Here is something I have been thinking a lot about lately: I wish we could all sit together.

Although almost everywhere we go – movie theaters, church, baseball games, concerts, etc – has wheelchair seats available (which is amazing; don’t get me wrong!), they often have ONE companion seat next to the wheelchair seat.

It all started with our Christmas eve service fiasco this year. Even if we were able to get a wheelchair spot, we wouldn’t have been able to all sit together as a family – and there were only five of us in attendance. And then, when I had to order tickets to my upcoming graduation ceremony, I had to send an extra email to ensure we could have a wheelchair seat…and guess what? Eric will get to sit next to Kiran, but my parents will have to sit elsewhere, because the wheelchair spaces are reserved with only one companion seat.

So for these big, and sometimes monumental, events, when it’s so important and valuable to experience it together as a family, ours is disjointed. The logistics of our situation make it necessary for us to not be together.

And it sucks.

I don’t have a solution. Honestly, I don’t even have super great ideas for a solution in most settings (Other than, for the big church services, they could dedicate the entire wheelchair row to families of wheelchair users without much difficulty for others), but it does suck. Not only is it typically an extra step to figure out accessible seating in most situations (an extra email, a phone call that could’ve been an online reservation, an earlier arrival time, etc), it often means we have to give up togetherness.