Two weeks ago, Monday, February 27, was the fifth anniversary of my mother’s passing. It’s a bit surreal, really. It doesn’t feel like five years. It feels more like two. The first year, after she passed, I was definitely just in “survival mode.” I somehow managed to live in the same house I shared with my mom a year and a half all alone. The silence, with my mom being gone, especially at night, gave way to the cacophony of my mind. I learned relatively quickly I was suffering from PTSD.
Since, my emotional and psychological well-being have improved every year, but in some ways, the anger is more palatable. I’m angry my mom and family had to suffer for so long and how we are still suffering. My sister and I miss our mom tremendously. My mom was only 66 years old when she passed. I was only 42 years old. My mom was extremely proud of everything I accomplished in my educational and professional life. But she still never really got to see the person who I became. After all, I couldn’t be fully revealing about my thoughts and opinions and different aspects of my life. I didn’t want to cause her undue stress. I definitely didn’t want something I said or was doing to be integrated into her psychosis and become a source of pain and conflict for her or me or us.
One of these days, maybe I’ll write more about my path of healing (And through a fucking pandemic even!). For now, I felt what would be best for recognizing the fifth year was to make a video tribute of my mama. Even more than what I was able to show in my documentary film, I think the video shows just how vivacious, eloquent and radiant she was. And despite how crippling her severe mental illness was, her personality traits and love for her family remained. I wish I could have valued that and realized that more at the time. We love and miss you, mom!
I recently went on a short trip to Spain with my father. It was the first time for both of us. It was something I wish we could have done ten years ago, when my dad was less physically limited. Unfortunately, back then, in 2012, my mama was homeless, living in her car. So, we were a bit preoccupied, on top of being busy with our jobs.
Though she is no longer with us, my mom isn’t ever too far from our minds. To honor my mom, I was already planning on leaving something of hers in Spain. My mama loved to visit new places and travel, before she got sick. Outside of Mexico a few times, my mom didn’t travel outside the U.S., but I know she would have loved to visit Western Europe if she got the chance. So, I wanted to leave a part of her there.
The ancient bridge in Cordoba
Not having too much to choose from, I had settled on her watch. I wanted somewhere meaningful to place it, but among the historical sites and places we visited, I had trouble justifying placing it among any of the ubiquitous Catholic edifices or relics. My mom was raised Catholic, but she would come to despise Catholicism. She came to believe the Catholic Church was “The Beast” described in Revelations in the Bible. This was a reflection of my mom’s religious views. She referred to herself as being “nondenominational” and had many criticisms of organized religion.
I was able to find a place in Cordoba, Spain. In Cordoba, there is an ancient bridge. The bridge was built across the Guadalquivir river in the early 1st century BC by the Romans. After the Romans, Muslims settled and dominated the area in the Middle Ages. At that time, it became the capital of “Muslim Spain” for many centuries. Christians (i.e. Catholics) would gain control of the area and in the 16th Century would build a Renaissance gate on one side, the “Puerta del Puente.”
As I learned more about the history of the bridge and the city, I became convinced it would be a good spot to leave my mother’s watch, since it was a place where so much world history, cultural and religious in particular, converged. In that sense, it was not about Catholicism, it was about human history and change. It was about time being impermanent. My mom’s watch stopped working shortly after she passed. But time still presses forward, as it does through all things, including after my mama’s heart stopped beating.
From our hotel, I jogged a mile to the bridge our last day in Cordoba. It was around 7:00am and still dark. The streets were still pretty quiet and a little eerie, but I didn’t mind the cover of darkness. I figured throwing my mom’s watch into the river could be considered “littering” anyways and I didn’t want to attract attention. I stopped about midway on the bridge, near the statue of what I thought was a virgin Saint. There were candles on the ground in front of the statue and a few were lit.
The statue of the Archangel, Saint Rafael
I had planned on doing a bit of a ceremony, something not too different than what I do in my home in the mornings some days. I started by saying to the statue, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know who you are. If you’re able to, I could use your comfort and protection.” Not being Catholic, I didn’t feel I could even ask for that. I was just showing reverence, mainly, since I was a visitor. I then said a short prayer. I asked for guidance from my mom and told her how much we missed her and how I wish she could be there with me. I then prayed a bit to Jesus. I said these prayers while looking out over the water. I could barely see the river in the black and indigo darkness, as the sun just started to make its presence known on the horizon.
