The final day of family week was the only time addicts and their families were together. If patients had multiple people visiting, as my mother did, they had to attend each of the separate groups. That morning, my mother orchestrated an elaborate photo shoot of herself meditating alone in the Serenity Room. She sat in the lotus position with a humble smile and her chin tilted toward her higher power as Arlene snapped pictures and patients who actually wanted to meditate paced outside.
My group convened with our family members soon after, and we were told that we each had to sit in the middle of the circle with our addict and relate what we’d learned that week. Everyone sat down, said what they were supposed to while the rest of us nodded compassionately, and then returned to their chairs.
When it was our turn, I stood up and moved to my chair in the middle. Instead of going to her chair, my mother stood behind me and said, “I just want to say how happy I am to see my daughter.”
The week had been full of shocks, but when my mother went on to announce that her daughter went to Oxford, everyone gasped. She was deviating from the script after no one else had, and doing it with the gusto of someone giving a wedding toast.
The therapist cleared his throat. “Sit down, Anita.”
“Can I give my daughter a hug?” she asked. As he was saying no, she bent over and squeezed me as I tried to squirm away.
“Anita.” The therapist’s voice was firm. My mother sat across from me and smiled. Her smile quickly transformed into her “I’m listening” expression, which I knew meant she wasn’t actually going to listen to me. This ignited the anger I’d discovered that week. People gasped again when I began to speak. My body expanded, and a voice I didn’t recognize as my own, or even as human, flowed up from my stomach. I wasn’t following the script, either, though I’d planned to.
“My ex-boyfriend drove you to the emergency room,” I spat out. “You shit on the floor. Every time Alex calls me, I think she’s going to tell me you’re dead.” I listed more of her most upsetting behaviors, hurled my hurt and blame, and screeched about how alone she’d made me feel.
My mother’s mask of empathy turned to a look of animal terror. She watched me like I was a shadow that might turn into a demon.
I stopped speaking because I got dizzy. I’d forgotten to breathe. My mother and I were still staring at each other when the therapist quietly thanked me for sharing and dismissed the group for lunch.
I turned away and hurried out of the room. I was disoriented but also a little excited. Whatever had happened, it seemed like it managed to shake her.
I found Alex in the cafeteria. She asked how my session went. I told her about my mom’s comment about me going to Oxford, and how she’d insisted on hugging me.
“You let her?” Alexandra said as she speared a piece of lettuce. “She tried to hug me, but I wouldn’t let her.”
Arlene plopped down next to us excitedly. “Oooooh, I heard about what happened,” she said.
I bristled. I didn’t want my sister to know what had happened in my session. I couldn’t imagine what my mother would say about it.
Arlene patted Alex’s arm and continued. “I just saw your mom. She said she tried to hug you during your talk, but you wouldn’t let her. She claims everyone is gossiping about it and people keep coming up to her, asking if it’s true.”
My sister and I just looked at our food.
I never told Alex what happened, and my mom and I never spoke about it. That night, and many times in the years that followed, I burned with shame as I remembered attacking my mom for her behavior in front of people who’d experienced much worse. My pain was so wild and my sense of having been wronged was so much bigger than that of the people who’d stayed in control of themselves. I hadn’t been trying to blame her for both of our problems; that wasn’t enough. I wanted to punish and shame her for them. At Betty Ford, I’d discovered that I was really, really angry, but I didn’t yet know how to curb it. I wasn’t in control, and I definitely wasn’t detached.
Before we left, we spoke with our mother’s therapist. We told him that we were worried that she wasn’t taking her time at the clinic seriously. She didn’t seem interested in recovery, let alone committed to it. Was there anything we could do? He said he’d speak to her about staying for another week. After we left, we found out that she agreed.
My mom never framed the picture of her meditating in the Serenity Room. She started drinking the day she got home and didn’t stop for two months. I was livid, but I told myself it was okay that I was angry. She didn’t intend to hurt me; her behavior wasn’t personal. I’d created expectations knowing they probably wouldn’t be met. I knew I had to lower them, but I didn’t know how much lower they could get. I didn’t want to give up on her. Maybe she had tried. Maybe she’d tried really hard but hadn’t been able to last a day and felt disgusting and guilty as she drank.
Her friends, loyal for so long, stopped calling. They’d spent years driving her to detox, listening to her cry. They were so depressed by what happened to their friend Anita, who’d made them laugh with her jokes, excited them with her wild travel stories, and inspired them with her tirades about the environment. Like me, they were mad. They didn’t think she was trying to get better and worried that their continued help would only enable her. And they had their own problems—cancer, parents with Alzheimer’s.
The following year, in 2004, Grandma Helen died. She was the one person my mother consistently spoke to, aside from Sylvia. Like Sylvia, Helen never told my mother to stop crying, and she never interrupted my mother’s stories even though she could recite them herself.
