“Of course,” I assured her. She’d been, well, my angel these last two weeks, as gross as it is to write that; my angel.
“Your father . . . ,” she began, and upon hearing that word I felt my body start to seize up. “I know we had talked about keeping this a secret from your father. Well, not necessarily a secret, but you know what I mean.”
“We didn’t want to hear his opinion,” I said. “He just doesn’t need to know.”
“I know, he doesn’t,” she agreed. “Except, when he calls me and asks how I’m doing, I don’t even know what to say to him. I mean, most of my recent life has been spent at that clinic.”
“I know,” I said, and started to feel a familiar sense of guilt.
“Heather, I know Rob is there with me when you go under, but I feel incredibly alone in all of this. The father of my baby girl has no idea what she has committed her body and mind to, what you are sacrificing. The father of my child isn’t in there watching your eyes flutter shut and your body go limp and the staff struggling to get that breathing tube down your throat. I have no idea what to say to him, because everything is not just fine.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“I don’t think you know this but I don’t sit down or stop feeling anxious or stop holding my own breath until the moment they take that tube out of your mouth and I see your chest moving up and down on its own. When I see you breathing again, it’s almost more than I can take. The relief almost knocks me out.”
“Mom, I am so sorry. You don’t have to be in the room. I hate that I am doing this to you.”
“You aren’t doing anything to me. I told you, we were going to get through this together. And I am so proud of you for taking this leap, for making such a formidable decision. You are so brave to be doing this, and I am privileged to be in that room. I want to be there.” Her voice was trembling. “I just woke up this morning and realized that watching you go through this has had such an effect on me. It’s a heavy thing; it’s a lot. But I am so happy to be in that room.”
“Of course I want you in there. And if telling Dad about this will ease any of this burden, I will gladly call him.” I laughed a bit at the thought of it. I’d be glad to call him and tell him that I had been dying every other day for the last ten days. Then, while he’s still in shock, I may as well come clean about all the lesbian porn I masturbate to.
“You’d do that? For me?” my mother asked.
“I’d do that for you, Mom,” I assured her. “I’ll call him this afternoon.”
“There’s one other thing,” she said. “Remember how we talked about your brother and sister coming and watching a treatment?”
I did remember. We’d tossed around that idea, since the depression and anxiety in our family has affected so many of the grandchildren—my nieces and nephews, my own children.
“Have you talked to them about it?” she asked. I hadn’t. I’d been silent about it all because what if it didn’t work? Then what?
Except . . . I think it had worked.
“Well, I have talked to them about it,” she said, “and both of them said they could take off of work to come with us tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Oh! That soon,” I said surprised. “Yeah, that would be amazing if they could be there.”
“Great. I’ll call them and arrange everything. We’ll probably all meet at your house and drive up together.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll call Dad in just a minute. I need to take a few deep breaths and maybe a few shots of tequila before I do.”
“Thank you,” my mother whispered on the other end. “I am so proud of you.”
“One more thing, Mom.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“I feel good. I feel different. Very different.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, I feel like laughing and spinning in circles. I kind of want to just lie down in the grass under the sun and breathe in the feeling of being alive. Does that make sense?”
“Yes, it does,” she said. “You know, I’ve been watching you this whole last week and it has felt like you were on the verge of something. There was more light in your eyes, less heaviness in your voice. And I didn’t know if it was because you were starting to feel better or if it was just because you had hope.”
“I definitely had hope,” I explained. “But some switch got flipped on Friday. Something happened. Maybe that was the magical reset that Dr. Bushnell talked about. Or maybe it was the cumulative effect of all the treatments before it. I don’t know, and I don’t really care. Something happened. My life changed on Friday. I heard music again.”
“Oh, Heather . . .” I could hear her voice verging on a cry. “I knew this would work. I know you don’t believe in prayer, but I do.” And then she was sobbing. “I knew the Lord would answer my prayers, the prayers of all of us who have been rooting for you. There are so many of us. And I truly believe that the Lord is the reason you were sitting in that doctor’s office on that specific day. He led you there. I knew this would work.”
My family and I have a mutual respect for our differing religious beliefs, theirs being in the Mormon faith, mine being in science. I’ve chosen to raise my girls without a specific religion: they both know that their father and I do not believe in a god, and yet both of them are polite and treat people with warmth and respect and they know right from wrong. They witness my extended family praying over meals and before bedtime and have attended church with them a few times, and I would have no issue at all if either of them decided to adopt the religion. It will have been their choice and theirs alone, a choice I felt like I had never been given. However, I don’t think I made that clear enough to Leta, who one night at the age of eleven said she desperately needed to talk to me about something but was afraid that I was going to be furious with her. My mind immediately rushed to something she could have googled. After she got ready for bed, we sat side by side against her headboard as she summoned the courage to talk to me. I’m certain her heart was racing as fast as mine was, and she took several deep breaths before saying a word.
“You promise you won’t be mad at me?” she finally blurted.
“Leta,” I said, and instinctively reached out to stroke her head. “Remember what I told you? You can always come to me with any concern or worry or question, and no matter what it is, I will not get mad at you. I want you to have someone to talk to. I will always listen.”