I then started to do some chanting meditation. It is what I have been doing and studying a bit, as part of a spiritual and physical practice I am learning through my Aikido training. Specifically, I did a version of O’Sensei’s Kototama that I was taught by Linda Holiday Sensei recently. It is a standing version that incorporates arm movements.
The vibration it creates in my center (“hara”) helps me feel grounded, present and more relaxed. Spiritually, it is verbal and physical reverence to creation and the universe. Praying I do more out of reverence for my mom and how I was raised. The chanting is something I actually feel that is more relevant to me philosophically. Being based on Eastern Religion, it embodies connection, awareness and harmony (i.e. coexistence) with other living things and nature. Given that there is even Jewish history and influence in Cordoba, I thought it was powerful that at that moment, through my meditation, I was integrating a fifth religious influence into the city.
After chanting, I took a few minutes to take in the moment. A range of thoughts came up, including remembering my dad cynically asking me the day before why I had my mom’s watch with me, to wondering if my mom was on that bridge with me at that moment. Once I felt ready, I took the watch out of my pocket and looked at it one last time. My friend, Shari, bought my mom the watch for what would be my mom’s last Christmas in 2017. I made sure to text and let Shari know, when I got to the bridge, what I was planning on doing. She was very touched and supportive.
I kissed the watch next and, as I did, I smelled the unmistakable scent of lipstick. I knew the watch had a faint scent of my mom, a flowery smell that some of her clothes also have. But I’ve never smelled lipstick before on any of her things. I thought it was interesting and odd, but I did not think too much about it. I know many people would automatically believe that was a sign from my mom, but I had trouble doing so, cause that’s not my belief system. And being gone around twenty five minutes at that point, I was starting to feel like I should hurry to get back to the hotel to have breakfast with my dad. I carefully reached back and hurled the watch as far as I could into the river, hoping it wouldn’t land in too shallow an area. I didn’t see where it landed, but after hearing a splash, I was satisfied.
It was not until I was in a hotel in Madrid later that day that I decided to look up who the statue on the bridge was. It turns out it is a statue of a male figure, Saint Rafael. Saint Rafael is actually an Archangel and is responsible for healing. During the time of the plague, people in Cordoba would credit Saint Rafael with preventing the plague from causing widespread misery and death. The Spaniards placed the statue of him there in the 17th century. And interestingly, a version of Saint Rafael is found in not just Catholicism, but Islam and Judaism as well.
I have no way of knowing for sure if my mom was with me on that bridge. I like to think she was and that she let me know she was there by somehow conjuring a scent of lipstick. Whatever the case, I do know that since returning from Spain, I have felt recharged and I have a vitality that I do not remember feeling before. I am not as irritable and overwhelmed with work and the mundane everyday tasks of life like I usually am. I have been feeling more relaxed and calm. Indeed, the feeling of melancholy I know so well is not as persistent. I have no idea how long I will feel this way. I hope it lasts. I hope I did receive some permanent healing from Saint Rafael and/or the energies and/or gods in that place. In the least, I’ve been given more reason to continue my spiritual practices and to travel in foreign places more. I’m trying to live a fuller and happier life because my mama would want me to. And, of course, it helps that I do receive what could be signs of my mama being with me.
I am hardly posting on my blog, for different reasons. One, work keeps me plenty busy. But I, also, am having a hard time balancing my advocacy, work and personal hobbies. That said, I will be sharing some news about a recent public event I participated in in Modesto, CA. It was the first time my film, “Benevolent Neglect”, was shown in a theatre!
With this post, I’d like to share some important personal news. After an intense amount of training this past year, I was able to finally receive my Black Belt in Aikido. I started training 14 years ago, around the time I first started trying to get help and treatment for my mom. Needless to say, dealing with my mom’s longterm medical crisis and housing insecurity derailed and delayed my training. I started training regularly again in 2019, but then the Pandemic hit! Well, I finally persevered and I know my mom would be very proud of me!
Here’s a video I made of my personal journey in Aikido. I incorporate the personal journey with my mom a little bit.
