Tag: women

Tribute: My Beautiful Mom Showed Me What Strength and Courage Are

Tribute: My Beautiful Mom Showed Me What Strength and Courage Are

mikegaeta

“The real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of institutions that appear to be both neutral and independent, to criticize and attack them in such a manner that the political violence that has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them.” –Michel Foucault

Despite my family’s best efforts to care for her and make sure she received adequate medical and mental health treatment, my beautiful mama passed away prematurely on February 27 at the age of 66.

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My mom at around eleven years old

My mom was the daughter of Mexican immigrant farm workers and the youngest of eight children. She graduated from high-school and received her Associate’s Degree from Fresno City College, despite having to work in the fields with her family starting from a young age. She would marry her high-school sweetheart, my father, shortly after his return from the Vietnam War.

My mom was a devoted wife, mom, sister and aunt and would defend her family fiercely from all injustices and dangers. One of my earliest memories of her protecting me involves her confronting an older boy who was bullying me when I was in first grade. In talking with him, she convinced the older boy to act as a bodyguard for me against any further bullying from anybody.

When she was not busy working or advocating for us in our schools, my mom enjoyed hosting and feeding extended family and our friends. Whether with her lasagna or albondigas soup, my mom would regularly showcase her excellent cooking skills. Her menudo was particularly good. To this day, my dad adamantly says he has never had menudo as good as my mom’s. In recent weeks, my cousins have reminded me how central my mom’s love, charisma and generosity were to our larger family’s closeness and happiness.

My mom also loved and served the Lord dutifully. Indeed, the two things that made her happiest were being with friends and family and praising and sharing the “word of God”

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My mama with my sister and me.

with others. Her faith in and love for God shaped most of her relationships and many of her decisions. The joy she expressed in her faith would provide the ultimate benefit to one of her childhood friends when they would reach their 20s. My mom gave her friend religious testimony and counseling that literally saved her friend from a dark, depressing time. I learned about this in the tribute my mom’s friend gave at the funeral service. “I wanted that joy,” my mom’s friend said.

While the immediate cause of her death was kidney failure, I know the main culprits are a negligent and abusive healthcare system and callous and inhumane government. My beautiful mama began exhibiting signs of a serious mental illness as early as 2003. She began claiming people were out to get her and that microchips and hidden cameras were being used to track her movements and interfere with her thoughts.

After years of witnessing her neglect her diabetes and put herself in dangerous situations numerous times, I began intervening to try and get my mom help in the summer of 2007. By then and much to my agony, my mom was hearing voices and talking to herself. Little did I know how virtually impossible it would be to get the help my mom desperately needed.

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My mom and me at my graduation from U.C. Berkeley.

From top to bottom, the healthcare system showed a constant disregard for my mom and our family. Medical doctors and hospitals had little patience and sympathy for someone who frequently would become distrustful and non-compliant (Patient Dumping from a Son’s Perspective). Skillful and caring counselors and psychiatrists we’d interact with were few. Even then, there was little they could do, given my mom did not believe she was ill and refused to take psychiatric medicine.

And while there is a legal basis to involuntarily hospitalize someone against their will, authority figures would regularly find my mom “self-directing” enough as the reason for them not to take action. For example, numerous police officers would say like pre-programed robots, “A person has to be lying down naked on the railroad tracks for us to take them in.” Hospital social workers would ask me “What does your mother want?” when I would request a psychiatric evaluation. Me saying “She wants to be with her family,” would garner little sympathy.

When she was homeless and living in a car for a time, I pointed out to a representative from the Californian Department of Public Health that she meets involuntary hospitalization legal criteria, since she was homeless as a result of her mental illness. I was told that, “Technically, a car roof is a roof over one’s head.”

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Mom and me visiting Monterey, CA in Dec. ’17.

Ultimately, in the end, though they were claiming to respect “civil rights,” they all were actually aiding and abetting a system that refuses to provide quality psychiatric hospitals and treatment and, instead, prefers to leave too many people to suffer, estranged from family and friends in the streets or thrown away in jails or prisons.

I moved my mother in with me in February ’16 because I could not continue to see her suffer and estranged from the family she loved and did so much for. I lost my mama twice, the first time to her mental illness and the second time, years later, to her physical illness. I was never able to have her be a fully healthy part of my life during most of my 20s and all of my 30s. Now I am 42 years old and will have to figure out how to rebuild and live my life without my beautiful mom.

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Mama was laid to rest wearing her favorite peach dress and white sweater and the necklace I bought her for Christmas.