My mom flew to Chicago to help Arlene clean out their mother’s small apartment. On the first day, Arlene left to run an errand, and my mother ran her own. She stashed vodka and wine in her purse, under the sink in my grandmother’s bathroom, and beneath the couch. When Arlene returned, my mom was already drunk but tried to deny it. Arlene went to work boxing up dishes and throwing away old sheets and towels. My mom tried to help, but Arlene exiled her to the bedroom because she kept dropping things. Arlene slept beside her that night, and when she woke early the next day, my mom’s side was empty and wet with urine. Arlene found her crouched against the tub in the bathroom. She’d peed on the floor, and was growling and mumbling gibberish.
Arlene called Sylvia and asked for help. Sylvia went to my grandmother’s apartment, gave my mom water and food, and listened as she cried that “Mommy was gone.” There was another person on the list she recited: son, husband, mother.
I moved back to New York for graduate school in 2006. I’d gotten into the Columbia University MFA Writing Program after applying in secret. I was back on the East Coast and went to Boston every two months, but Alex was still in charge of our mom. I’d call her for updates and ask if she needed help, but she never said that she did. I felt like a flaky little sister, the dippy creative one who couldn’t be the adult Alex needed me to be.
My first Thanksgiving back on the East Coast, I arrived at our mom’s house to find her passed out and breathing heavily in her room. I flipped on the light and waited to see if she would wake, but she didn’t. A large bottle of white wine was on her nightstand. I looked under the bed and found seventeen empties. “Oh Mom,” I said. As I moved them into trash bags, I thought of how she was continually hurting herself. Drinking until she blacked out must have felt too good to stop, far better than being sober, so good that the consequences didn’t matter. I placed a large glass of water on the nightstand next to the wine and went to my sister’s. I couldn’t stay. I felt guilty because I figured she’d want company if and when she woke up, but I was terrified by how she was living.
Seeing the person she’d become made me fear that the same thing could happen to me. I was so focused on achieving success that I couldn’t imagine developing a problem as extreme as hers—one that would prevent me from at least tryin
g to accomplish the things that I wanted—but I knew that addiction had a genetic component. And although I never felt that I needed to drink, I loved doing it. When I was out with friends and had already had a few, I didn’t want to stop. I’d get more drunk than I already was because it felt so good; I ordered more drinks, accepted free ones from bartenders, and finished other people’s when they’d had enough. When I made it home, either by luck or with the help of friends, I fell climbing the stairs to my apartment, crashed into my dresser, and woke up covered in bruises. Multiple friends told me that they were worried about my drinking. I knew they weren’t being judgmental or hysterical. They’d seen me reach for drink after drink and pour booze into my body, and they knew my family. I listened, but I didn’t know how to change. A life without wine or hyperactive bar antics seemed miserable. It was hard to accept that I didn’t need to be drinking every day to be out of control or have problem behavior, and I didn’t want to give up alcohol completely. But I was a potential version of my mother if I didn’t learn to control my occasional need to be out of control.
When my mom sobered up a few days later, I sat with her in her bedroom and told her that I was scared she was going to die. I asked her to see a therapist, to go to meetings, to volunteer, to go into treatment again, this time for three months. When she said that she didn’t have the money, that she was poor, I told her, “Take money from Dad’s retirement account early. Use it to take cooking classes in Italy! Visit your friend in France. Do something for the environment. Remember how much you used to care about the environment?” I was the cheerleader Betty Ford warned me about even though I knew that my eagerness and optimism wouldn’t help.
My mom sucked on a cigarette and gave me a look that said I was the one who needed pity. She just wanted to be left alone. Her world had been bigger than most people’s, and then it shrank to the size of her bed. It was becoming increasingly difficult for her to walk. She could only get down the stairs if she went down on her butt like a child, and she couldn’t stand for more than a few seconds without the support of a wall or another person.
I was relentlessly happy to her face but haunted by her misery when I was alone. I’d call her and leave messages, and she’d call me back weeks later. When she did pick up the phone, she’d ask why I was calling at two in the morning and I’d tell her it was two in the afternoon. I asked what she was doing, and she’d say she was paying bills or doing her taxes. She was always paying bills and doing her taxes. The only other thing she ever said she was doing was watching TV. She’d tell me about Grey’s Anatomy, Dateline, sometimes mixing up shows and characters, but I’d listen. I wanted to tell her to cut the shit, but I stopped myself. Shame or accusations would only make her drink more.
In New York, I was writing and going to classes at Columbia, working part-time at a magazine. I began dating a photographer named Marko. He was fun and talented, supportive and sweet. He was the opposite of my father and of many of the men I’d dated. We fell in love quickly. I received a two-year fellowship to teach writing, and together we moved to Red Hook, Brooklyn. We adopted a feral cat from the neighborhood, whom we named Dolores, and I marveled at how adult and mostly interesting my life was. My only problem was my mother.
I began having nightmares about her committing suicide. She seemed to be drinking herself to death, but if she purposely killed herself, it would prove how miserable she was, how desperate not to be alive. I could handle the duller, drawn-out version of this truth, but the thought of seeing such clear evidence of her pain made me feel miserable, too, and scared that I might one day confront it.
Arlene and my mother’s cousin Chrissy visited her the year I began teaching. They called me the day they arrived and demanded I come to Boston.
“Do you know the state your mother is living in?” they asked.
“Yes?” I said. “No?”