I’ve decided to try and convert this blog to a promotional page for my film, Benevolent Neglect. Having a website for my film is one of those marketing aspects I haven’t been able to create yet, given I’m a one person operation and my regular “day job” keeps me way too busy. I’m content with the positive responses my film is garnering, but I know it has the potential to attract a bigger audience. That’s the only way any politicians are going to take it seriously, I figure. I’ve sent it to officials to watch, but haven’t received any response or feedback from them. Typical, I know. In the least, it will give me something productive to do when I feel my advocacy is fruitless. I’m not sure what it’s going to look like yet, but I still plan on blogging on occasion, once it’s converted.
In the meantime, here are some short videos I took when I went to visit my mom at the cemetery on Mother’s Day. I was feeling somewhat creative and wanted to give a more personal feel for what it’s like when I’m there. I’ll usually stop by on my way to Fresno and then, again, on my way back to the Bay Area. The first video is the Friday, two days before Mother’s Day.The second video is on actual Mother’s Day. A mariachi band greeted me as I arrived. It was lovely.
It was the third Mother’s Day without my mom. I would normally take her to Marie Callender’s, her restaurant of choice for the occasion. I turned 45 years old this year. I should still have my mother.
As a former caretaker, The Joker movie hit me in a raw way. I think the movie accurately portrays how society mistreats the poor and people with serious mental illness (SMI). I saw this, firsthand, in trying to help and take care of my mom, who struggled with schizoaffective disorder.
My mom wasn’t able to take care of herself adequately. She, in fact, had been suffering mightily and deteriorating for years. I couldn’t take it anymore. She deserved to live with a semblance of dignity.
When I started taking care of her full-time, we didn’t have a lot of family around and I didn’t have a lot of money saved up from my teaching job. So, my mom and I were pretty isolated socially and very reliant on the government for her healthcare and welfare needs.
I was able to stabilize her medically (physically) enough and keep her safe for two years, but society made it exceedingly difficult, in every respect, for me to do so. As it was, it never provided us with sufficient help and respect, since the onset of her SMI. My mom needlessly suffered for more than a decade. She would never be treated for her SMI and stabilized. She was discarded. We were discarded.
“They don’t care about people like you, Arthur.”
Arthur Fleck doing his best to survive.
Those were the words spoken to Arthur Fleck by his government social worker (SW). She was referring to the policy makers (officials) who decided to close her office and, thus, cut Arthur off from his psychiatric meds. But as was clear in their interactions, even the SW didn’t seem to care all that much about Arthur’s struggle. As Arthur stated moments before she told him the news, “You never really listen to me.” He’s of course saying she doesn’t really care about him.
This was all too common an experience in trying to access MH services for my mom. For example, there was the time when an intake worker/clinician at a county Behavioral Health Department, in flagrant violation of county policy and state law, outright denied my mom MH services, because my mom, like many people with SMI, denied having a SMI!
The worker was cold and impersonal from the minute we met. I remember saying, angrily, on my way out of the interview/assessment, “I’m waiting outside, mama. All she’s doing at this point is filling out information so they can get their money for seeing you from Medi-Cal.”
There was the time when a hospital nurse and supervisor unsafely discharged my mom against my wishes. My mom was clearly in a psychotic state and unable to make a competent decision about her own care. My mom didn’t even believe she was in a hospital.
Despite this and her physical condition being fragile (She would be treated for sepsis and was just two days removed from a ventilator.), hospital staff would wheel her to a cab. They couldn’t even be bothered to do a psychiatric evaluation to see if she fit involuntary hold criteria.
My mom didn’t like hospitals. I can’t blame her.
This incident was an extreme example, but our experiences with various hospitals taught me they don’t give a shit about people with SMI. Whenever my mom started to become non-compliant, due to her psychosis, staff would become less attentive and they’d begin preparing her for discharge, even if she wasn’t medically stable.
And this is what they were willing to do regularly in front of me. I can only imagine what they did all those times I wasn’t with her before she lived with me!
“Is it just me or is it getting crazier out there?”
That’s what Arthur asked his social worker during one of their sessions. She responded by saying, “It’s tough times. People are struggling with no work.”
