The Oregon mother accused of throwing her autistic son off a bridge to his death kept a blog in which she chronicled her love for the 6-year-old, the struggle to raise him, and what "stops me from pulling a Thelma and Louise."
That wasn't the only reference to the 1991 movie starring Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon as two friends who drive off a cliff; she made a similar remark in a video earlier this year thanking donors who chipped in after her husband fell ill.
Jillian McCabe's relatives say son London was the center of her life, and that she was a devoted mom consumed by his 2011 autism diagnosis who cracked under stress and didn't get proper mental health care.
She kept the blog in 2011 and 2012 — before her husband's debilitating neurological disease and her father's death sent her, according to family, into a downward spiral. But it provides a glimpse into the emotional ups and downs of caring for a child with a challenging disability.
"We love London," she and he husband, Matt, wrote. "This is our journey.” Here are some excerpts from an archived version of the blog:
"Matt and I isolate ourselves a lot and stick together. We can’t really explain accurately to others our experiences. I think the worst thing that Matt and I are going through as parents is the comparison to other children in our family and in our lives. We can’t help but to compare London and all it does is tear us up inside, but it is like something we cannot control."— September 2011"Thankfully, London is not dying and he does not have a life-threatening disease. It may seem to others as though we are taking his diagnosis of Autism extremely hard. We are behaving as if there has been a death in the family even though our beautiful son is still very much alive. In a way, we are grieving over the death of the son we thought we would have; the healthy and functional little boy that we envisioned and dreamt about when I was pregnant."— October 2011“My sweet little man is coming back to me. He’s signing, he’s communicating and he’s being so adorably cute…I love London so much and I want him to further progress and grow and be happy. Autism is a thief that has stolen my son from me. No matter what progress London makes, I live in constant fear that he will regress again or that he will get even worse. I want to celebrate his progression, but I am afraid."— November 2011"I get by with a little help from my friends, LITERALLY. My friends are the most honest, supportive, wonderful and beautiful people in the world. They are the family I choose. They don’t keep score, they take my child when I need a break, they get my husband and I out of the house for game nights, they let me cry all over them, they feed me tasty viddles and they unconditionally understand our situation."— April 2012