’t be sure she could fulfill, Rindfleisch and Reeves both signed up for the GED program at the Clinton Adult Learning Center. Rindfleisch had never completed hers, and Reeves hadn’t passed MCAS, and had therefor been prevented from graduating from high school. He found the program overwhelming, and dropped out in April 2015. But Rindfleisch persevered and was awarded her diploma last June in a ceremony she calls “one of the happiest moments of my life.” She was even asked to be class valedictorian.
Rindfleisch was accepted into the Transition Program at Mount Wachusett Community College in 2014, and became a full-fledged college student in 2015, enrolled in the Human Services program. She completed her spring semester in March, and was the first person to ever earn a perfect score in one of her math classes, which resulted in congratulatory words from the dean himself.
In September, Rindfleisch began her second semester, and is now responsible for securing her own financial aid. She is taking human services and psychology courses, and expects to graduate in the spring as a Human Services Technician. She will then put all her effort into finding work that helps people with disabilities to have a better quality of life.
“I’m doing this because in my heart, I know there isn’t enough out there for young people like my son,” she says. “These kids need a shot at life. They need independence. If I can use my education to make a difference in someone else’s life, that will be my reward.”