“I know. It’s just . . . promise you won’t be mad.”
My heart started pounding even harder as the list of what she could possibly have done unspooled through my head.
“I believe in God!” she almost shouted.
I blinked hard, and I kept blinking for several more seconds without saying anything. That was what she was scared to tell me?
“I know you and Dad don’t believe in God, but I do, and I have for a few months now.”
“Oh, Leta.” There was so much I wanted to say to her, but that was how I wanted to start: with her name.
“You promise you’re not mad at me?” she pleaded, and she was dead serious.
“I am not mad at you,” I promised her. “In fact, I am so happy that you told me.”
“Really? You’re not mad? But . . . I know you make fun of Mormons on your website, and—”
“I make fun of the fourteen-year-old Mormon that I was on my website. I wasn’t a fun kid. The point is, I think it’s wonderful that you believe in God.”
“You do?”
“Yes! I always wanted you to make your own decision about it,” I explained.
“Okay, but . . . there’s more,” she said.
“And what’s that?”
“Sometimes I like to pray, too.”
“You like to pray?”
“Yeah. Like, sometimes when I’m feeling anxious, it brings me comfort. It, like, calms me down.”
“Leta, I think this is all wonderful. How amazing that you have found something you can do and
connect to that brings you comfort.”
“You’re really not mad about that?”
“No! Not at all. In fact, I’d be willing to pray with you sometimes if you want me to. I was a pro at it back in the day.”
“You prayed?” She could not believe these revelations.
“I did. I was a very good Mormon when I was a Mormon. I’ll even take you to church if you want me to—”
“NO! I’m fine. I don’t need to go to church. I just want to believe in God and pray.”
I laughed with my whole body. Of all the reasons I left the church, that three-hour block of weekly boredom on Sunday mornings was very near the top.
I prayed with her that night and let her lead. She used some of the common language Mormons use in prayers, like “Please keep all of our loved ones safe” and “We thank You for our home and our health.”
“In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.”
The fact that my mother was convinced that the success of my treatment was all the Lord’s doing did not bother me. How could it? She had sacrificed so much for me in the last ten days. If she thought that her Lord and Savior had put me in the right place at the right time, I was happy with her believing it and sharing that belief with me.
Also, a switch had flipped. That’s the only way I can describe it. I was Dorothy opening the door of her house when it landed in Oz. The colors were nearly blinding.
* * *
About a half hour later, I had thrown that yellow lacrosse ball across the yard so many times I thought my arm might fall off. This dog would fetch a ball until she fell over, and even then she’d beg for you to throw it again. I let her in the side door of the house and walked to the front porch to sit in the afternoon sun.
It had worked.
I kept repeating the words in my head: It worked. It worked. I didn’t want to be dead anymore. That was all that mattered. Whatever reaction my father had would be secondary to this fact.
I found his contact on my phone and dialed his number nervously.
“Feather! Is that you?” he asked. The story goes that he wanted to name me Heather so that at the end of the day when I was out in the neighborhood playing with friends and it was time to come home for dinner, he could step outside, cup his hands around his mouth, and yell, “Come hither, Heather Hamilton!” I remember that he did this a few times, but his nickname for me, Heather Feather, is the one thing about our relationship that hasn’t ever really changed. He calls me that every time he speaks to me, and because he is my father and I am his daughter, it softens the edges of our many differences.
“Hey, Dad. It’s me. How are you guys?” I said “you guys” because I knew he would put me on speakerphone and my stepmother would hear the entire conversation. I cannot remember the last time I spoke with my father when she was not listening. I don’t have private conversations with my father, and I believe this dynamic has contributed to the distance between us.
“We’re good! It’s good to hear from you! How is everything?” I could hear my stepmother walking across the room in the background.
“The girls are great and we’re slowly getting settled into the house. I’ve got a few photos hanging up in the living room. My office is a bit of a mess, but I’ll get to that soon.”
We continued for several minutes to make small talk about the weather and my stepbrothers and their families, and then I stood up to pace around the front lawn. When we got to a natural pause in the conversation, I just blurted it out.
“I have something to tell you, something really important. This is why I called.”
“Okay,” he said. If I know anything about my father I’m confident that he straightened his back to take in the news. “What’s up, daughter of mine?”
“I’m telling you this at Mom’s urging, mostly, because she’s carrying a lot right now. And it doesn’t feel right to make her carry it all.”
“Okay. What is she carrying?”
“So, basically . . . I think you might have some idea about how depressed I’ve been over the last year or so, right?” I asked, expecting him to have no idea whatsoever.
“Well, now, I know your job has been hard on you. We’ve talked a bit about that. Is there more to it than your job?”
“Yeah, it’s my job and all that training I did for the marathon and my diet and the ongoing, relentless pace of taking care of two kids alone. I haven’t had a very good year.”
“I didn’t realize it was that bad, darlin’.” He’s lived in Utah for over a decade and yet, like every other person in my family, he hadn’t been able to shake the Southern drawl.