Her comment is a reference to the larger political and economic situation the movie is based in. It’s a pretty subtle backdrop, but the movie itself starts with a radio report of a pitched labor battle, a garbage strike, to help make that very point.
It lasts weeks and leads to increasing piles of garbage on city and neighborhood streets. Tensions build and, eventually, protests breakout at what’s clearly deep frustration with economic inequality and uncertainty, and government mistreatment and negligence.
Arthur’s access to his meds and social worker getting cutoff epitomizes how poor people with disabilities are some of the biggest victims of these conditions. Social scientists actually have a name for such government practices. They’re called “austerity politics.”
In a basic sense, we have been living under an era of “austerity politics” for decades. Since the 70s, governments, at every level, have been cutting costs and services (i.e. downsizing), in the name of “fiscal responsibility” and in order to foster a better “business environment.” It’s a process, a project really, that started as a result of a sluggish economy, increased foreign competition and lower corporate profits. The movie is set in the early 80s, the decade when the process accelerates. (My mom would actually lose her job with the State of California in the late 90s, due to layoffs.)
An abandoned psychiatric hospital
Mental health services have not gone untouched. People like to blame the Republicans and Ronald Reagan for the closing of state psychiatric hospitals. But today, even in “Liberal” San Francisco, we have a local government severely neglecting the needs of its own SMI population. So much so, we have local MH workers themselves speaking out against the inadequate conditions and publicly protesting. In fact, former Chief Psychiatrist of SF General Hospital, Robert Okin, describes the situation as a “war on the mentally ill.”
Arthur’s social worker’s full comment actually was “They don’t care about people like you, Arthur. They don’t care about people like me either.” I’ve had my issues with regular staff and frontline workers. In fact, a friend my mom and I made at her dialysis center even told me, in a private conversation, that her coworkers don’t care about the patients. They only care about the money.
This regime we are living under of austerity leaves me with no doubt, however, that high level administrators and public officials are the biggest culprits of all. They make it too difficult, if not impossible, for even the best and most empathetic workers to do their jobs.
“Society decides what’s fun-ny.”
Arthur says this after embracing his homicidal, violent urges and becoming The Joker. It’s the beginning of a strident public criticism he makes, while appearing on a late-night talk show, to explain his rage and motives. His criticism really is the first time he says something so politically cohesive in the movie.
In a basic sense, he says society made the rules and the rules were made to keep him marginalized and an outcast. He worked hard and honestly, but he lost his job cause of a dishonest coworker and cold-hearted boss. He wanted to get better, but he was cut off from his meds. He cared for his ill mother the best he could, but in the end, she was his biggest betrayer and abuser.
My life experience hasn’t been so bleak. In fact, there were many people, workers, clinicians and strangers that were nice to me and my mom, and did try to help in some way. And my mama knew I loved her and I know she loved me, even though her SMI strained our relationship.
But I damn well know there are too many people who have it worse, like Arthur. And some of them, unfortunately, do lash out with violence. As it is, I’ll never forget what was done to me and my family. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive. Society will try to focus on individual motives or psychological reasons for behavior it doesn’t like, but the fact of the matter is society, is too often, the monster.
A year ago, today, would be day 6 of hospice for mom. By then, she wasn’t eating and was physically very weak. She needed substantial assistance to get out of bed to go to the bathroom or another room.
At one point, I believe on day 5, she asked one of my cousins why she was getting weaker. My mama truly didn’t understand. Such was the state of her serious mental illness (SMI); She’d have little self-awareness about her true medical condition.
Indeed, since my mom first started exhibiting signs of a SMI, this had been a constant feature. Even as her physical health sharply declined over the years, her lack of self-awareness just became more elaborate.
“The machines (blood pressure and glucose monitors) work when they want to.” “The lab results are being tampered with.” “The medicine is what’s making me sick.” She’d say all these things and more on a regular basis.
In fact, to my mom, the beginning of hospice just confirmed her belief that she would start getting better, since she could stop taking her medicines (In hospice, a patient’s regular medicine is stopped and the focus becomes on keeping him/her comfortable. Yay for morphine.) This is what she was saying God wanted, before hospice even started, after all.
