To Love and Let Go

by Rachel Brathen

  Olivia and Daniella and I are lying on the beach one morning after breakfast. The sun is still rising, it’s early and not too hot yet. We’re discussing whether we should order fruit salads or some smoothies and I’m listening to Olivia speak when I hear my phone go off. A message has come in through WhatsApp. I had been speaking to Dennis and checking in about his day—in a few days he is coming to meet me all the way from Aruba—so I assume it’s him. A minute or so passes and I’m still listening to the conversation, but something is left lingering in my mind about that message. I suddenly get a bad feeling; is Dennis okay? I excuse myself and get my phone from my beach bag. I don’t have to unlock it to read the message. It’s from my mom. Seeing it freezes my blood to ice in a split second. As I begin reading, time seems to stop.

  Darling, I am so sorry that I didn’t make it. I have tried but I can’t do this anymore. Please promise me you will take care of Hedda and Maia for me. I love you so much. I’m sorry. Mom.

  I am so sorry that I didn’t make it. I knew what that meant. I feel faint. Olivia and Daniella see my expression. “What’s happening? . . . What’s going on?” I can’t speak. I call my mom’s number. No answer. I call again. No answer. I call and I call and I call. There is no answer. She is not answering. I stand up. The panic I feel inside of my chest is so vast, it makes all the panic I have ever experienced all throughout the past year fade in comparison. I’m having an out-of-body experience. I call and I call and I call again. She is not picking up. I fear my chest is going to burst from panic. I don’t know who else to call. My mother might have just committed suicide and I am a twelve-hour flight away. My sister Hedda is in the south of Sweden, where she is attending art school. Maia still lives at home with my mom. I call her. She picks up on the first ring. Her voice sounds happy and casual. I hear her friends in the background. She obviously doesn’t know anything, and I don’t want her to know the gravity of the situation. I love her so much, I think to myself. I have to pull this off. She can’t know.

  I force myself to sound natural, as if I’m just calling to check in. “Hey, honey, it’s me,” I say. My voice sounds normal. I’m pulling it off. I can see myself from the outside looking in. I’m in Thailand standing on a beach, calling my thirteen-year-old sister in Sweden to see if she knows that maybe our mother has committed suicide. The situation is so absurd I can’t wrap my head around the fact that it’s actually happening. “Hey! How is Thailand?” she asks. She sounds so happy. “It’s great,” I say. “Hey, have you seen Mom today?” I ask. “Yes,” Maia says. “We had breakfast this morning. Why? Is everything okay?” “Yes, everything is fine,” I say. “I just need to talk to her. Everything is good.” “Okay,” Maia says. “I’m hanging out with some friends. Should I tell her to call you when I’m home?” “Sure,” I say. “By the way, when you saw her this morning, how was she?” Maia becomes quiet on the other end. “Sad,” she says. “You know how she is. She made pancakes but she was sad.” “How sad?” I ask. “Really sad. Crying. But she said it was okay that I went to see my friends.” Maia sounds worried suddenly, maybe wondering if she’s done something wrong. “Are you sure everything is okay?” she asks. “Everything is fine!” I say. “You have fun. I’ll call you later.”

