He was sitting there in his wheelchair, unable to speak, powerless to move, but Ryan's twin brother Derek was delighting in the moment. Ryan could see Derek's giant grin and he heard those familiar sounds of joy as he charged over to him even faster than when he closed in on that Marshfield pass he intercepted on this same Foxboro field.
Ryan Diffenbacher reached out and kissed his brother. Then he took his football helmet, the helmet he had worn all season in honor off his No. 1 fan, and placed it gently on the lap of his brother.
"I just imagine him being in my shoes sometimes," said Ryan. "But he loves who he is. And we both wouldn't change anything."
The clock moved past midnight, less than an hour after Dracut High's Super Bowl triumph last Saturday night. And on the victory ride back home in the first hour of that sweet Sunday morning, the twin brothers turned 18 together.
Ryan was born at 12:50 and Derek at 12:51. They are as close as brothers can be, but then there is that one difference.
One child is born healthy, full of
athletic gifts that this spring will
have the 5-foot-10, 180-pounder leading
the Middies lacrosse team as its
captain. A minute later,
another child follows him into this unforgiving world wrapped in a body that is now 75 pounds lighter than his brother and weighed down by many unfair challenges. But to their parents, Jim and Linda Diffenbacher, the brothers are twin treasures.
Jim Diffenbacher rolls off a long list of medical names that accurately explain his son's condition, but then just he smiles and softly tells you the shorthand version. Derek has cerebral palsy. It is an extreme version and the spastic quadriplegia disguises the person within. He cannot speak, and his limbs are left powerless, but while this appears to be an extreme handicap, the only thing extreme is the extreme joy Derek brings to this home on Lannon Ave.
"When Derek was younger we made a conscious decision to involve him in as much of life as we possibly could and in any way we possibly could," said Jim Diffenbacher. "Ryan was always very athletic. Hence, Derek was always going to ball games. Lacrosse games and football games. He's always been Ryan's biggest fan."
"He understands everything and wants to do everything, but his muscles won't let him," said the boys' mom, Linda.
Their parents once bought the boys a pitching machine and Derek would press a button and the ball would rise and Ryan would hit it for them both and Derek would laugh again. Then they would watch the Yankees and Sox on TV and dream together about glory days.
"Ryan used to be number 12 in all sports," said their mom, Linda. "Derek used to get a number that said 12.5. So he was always the half."
The Diffenbacher family says the Middies football players reached out to Derek, especially Dracut's star quarterback Matt Grimard, who has been a close friend to the boys since they moved to town in second grade. Ryan says seeing his brother on the sidelines has been a good luck charm.
"It felt good seeing him there. He is a big motivation. He was always on my mind. I definitely know where he is all the time. I don't need to see him to know where he is."
Derek will always need plenty of care, but Jim Diffenbacher believes each day with him is another day in paradise.
"He's just a joy," says the father who bounced back like a champ from a heart attack he suffered in August. "Like Ryan said, we wouldn't have it any other way. This is so cool ... He's taught us so much about the strength of the human spirit."
The parents wake up every day and play the game of life as best they can. They both go to work at Lowell's old M/A-Com building. Jim, 49, works in the materials division at Cobham, and Linda, 48, is a business system analyst at Tyco. But after life's daily grind brings them down, their spirits are lifted once again by Derek.
"It puts the day in perspective," said Linda.
"I definitely look to him sometime to cheer up my day," says Ryan. "Just looking at him smiling makes me happy."
The Diffenbachers can't find enough words to praise the support Derek is given in his special education classes at Dracut High. One of his tasks in vocational training is to take the attendance sheet into Ryan's home-room class, and Derek also delights in joining the school's band practice every day.
But while he can communicate by lifting his eyes for yes and lowering them for no, what's really been music to the Diffenbacher household is the $10,000 DynaVox computer that allows Derek to form sentences.
Derek speaks through the machine by tilting his neck and aiming a metal reflector that is placed on his forehead. The infrared reader bounces onto icons on the machine with certain word patterns. His parents had to block the favorite words he kept triggering with his forehead mouse: Shut up.
"He's got better hearing than all three of us," laughs Linda..
Although the insurance paid for the computer and the $20,000 wheelchair, the Diffenbachers face a lifetime of care for Derek and someday will have to make their home handicap-accessible. For now, the three of them take turns carrying Derek up and down the stairs. But after the Super Bowl, Derek carried something for his teammate one last time.
"After the games I give him my football gloves," said Ryan. " He brings them home for me. It was kind of a ritual that we started."
"It's unconditional love," says the mother of her sons.
It is one love between two
brothers born a minute apart. They carry
each other.
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