I am currently seeing a grief counselor and it is clear I have a lot of trauma, emotions, and anxiety to work through. What will help me heal and prosper are the strength and courage my mom showed through her adversity. She never wavered from principles or lost her faith in the Lord or her will to live. I hope to become half as strong and half as principled in my life, particularly in my advocacy for a better healthcare and support system for caregivers and families. We deserve better. My mama deserved better. We love and miss you mom.

My Mom Is Homeless and Cries for Help from Her Family, The Government Ignores Our Pleas

mikegaeta

(Originally published in August of 2010. It was the beginning of dealing w/persistent government neglect towards my mom. Knowing what I know now, my mom should have met criteria for what is considered “gravely disabled” and been taken in for mental health treatment, not just at this time, but countless others since.]

On Thursday night, exhausted and hungry, my mother began to cry and plead with two of my cousins: “I’m tired of this. I’m tired of all of this. I don’t want to live like this anymore. I have nothing.”

These break downs happen often. While she shows tremendous courage and endurance in living her life with an untreated serious mental illness, at times of distress, she breaks down and cries, saying that she doesn’t want to live estranged  from her family. Needless to say, it is heartbreaking for me and my family to see and hear my mother when she is distraught like this.

For a week, my mother and uncle were homeless AND without a car in Bakersfield. My uncle had driven them both down to Bakersfield from Fresno last Thursday. Driving back and forth between Bakersfield and Fresno has become routine for them these last few months. They do it when my mother feels Fresno is particularly unsafe, i.e. when the “enemy is out to get them.” They will drive around for hours, or even days, and will sleep in their car.

Sometime the following evening, though, my mom was pulled over by the police while driving. For all I know, my uncle just let her drive because she wanted to or because he was tired and asleep in the backseat. Whatever the reason, letting my mother have access to the keys was foolish because my mother has a suspended license and the police impounded the vehicle.

They stayed in Bakersfield for a week trying to get their car back. For a couple of days and nights, members of my extended family put them up in a hotel. That was all my extended family could do for them, though. Like my sister and me, it is too difficult for my cousins to be around my mother, especially since they have young kids. My mom has scared their kids before, believing as she does that there are people and evil spirits around her and trying to cause her grave harm. So, for the other five nights, instead of going to a homeless shelter like my cousins and I suggested, my uncle and mom elected to sleep in another uncle’s car.

Come this past Thursday evening, they were both worn out. According to my cousins, my mom was so tired and hungry, that she looked like she was going to pass out. I can only imagine what her glucose level might be. She admitted to me on the phone earlier that day that she is out of one of her diabetic medications.

My sister and I made phone calls throughout the week to Adult Protective Services (APS) and the police to try and get them to do a welfare check on my mother and, if possible, to connect her with temporary housing. APS and the police were unable or unwilling to do anything, though, because we couldn’t tell them with any certainty where my mother was going to be at any given time. We knew my mom and uncle were at the courthouse during the day, but APS told us they only go to actual residencies and a rude police operator told me that the police aren’t going to waste their time by looking for someone in a courthouse.

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My mom and I in 2008 at a family celebration.

Well, as of today, the 28th, my mom and uncle are back in Fresno. My sister and I are hoping that we can get Fresno APS to visit my mom. This is not a sure thing, however, because Fresno APS has been uncooperative. They have been refusing to check in on my mom the last two months, even though we have told them that she is regularly sleeping in the car and had been evicted from her apartment. Fresno APS sent an investigator to my mom’s residence three months ago and found signs of neglect, but since that time has been saying that, due to my mom having a conservator, checking in on my mom’s condition and welfare is the probate court’s responsibility. (The probate court is the court that handles conservatorship issues.)

Because of this bureaucratic negligence and indifference, my sister and I have missed work and spent the last two days meeting with and talking to people at different agencies about what’s going on. My sister was able to talk to a supervisor at the investigation department of the probate court and was told, predictably, it was APS’s responsibility. Talk about passing the buck! With that information in hand, I called the Deputy Director in charge of APS and told them what I had been told.

Finally, around 4:30pm on Friday, I received a call from Bea, a supervisor at Fresno APS, who said that she was going to reopen my mom’s case and send someone to visit my mom sometime this next week. My sister and I are not holding our breath, though. We know by now to not get our hopes up in relying on the government for meaningful help. We won’t be surprised if they find an excuse not to visit my mom at all. Even if they do pay her a visit, we know they probably won’t do anything.  It’s pretty simple. They should find some shelter for my mom, hospitalize her if they have to and physically separate her from her brother, since he is neglecting and enabling her. We all damn well know that if she was wealthy and/or famous, it would not be this hard to get her help.

It’s time to end this post now. I need to return my ailing mother’s phone call. She is sounding really tired and weak.