  We hang up. I call my mom again. Still no answer. I’m panicking now. I don’t know who else to call so I call David. We haven’t spoken since before the divorce. He picks up on the second ring. “Rachel,” he says. “How are—” I cut him off. “David,” I say. “Something is happening. I need you to listen to me very carefully. Mom has done something to herself. I don’t know what it is or how bad it is but I need you to go over there right now.” His voice sounds flat on the other end of the line. He doesn’t believe me. “Rachel—your mom and I are divorced now, I’m at work, you can’t just—” I cut him off. “Now. You need to go now.” My voice is trembling. People are looking at me on the beach. I’m almost screaming. Something in my voice tells him it’s real. “Okay. I’m on my way.” “Call the ambulance,” I say. We hang up. He works close by and I pray he was at the office and that he’ll get there quickly. It’s bad. I know it. This time, it’s bad. It’s real. I call her again. No answer. A few minutes later my phone rings. It’s David. “I’m here,” he says. “I’m at the door. She is not answering the door or picking up her phone. Maybe she’s not home?” “She’s home,” I say. My voice is calm. I become acutely aware of the fact that I’m the only one who knows that something is really wrong. I am the only one in the world who knows what is happening and I’m powerless. I have to convince him. “Shama!” He calls her name. I hear him banging on the door. “If you’re in there, open the door.” Silence follows. “You have to get a locksmith. Get them to take the door down,” I say. “I don’t know, Rachel . . . She changed the locks after I moved out. Maybe she is out? You need to calm down.” “She is not out!” I say. “She is there.” I’m convinced. “Look through the mailbox. Do you see anything?” He is quiet for a while. “I see her shoes. Wait, Henry is here!” Henry is my mom’s dog. She takes him everywhere. “Wait. I . . . I see her purse. Her purse is here. And her keys. And Henry. She is inside. Shama! Open the door!” I hear it in his voice now, he knows she is in there. I’m not alone anymore. “Call the locksmith. Do it now.” He hangs up. An eternity passes. I walk out into the ocean. The water reaches to my knees. I hold my phone to my chest. None of this is happening, but I know it is. I’m in the ocean. The water is warm. I look up—white clouds are passing by the bluest sky. My mom might be dead, I think. My mom might be dead. My mom might be dead. I let that reality sink in and I see the entire world changing around me. I float out of my body, all the way up into the sky. I see myself in a world where my mom is dead, where this time she succeeded. Where this time she takes her own life. From above I see myself, standing in the ocean in my orange bikini. I look so young, almost like a child. My blond hair reaches almost all the way down to my waist. I’m clutching my phone, willing it to ring. My mom might be dead. If it weren’t for everything that’s happened in the past year, I wouldn’t have let myself grasp the gravity of what might be my new reality. But in this life, in my life, I know that lightning doesn’t only strike once. It strikes twice. Three times. Maybe even a fourth. My mom might be dead. I won’t be able to live without her. It’s not a thought but a knowing. Even though I’ve spent my whole life fearing it, life without my mother is completely unimaginable. If she’s dead, I’ll die. She has to live. I’m willing her to live.

  A lifetime passes before David calls back, but in reality it’s maybe ten minutes. When I pick up the phone he is crying and talking to someone else. “She is inside. My ex-wife. I don’t know, she might have done something, I’m worried . . . Her daughter is on the phone, she is in Thailand.” I hear other people in the background. They are tearing the door down. “The ambulance is here,” he says. “And the locksmith. We are almost in.” I hear a shuffle of people on the other line. A loud bang, people yelling. David is sobbing now. “Shama!” he says. “Shama!” His voice has cracked. “We’re inside,” he tells me. “I see her. I see her. She is here. She is on the bed. She’s here. She’s unconscious.”

  I stay on the line until they have loaded her into the ambulance. He hangs up.

  I fall to my knees.

  I don’t remember how I got back to the hotel room but I am sitting there with Olivia and Daniella when David calls again. “She’s alive,” he says. I choke on my tears because the relief is so sudden. They get stuck halfway up my throat and just sit there. I cry and I scream but there is no sound. It’s all silent. It’s relief but it’s all-consuming pain because I can’t fucking believe that this is happening. Olivia and Daniella hold me. “She’s in intensive care,” David says. “How did she do it?” I ask, but I already know. “Half a bottle of vodka and an entire bottle of pills,” he says. “It was close. It was really close.” David isn’t crying anymore. “I can’t be here,” he says. “I can’t deal with this. These past months . . . you hav
e no idea. I have to go.”

  I understand. This is not his problem now. They aren’t married anymore. He doesn’t want to touch this with a ten-foot pole. “Your aunts are on their way. When they get here, I’m leaving.” “Thanks for breaking the door in,” I say. “Thank you for making me,” he answers. “I’m sorry.” The line goes dead.

  The next call is from my mother’s sister Stina. She sounds weary. “She is sedated but stable,” she says. “We are here. We’re not leaving. Who is going to tell the girls?”

  “I’ll tell them,” I say.