“It’s bad. Like, really, really bad. Or at least it was. It was the worst episode of depression I’ve ever experienced. Mom was probably the only one who knew the extent of it.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that. Is there something we can do for you?” he asked.
“So, hm . . . how do I put this . . . I think what I need from you right now is to let Mom talk to you about what she’s been witnessing. She feels alone because she and Rob have been taking me up to the ECT clinic for the last ten days or so to go through an experimental treatment.”
“ECT?” he asked gravely. “You mean electroshock therapy?”
“I’m not getting electroshock therapy, Dad. No. This treatment is being conducted at the same clinic is all.”
“Oh, wow. Wow. Okay, so tell me about it.”
I laid it all out in very basic terms. I used harmless language so as not to alarm him any more than he already was. But when I finally got to the part about the breathing tube, I found myself becoming firm.
“I don’t know what happens when I am out. I have no clue. I’m awake and then suddenly I’m in another room waking up from the anesthesia, saying crazy things and sometimes berating strangers. I have no idea what goes on when I’m under. But Mom is in there the whole time watching this happen, and some of it is unsettling for her. Some of it is devastating, even. But I will let her tell you about it. I mean, I have no idea what she’s seeing. I just know that this has been really hard on her.”
My stepmother piped up in the background. “What made you decide that this was safe? I mean, how many people have done this?”
“I am only the third participant. Two have gone before me, and according to my doctor both of them reacted well to the treatment.”
“But what made you decide?” she persisted.
“Like I said, I was really, really depressed. I guess I thought that nothing was going help. I didn’t think I would ever be able to climb out of it; that’s what scared me most. I once told Mom that it felt like the nervous breakdown from which I would never recover. The idea of this treatment was far less scary than thinking I was going to feel like that for the rest of my life. Plus, I trust my doctor. He’s the smartest man I know and has revolutionized ECT. He assured me that I’d be safe.”
There was a long, uncomfortable pause in the conversation.
“My kids deserve to have a happy mom,” I added. “I know it may seem to you like it’s too big of a risk in terms of them, but I chose to do it for them.”
“Well, do you think it’s gonna work?” she asked.
At the risk of sounding unnecessarily harsh and completely unfair, I didn’t think that they deserved to know just yet. They hadn’t been in that room. They hadn’t driven me up the winding streets to the clinic and sat with me as I filled out forms and battled 22-gauge needles. They had not witnessed what my mother witnessed when my brain would go down so hard and so fast that the assembled crew had to struggle with my limp body. They had never battled lingering, incapacitating feelings of sadness and not understanding that sadness, just knowing that they wanted that sadness to end.
“I’m hopeful,” I said.
“Well, okay. If you say so!” she said, and chuckled.
“Feather, thanks for telling us all this. It’s a lot,” my father said, taking back control of the conversation. “I’ll talk to your mother, probably today or tomo
rrow.”
He would call my mother that evening and listen to her describe the last ten days of her life, perhaps the most harrowing she’d lived through in recent memory. He didn’t offer much insight—how could he?—and told her that he was sorry she felt like she was going through this alone. I don’t think my father remembers cornering me in my room or yelling at my brother or any of the comments he made about a woman’s body in front of me or my sister. I don’t think he knows just how much my fear of his temper shaped my life. I used to think that our relationship would transform when I had my own kids because my dad loves babies, but that didn’t ever really happen. He doesn’t spend much time with my girls, and while my girls don’t mind spending time with him, they just don’t see him very often. Most of what we share revolves around practical things he knows about and can advise me on, like financial planning and relationships with employees and bosses and where to do research when I’m shopping for a major purchase.
This has always been somewhat fine with me, our dynamic, our relationship. After my parents divorced, he moved several miles down the road and I lived with my mother 100 percent of the time. She was the one who influenced my transformative years, and so a father figure to me is someone who shows up to a volleyball game and a choir concert and occasionally dispenses advice on how to save money and open a checking account. I love him dearly—I have always loved him dearly—and I do have fond memories of him from my childhood that mostly include the hysterical way he could imitate Donald Duck. I remember riding on his shoulders as we walked through the neighborhood so that I could reach up and touch the leaves of trees. I remember when he would dress me for church in a T-shirt printed to look like a prison uniform to make my mom laugh. He taught me to be kind to strangers and smile at every person working the checkout line at the grocery store and why a good credit score is important. He truly has given me so much.
But, sadly, he is not someone I would ever call if I were in a crisis. I would not think to dial his number if I got a flat tire on the freeway and had run out of options. In fact, the day before we moved houses, before I had started treatment, I dropped the girls off at piano lessons and then ran back home to load up the car. There were some things I wanted to move into the house myself, things I didn’t want misplaced or mishandled by a team of movers who would not understand their value. After packing the back seats full, I climbed into the driver’s seat to turn on the car and race back to pick up the girls, but my car would not start. That house sat across town from the piano teacher’s home, and there I was, stuck in a hybrid vehicle with an engine that wouldn’t turn over. I had no idea what I was going to do. I called my mother and did what I had been doing for over nine months: I started screaming, which always goes over well and fixes everything.
The Valedictorian of Being Dead Page 15