Sometime after the bittersweet joy of our Star Wars day, my mother Angela descended into a deep anti-social sadness. She seriously succumbed to her life-long struggle with depression.
She gradually became quieter and quieter, sitting by herself in one of our upholstered recliners at the back of the livingroom. It was as if she was just a passenger in the family, not a participant. We all watched her behaviour shift over the course of about a year.
Back then, I had no concept about coping, or the idea of an “elephant in the room”, or even what the word depression really meant. Alcoholism was a dirty word too. None of these things were discussed or even spoken of in our family or, it seemed, anywhere else that I can recall. Thing were there, happening in front of you and to you, day by day, with no explanation or hope of intervention. It was ust part of what was “normal” in our home.
Mum would just sit in her rocking chair, compulsively rocking and twiddling a lock of hair around her finger while her foot would trace endless circles in the air with her toe. It was some kind of stress reaction that nobody commented on or did anything about. She’d just sit there creak-creak-creaking her chair, like a bundle of nervous energy.
I can’t remember her eating breakfast or dinner with us very much during this phase. I’m sure she must have eaten something somehow, as she was still a good thirty pounds overweight. I remember telling some friends how my mother just stopped eating meat after a while, and later seemed to stop eating altogether, at least in front of us.
Eventually, she stopped sitting, and most of the time ust laid on the livingroom couch in her pajamas. She was still “with us” in a way, physically present, but mentally quite separated. It felt strange, like something nobody could do anything about – and nobody did.
After a while, Mum never got out of bed at all. I never went into the master bedroom to visit her either. I guess the “leave me alone” vibe was too strong and scary.
Sometimes I’d find evidence of her night-time emergences, like a mess from a nocturnal snack, with a butter knife covered in peanut butter and mayonnaise left on the kitchen counter (peanut butter and mayo? Ech!). Once, when I poured water to clear a clog in the bathroom sink, pink vomit came crept back up through the sink’s overflow vent. Sometimes, she wouldn’t make it to the bathroom at all, and I’d have to clean her wine-coloured puke out of the upstairs hall carpet.
Poor mum was very sick in both her mind and body. She’d given up on her life and seemed to have lost all her self-respect.
A grey, rainy day came in 1978 when Mum succeeded in drinking herself right to the edge of death. Dad tried to rouse her from her bed, but she was unresponsive, so he called an ambulance, and she was rushed to Burnaby General Hospital.
The doctor told Dad that she was lucky to be alive: Her liver had quit, and if she’d stayed home for 24 hours more, she’d surely have died in her bed. Looking back now, I understand that it had been a slow-motion suicide attempt. She’d given up on life and had been trying to kill herself over the past year. That idea was never brought up by anyone, at least not in front of me and my sister.
At Burnaby General, Mum was in an isolation room at first, unconscious and hooked up with tubes and monitors. It was scary, and we were all worried about what would happen to her. Medically, all I recall is that she was given a full blood transfusion. I don’t know what else she underwent – that whole episode is bit of a blur. Mum’s descent and fall was treated as a health emergency first: stabilize the body and ensure survivability first, and then (hopefully) deal with the psychological aspects and coping tactics afterwards. I have no idea if Mum was ever visited by a counsellor or psychologist at that stage.
She survived, but with permanent brain damage and memory loss, and a personality that seemed now unfiltered and free of self-conscious awareness. Sitting with her, Dad, and Kim in the ward’s small visiting room, I watched her, not knowing what to say. Angela remained anxious and full of nervous energy, and she kept blurting out that she wanted to go home. It could have been the scariness of being sober in a strange hospital or her withdrawal symptoms, or her brain damage, but she had been permanently transformed.