While we were careful with our words, in response to my mom’s question, my cousin could only tell her the truth, “It’s your kidneys.” Mama didn’t respond. It was taking a lot of effort for her to talk at that point. Perhaps she just decided to save her energy or just pray silently. But I’m sure that didn’t make any sense to her at all. My mama was expecting to get healthier and stronger, not sicker and weaker.
As if navigating the situation and counseling her weren’t challenging enough, given her delusions, she’d also experience intense hallucinations.
Now before hospice, as part of her SMI, mom had regular audio hallucinations. But aside from occasionally seeing things that weren’t there, like cameras on the walls (They were usually just spots of sunlight coming into her room.), she didn’t really have visual hallucinations. Visual hallucinations began appearing relatively early in hospice, though. Being new to her, this understandably confused and, at times, distressed and scared my mama.
They’d begin on day 3 and, curiously, would begin around the same time she’d start developing severe apnea. My girlfriend and I were talking to my mom by her bedside in the evening, when she seemingly started nodding off to sleep. She closed her eyes mid-sentence and her head began to lower.
Around 30 seconds later, she raised her head, opened her eyes and asked us:
“Do you see them?”
“See who, mom? It’s just us. What’s there?”
“There’s some people standing over there. Shadowy figures. I can’t make out their faces.”
“Are they scary, mom?” I asked. To my great relief, she replied, “No.”
This continued around an hour that evening. Mom wouldn’t see things every waking minute, fortunately, before finally falling asleep. But she’d continue to see the shadowy figures and would begin to see flashes of light. She’d also say she saw a woman she didn’t recognize, sitting in the room with us. Thankfully, mom wasn’t frightened, but she was perplexed by these new experiences.
Disturbing and scary hallucinations first appeared in the form of several faces she would see. One appearing minutes after seeing a little girl. We had just convened in the living room with my aunt and cousins.
“Do you see the little girl?” she asked, as she pointed behind the couch.
“No mom.” “No Aunt Josie.”
The little girl disappeared and we continued talking and interacting with her, as normally and supportively as possible. My cousins, being older than me, had a lot of good memories to share with my mom and I about my mom’s younger days. They were reminiscing when my mama let out a sudden shriek and pointed towards one corner of the room. I don’t remember the exact words she used to describe the face, but she described a ghoulish or devilish morphing one.
Unfortunately, these scary visual hallucinations would continue when mom had acute psychotic episodes. I believe three altogether. In the evening on day 6, for example, she started complaining that her feet were getting really hot. She pleaded with my girlfriend to take her socks off. “Hurry! Hurry!” she said frighteningly.
She then described seeing the earth opening up below her and became afraid she was going to fall down through. We did the best we could to keep her calm and assure her Jesus wouldn’t let anything happen to her. “Focus on Jesus, mama. Look for Jesus. Nothing sinister is welcome here.”
A picture/illustration of Jesus mom had in her room. a caption
The hospice chaplain recommended we tell her to look for Jesus and the light, when she started seeing things. During another acute episode, I read her favorite verses from Psalms for close to an hour. My aunt and cousins prayed with her, recited the Rosary and had salt at the ready for the duration of their stay.
I saw my mama suffer tremendously throughout the years, physically, mentally and spiritually. It traumatized and saddened me, for sure. And seeing her scared during hospice was particularly heart wrenching and painful, since she was in her final days.
Not being especially spiritual or religious, I found myself asking my grandmother, my mom’s mom, to help me and mom, out of desperation. I think she visited us on day 7, in the early morning. I’m pretty sure I smelled her, after not smelling her in more than 20 years. I, also, think mom sent a humming bird to visit me this past Monday, what would be the first day of hospice last year. I’ll elaborate on that event in a subsequent blog post.
Hospice was life changing. I’ll never be the same again.
Mama would be in hospice at home a total of 9 days. After two days of many tender, loving moments with family and no significant complications, she’d start experiencing nausea and end up vomiting twice from her bed on day 3. That day was a year ago today.
Mama’s room, a place of tranquility now.
This was on my mind pretty heavily for most of the day. I would actually end up sweeping and mopping her bedroom floor today because of it. The grief and restlessness motivating me to do so were clear. I went over the areas of the floor she vomited on particularly well, though the floor wasn’t too dirty, since nobody enters that room now but me. And that’s just occasionally, mostly to open and close the blinds.