“You don’t,” Chrissy said. “She had a gash on her arm that she couldn’t explain. We took her to the doctor, and they said her insurance had been canceled months ago because she hadn’t paid it. We got it reinstated, and they took care of her, but when we got back we went through her mail—months of it. Her heat’s about to be turned off!”
I explained that whenever I spoke to my mother, she seemed okay, or what okay had become for her. “She says she’s paying her bills, every time I talk to her!” I said.
“Well, she’s not,” Chrissy said.
The next day, Chrissy, Arlene, Alex, and I sat in my mom’s living room and talked through different plans: getting her an apartment, getting her into assisted living, trying another stay at Betty Ford.
When I heard my mom stirring, I went to rouse her. She was surprised to see me. “Hi,” I said. “I’m here with Alexandra because Arlene and Chrissy asked us to come to Boston. Come downstairs so we can talk.” I helped her out of the bedroom, then stood behind her as she slowly moved down the stairs. When she reached the bottom, I hoisted her up and brought her to the couch. She scanned our faces, trying to figure out what was happening.
We tried to tell her how concerned we were about her, but she kept interrupting.
“Why are we sitting here talking about depressing things?” she asked. “Chrissy, Arlene, it’s your vacation! We should be celebrating. Who wants a glass of wine?”
“We thought we were coming for a vacation,” Arlene said, “but then when we came, we realized that your life is a mess.”
My mother turned to me. “How’s graduate school, sweetheart?”
She would not agree that the house was too big for her, that it was dangerous with its steep staircases and inconvenient with a kitchen that was two floors below her bedroom. She refused to look at apartment listings. She disagreed with us about everything, but she had a hard time following conversations. She’d interrupt herself to ask what she’d been saying, or interrupt us with an unrelated topic.
When we were away from her, we wondered if she had Alzheimer’s and discussed having her rights taken away. Then we could force her to move, or have her involuntarily committed. But, we decided, that was the last resort. We knew that if we tried, she would clean up and charm the judge, and if she succeeded, she’d refuse to speak to any of us again, and we wouldn’t be able to help her at all. The idea of taking away anyone’s rights, particularly my mother’s, felt too dictatorial and final to me. Freedom had always been important to her. I’d seen how having alcohol withheld reduced her to a primal state. Having a judge say that I was no longer in control of my life would produce that reaction in me.
Alex took charge as she always did. She convinced our mom to make her coexecutor of her estate so all the bills could be in Alex’s name, and she arranged for home health care a few times a week. Since our mother wasn’t willing to move, Alex had the house safety-proofed. Rails and handles were installed in the bathroom and shower. Since reaching the kitchen, or even the front door to receive a food delivery, was so dangerous for her, a mini-fridge and microwave were placed outside her bedroom. As I listened to everything Alex was doing while also working full-time and raising kids, I felt more useless than ever.
We told her aides that it was okay to buy her alcohol when she asked for it. We didn’t want her trying to go to the store herself or falling down the stairs when she had it delivered. We wanted her to be as safe as she could be.
Her first two aides quit because taking care of her was too upsetting for them. The third stayed. Nora loved my mother despite everything she put her through, and my mother adored her in return. She would sit on my mom’s bed and listen to her talk about my father and Yuri, or Nora would share stories about her own family in Ireland. She promised to take my mother there with her if she got better. When I spoke to my mom, she’d tell me how happy she was to have a new friend, how they gabbed like schoolgirls and were planning a pizza night. But Nora’s weekly email reports were grim—some weeks my mother would only stay awake long enough to ea
t a bit of food. I felt guilty for outsourcing these responsibilities to a stranger, but I knew I couldn’t handle them myself.
My mom’s memory and cognitive skills continued to decline, and her mobility became increasingly worse. “I used to be a dancer!” she cried to me, to Nora, to her doctors when she was sober enough to show up to her appointments.
“How often do you drink, Anita?” her doctors asked.
She’d pretend to be insulted. “I haven’t had a drink in weeks!”
During one of my visits, I took my mom to see a psychiatrist, and she begged him to give her Antabuse, a drug that made you sick if you drank. He refused, explaining that he couldn’t give her a drug like that if she wasn’t also seeking treatment and actively trying not to drink. I didn’t normally speak to my mother’s doctors beyond informing them that she’d lied and had been drinking a lot. But now I asked, “You’re sure you can’t give her that drug? What about something else?” He shook his head.
Asking for the drug was the biggest effort my mother had made to stop drinking in a while, even if it was only verbal. I understood what she was hoping for: something outside of herself that would cure her problems.
The doctor told her she was having mobility problems because of her drinking. My mom told him she was only drinking because of her mobility problems, that she used to be a dancer. If you keep drinking, he said, you’re going to lose the ability to walk permanently. If you don’t kill yourself first.
My mother nodded somberly, then took my arm so I could help her out of the office. As she shuffled toward the elevator, she whispered, “He’s so condescending. What does he know about what I’ve been through?”
In December 2009, Alex asked me to spend Christmas Eve with our mother so she could have the night with her husband and sons. I agreed, happy to have the chance to do something for her and for my mother as well, whose steady decline had turned into a rapid decay.
My Dead Parents Page 10