  The only thing worse than having to tell my siblings our mother just tried to commit suicide is the thought of someone else doing it.

  I call Maia first. “What is going on?” she asks. “Mom hasn’t picked up the phone all day.” Maia says she is at her best friend Nike’s house. I am glad she is there. I’d been worried that maybe she had gone home during the day to find the door shattered and remnants of pills and alcohol.

  “I have to tell you something,” I say. “Everything is okay, but Mom tried to kill herself today. She is okay—she is alive—but she is in the hospital . . . It has nothing to do with you, nothing to do with us . . .” I say these things, I try to soften the blow, but I know it’s all a lie. How can you try to commit suicide when you have children waiting for you at home? Of course it has something to do with us. She’s our mother. It has everything to do with us, but I don’t want Maia to feel like this is her fault. I don’t want her to live with my guilt. I don’t want her to think what I know she is already thinking: Mom was crying into the pancakes this morning. I shouldn’t have left. I shouldn’t have gone to meet my friends. Of course she should have gone to be with her friends! Because our mother is a grown-up and we should be able to have a normal fucking day without worrying about her dying.

  I tell Maia all those things—Mom is sick; she loves us; she is going to get better—at the same time thinking it is all bullshit.

  Maia is quietly crying. Tears burn like acid down my cheeks.

  “Stina and Lisa are going to call you,” I say.

  Maia would have to stay with her father. She hadn’t seen him in months, but she had to stay somewhere. No one knows how long Mom would be committed.

  I call Hedda next. Might as well rip off all the Band-Aids at once. I know it won’t be an easy call. Hedda was always a sensitive child. Right now, she is probably the one who is closest with Mom. Sometimes she would spend a whole day on FaceTime with my mom so she didn’t have to be alone. She answers right away.

  “Hey, honey,” I say.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks.

  “Are you with someone?” I ask. I worry she is going to have an anxiety attack and don’t want her to be alone.

  “Yes,” she says tentatively. “My roommate is here,” she says. “Tell me right away. What’s wrong?”

  I don’t want her to have to linger with uncertainty for even a second, so I tell her the news in reverse. “Mom is alive—she is okay—but she is at the hospital. She tried to commit suicide today.”

  “What?” Hedda asks, her voice soft, almost like a whisper. “She tried to what?”

  “She’s okay,” I say again. “But she tried to kill herself. She is at the hospital now. The aunts are with her.”

  Hedda stutters in disbelief. “No. I don’t believe you. She wouldn’t do that,” she says. “You’re lying. I spoke to her last night.” “I’m so sorry, honey,” I say. She begins to sob. She sounds so little. I wish I could have been there to hold her. For a long time I just listen while she cries. It is awful—the cry of a child having her whole life torn apart. She cries quietly, full of disbelief. Every sob feels like a knife twisting in my heart. Hedda and my mother had been through a lot together. Mom had been Hedda’s rock when she went through her periods of depression. She doesn’t know Mom the way I do. Mom had been stable for her. I repeat to Hedda what I told Maia, but she isn’t having it. Her sadness turns to anger. “She loves us?” she cries. “Loves us? What kind of a person tries to take their own life when they have children they love? Children who rely on them? She was just going to leave us! She doesn’t love us!”

  I don’t have any answers. Hedda is a four-hour train ride from Mom. “Do you want to go up to Stockholm to be with her?” I ask. “I can buy you a ticket.”

  “Why would I want that?” she asks. “Go see a mom who doesn’t want me? Who abandoned us? Who only cares about herself? No thank you!”

  She asks about Maia. Her concern for her little sister makes my heart break even more. “She is okay,” I say. “She’s going to her dad’s house. Call her. Maybe it’s good that you guys talk.”

  I have one call left to make. My brother, Ludvig, is two years younger than me and he’d lived in LA for most of his adult life. He and our mother are close—as close as you can be when you live a thousand miles apart. We’d been through this before together—when we were little kids. He knew this pain.

  I punch in his number on my cell phone and it goes to voice mail. What was I thinking? California was fourteen hours behind Thailand. It is the middle of the night there. The call would have to wait.