Overall, I’m thankful I’ve felt pretty good today, though. This is in stark contrast to how I felt for much of Monday, what was day 1 of hospice for mom. Those feelings of tremendous worry, fear, sadness and even some guilt that started to hit me when hospice day arrived reappeared, forcing me to relive it all over again.
My mind raced with tremendous stress and anxiety, on that day a year ago. Would the hospice staff and nurses be good and helpful? I heard of bad experiences with loved ones in hospice from friends and family. Even if they were decent, would my mom end up suffering too much in some way, still? Kidney failure is supposed to be one of the relatively easiest, painless ways to die, I was told. OK, but there’s still the matter of her serious mental illness. That was never successfully treated. I knew acute episodes were going to be inevitable. And the fact remained that she was coming home to die! I didn’t want mom to die! I fought so hard to protect her and keep her alive for so long!
On top of all this, we couldn’t even tell my mom she was coming home to die in hospice care. My mom wanted to live. She didn’t even believe she was really sick, due to her serious mental illness. For years, in fact, she regularly insisted that “devils” were attacking her organs and that she didn’t really even need medicine. I lied and told my mom that the new hospital bed, oxygen tank and medical support at home, all provided by the hospice, were just part of added support the hospital was giving us. Luckily, she didn’t question any of that.
Not being able to tell my mom, though, was to a large extent like a gut punch, the latest in a long history of gut punches. There was nothing else that could be done, though. Mom was suffering mightily. For months prior, she was declining markedly and becoming increasingly uncooperative and medically non-compliant. I knew the time was near and was actually frustrated that her doctors wouldn’t help me put together a plan for putting her into hospice. “She has the right to refuse treatment,” they’d say. I grew fearful that she’d end up dying of a heart attack at the house, perhaps alone or in my arms. Hospice was the more humane option, when all things were considered. I knew it was the right choice, as hard as it was.
The hospice staff and nurses ended up being wonderful. The nurses were exceptionally responsive, skilled and caring. They’d end up coming every day. What a blessing! We’d have some difficult times with my mom, but overall, things went as good as can be, considering the circumstances. And for that, I’m grateful.
But seeing my mama increasingly decline (slip away) was probably the hardest part for me. Day 3 was the marked start of that. From then on, every day, she’d get weaker and exhibit more symptoms that death (her transition) was nearing. She’d begin to lose her appetite. Her physical strength would begin to leave her. She’d start hallucinating pretty regularly, too. She’d become bed ridden. She’d start frothing at the mouth….
A small piece of pumpkin pie, I believe, was the last meal she’d have. She loved pumpkin pie. In hospice, patients are allowed to eat whatever they wanted, within limits. That was on day 5, I believe. My memory of events and the timeline do get a bit fuzzy. It’s the trauma, I’m told.
My mama passed away in late February, my birthday month and almost two years to the day I moved her in with me. The immense grief has gradually decreased, as I read and was told it would do. But some days, the grief, and the guilt and sadness associated with it, hit me intensely. It combines with my “PTSD.”
I say PTSD because of the intensity of the painful memories and feelings I experience and relive at times. Partly situational, there are a number of things that can trigger it. Most recently, it has been facilitated by the arrival of the cold weather.
The cold is a raw reminder of the time my mom was homeless, living in a car, for around two years. The whole ordeal was traumatizing and depressing. I would, in fact, be put on an anti-depressant for a short time then.
In the Central Valley of California, the weather is similar to that of a desert. In the summer, it gets hot, over 100 degrees many days. In the winter, it gets cold, into the 40s and below freezing at night.
Making it through the cold winter nights was very difficult for my mom. She would have to turn on the car and run the heater throughout the night. How I hoped the car engine or heater wouldn’t go out from her doing so! My mom was tough and, actually, didn’t complain much at all. But she’d of course ask for help at times.
A letter from mom
In a letter she wrote, asking me if she could come live with me, she specifically mentioned the difficulty of surviving the cold. I bought her blankets and clothes to help and checked in on her regularly, but it wasn’t enough. She didn’t know, given her serious mental illness, but I suffered too.
I had tremendous trouble sleeping during cold nights, knowing my mom was out there. It was agony. And just stepping outside in the cold weather would strike me with dread and despair. The first winter my mom was homeless, I lost a lot of weight. By the second, my stress and anxiety reached the point that my doctor suggested I take a leave from my job.
The cold weather arrived a few weeks ago, freezing temperatures this past week. With it at times, the feelings and memories of those two years. Each time, I’m there again, in that time period, in a moment, seeing her and hearing her suffer in some way and feeling the dread, agony and heart break all over again.
If it’s not the cold directly, it’s seeing homeless people trying to survive it, like the woman I saw as I drove to work the other day. In a sleeping bag on the sidewalk, I noticed her as she sat up. She sprung up and made a facial expression of great discomfort and pain, mouth wide open, eyes closed, like a silent scream. That moment took me right back to my mom.
Me and mom before Thanksgiving dinner at a Marie Callender’s in ’15.
At these times, and whenever the grief is great, I take deep breathes and try to remember all that I did to help and take care of my mom. That includes advocating for her fiercely when she was homeless. And I’d still visit her when I could, including for Thanksgiving. I’d usually take her to Marie Callender’s, her place of choice for the occasion.
In a few days, it will be the first Thanksgiving without my mama. I’ll miss her company. To help get through it, I’ll be spending it this year in the warmth and company of my extended family, my aunt (my mom’s sister) and cousins. It’s what my mama would want: warmth, instead of cold, connection, instead of estrangement, hope, instead of despair. I’m trying, mama.
I haven’t been too motivated to blog. In fact, it has been three months, since my last post. It can be time intensive and I don’t receive a lot of traffic on it, but I should just write to get better at writing, I think sometimes.
A book I’m reading, given to me by a dear friend.
Besides, eventually, I may want to write a memoir or screenplay and writing regularly can act as a kind of journal of my life to help with that. I already regret not writing more about my experiences with mom or video recording her more when she was alive, after all.
And the number of views and followers shouldn’t really matter. As my experience with my mom taught me, even if you reach or save just one person, the love and value expressed in that transcend space and time. There is no big or small. And it’s the love shown for others that help one protect themselves.
Given this newfound perspective, I’ll be writing a new post in the next couple of weeks. It will be on a topic I’ve been wanting to write about for months: my experience as a caretaker for a parent. It’s unique and the story should be shared.
For some context, know that many mental health advocates are parents and many of them are caretakers for their children, who are recovering from serious mental illness. Parents, understandably, feel an undying loyalty to protecting their children. But what familial and emotional obligations do young adults hold for their parents?
As my boss has told me, I put my life and career on hold to try and help and take care of my mom. And, frankly, I don’t think many young adults would do what I did. As my mom’s heart doctor told her a couple of times when my mom was being uncooperative and defiant, “I hope that you appreciate what your son is doing for you. Many sons would not do this for their mothers. I know. I’ve seen it.”
I miss my mom, but I don’t miss her suffering. And caring for her was exceedingly difficult, since my own health suffered and declined, including my own mental health. In talking to my therapist, it turns out that I have chronic depression, dysthymia. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as chronic depression, until I was told in a grief counseling session.
While visiting my dad in Fresno last weekend, I told him I started seeing a therapist for my depression. I explained how it feels and how long, I believe, I’ve been living with it. A grey cloud in my head has been discernible since at least ’07. That was the year I started to try and get help for mom.
Fishing on calm waters with few people around is one of my favorite hobbies.
My dad listened mostly. I figured he’d be understanding, even though I know he has trouble understanding why I’m grieving, as much as I am, about mom. I told him specifically about two times late last year when I had trouble getting out of bed. That had never happened to me before. It no doubt occurred when it did because my mom’s health was declining and so poor, due to her kidney disease. He seemed the most concerned about me when I mentioned that.
I, also, told my dad I don’t need medicine for it, but that I do need more things to look forward to. I asked him to get the boat ready to go fishing. He said he would. He charged the batteries on it today and surprised me by saying, on the phone, that he was thinking about buying a bigger one. That brought a smile to my face. “Sounds good! Let’s go shopping!” I replied. That will definitely help get me through the year.
benevolent neglect 