  The second I hang up, my phone rings. Hedda is on the other end and she is wailing. She can’t talk. I am thousands of miles away—I wish I could will myself to be there with her, to be able to take her in my arms. But all I have is the phone. “Breathe,” I say. “Breathe.” I guide her the way I did my students. “Come back to the body,” I say, trying to soothe her. “Inhale. Exhale.”

  It takes a good ten minutes for her to calm down enough to be coherent. We stay on the phone while she walks to the school nurse’s office. When we hang up, I turn to the ocean and scream.

  It was late afternoon in Thailand when Ludvig returned my call. He greeted me joyfully. “Sis! What’s up! How is Thailand?” I got right to the point. “I have to tell you something,” I said. “Mom tried to commit suicide. She didn’t succeed. She’s at the hospital. She’s okay, physically. Mentally . . . I don’t know.”

  Sitting with my brother’s silence was more than I could bear. I didn’t know what to do so I kept talking. He said nothing. I told him the whole story, starting with Mom’s text to me—except I lied and said she’d included his name. She hadn’t. Her text didn’t say, “Take care of Hedda and Maia and Ludvig.” She didn’t mention him in what she must have thought were her final words to her children. In my mother’s world, I was the caretaker, the one who rescued, and Hedda and Maia would need to be cared for if she died. I lied to Ludvig because, to me, not being mentioned seemed worse.

  Ludvig was crying now. “Are you going home?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “You?”

  “No,” he said.

  When Ludvig and I wrapped up our call, I was so tired I had to lie on the floor.

  I checked in with my aunts every day. Mom didn’t want to talk to me. She was too sedated to talk, they said, but I knew better. My mother was like a child. She was too ashamed to talk to me.

  On the third day after her attempt, she was moved from intensive care to the psych ward. My aunt called to tell me. “Do you want to talk to her?” she asked.

  Yes, I wanted to talk to her. I wanted her to tell me she was sorry and ask if I was okay so that I could tell her that “No I am not fucking okay. My mother tried to commit suicide, and even though she didn’t die, in a way it’s like she did. She left me. Again. I am all alone. I am not okay I will never be okay after this.” I didn’t say any of that.

  Mom’s voice sounded like someone else’s. It was hoarse, like she’d smoked too many cigarettes. The hoarseness was from the tube they had jammed down her throat to pump her stomach.

  “Rachel?” she said. “Are you there?”

  “Yes,” I said, trying to hold back tears. Hearing her voice was a huge relief—it was like a part of me hadn’t fully believed that she was actually alive. I had saved her life. I knew she was in pain. I knew that no matter how hard I tried, I would never be
able to put myself in her shoes. I had never known despair that intense, suffering so deep that it made me want to leave this life. I should have felt sorry for her but I didn’t. I was tired of feeling sorry for her, of worrying about her. I wanted her to worry about me now. I was her daughter and she was my mother—not the other way around. I wanted her to tell me she loved me, that she was sorry, that she was never going to leave me again.

  “Where is David?” she said instead. It was like she’d slapped me hard in the face.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Where is David? Have you spoken to him? He isn’t here. He isn’t at the hospital.”

  I could scream into the phone and you wouldn’t hear me, I thought. I didn’t exist to her.

  “Can you believe that I’m at the hospital and David still hasn’t come?” she asked, sounding distraught.

  “I don’t know why David hasn’t come, Mom,” I said. “I’m in Thailand, remember?”

  “Oh. Right,” she said. “I have to go now.”

  My aunt got on the phone.

  “Has she even asked about us?” I asked. “Has she asked if we are okay? Even once?”

  Stina didn’t answer the questions. “She is very confused,” she said. “This has triggered something deep within her. You know this is not about David. It’s about her pain. She loves you. More than anything.”

  I felt sick. “She has a funny way of showing it,” I said.

  Stina tried to comfort me, but her effort was in vain. My mother had tried to commit suicide, and after saving her life, and three days of silence, I finally got to talk to her and what did she say? She asked about David. She didn’t ask about me, or my siblings, or whether we were okay or safe. The only thing that mattered to her was that David wasn’t there.