My God, the crying. So much crying. I couldn’t help but sit there and weep thinking about the struggle she had been through, the phone calls and text messages from her kids that probably resembled the phone calls and text messages from me to my mother. The same phone calls and text messages I am certain to receive from my own children.
“What you are going through is so sacred, Heather,” my mom repeated. “To be in that room with you, to witness your bravery . . .”
“Is that what you really feel?” I asked through my tears. I did not feel brave. I felt like this was something I had to attempt, mostly for the sake of my girls. “I didn’t have a choice, Mom. I had to do this. What else was I going to do?”
“Heather,” she said and then she leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “This is experimental. Read a description of what you’re going through from the perspective of someone like your father.” She had a point. “Your brother was mostly silent the whole time, too, although he did talk to Dr. Tadler a bit. You know what Dr. Tadler told Ranger?”
“Did he talk about the abyss?”
“He did, yes. But at one point he pointed to the monitor and said, ‘See this point? About 40? When we take a patient’s brain to here we can cut ’em.’ ”
“ ‘We can cut ’em’?” I was confused.
“Surgery. When anesthesiologists get a patient’s brain activity to that point, they can start cutting the body open. They’re down far enough not to feel anything. And then he pointed to the bottom of the monitor and said, ‘We are taking her all the way down.’ When he put it like that, all of us gasped. We all knew, of course, but your brother put his hand over his mouth and shook his head in disbelief: the difference in what they do in surgery, and then what they are doing to you.”
I pulled one of my giant throw pillows into my lap and hugged it like a teddy bear. What I was willing to do so that I could stop wanting to be dead. Period. I didn’t want to feel that way, so desperately. I did not want to feel that way, and so I was willing to try or do anything. How is that brave? Is desperation brave?
“I was so desperate, Mom. You know how desperate I was.”
“Yes, but you held on. You held on. You didn’t give up. You didn’t give in to this. You are a fighter and you came through.”
“I did come through,” I said as confirmation, for her and for myself. I had lived in an abyss for over eighteen months, and the abyss had brought me out of it. It had worked.
Later that night I put Marlo to bed. I have sung her the same four songs every night of her life after she reads and we turn off the lights—“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” a verse from “The Little Drummer Boy,” and a verse from “You Are My Sunshine”—and will continue to do so until she doesn’t want me to sing to her anymore. When she is with her father, he does not sing to her because he thinks she’s too old for that. Even if she is twenty-five years old and still finds comfort at night with my voice in her ear singing, “You make me happy, when skies are gray,” you better believe I am going to whisper-sing that line into the velvety outline of her ear until she falls safely asleep. Because I am her mother.
I turned off her light and headed upstairs from her basement bedroom to watch an episode of Felicity with Leta. This nightly ritual we share has brought me closer to my daughter than anything else in our lives. We watch an episode of a show together every night—we started with My So-Called Life and graduated to Felicity. It has sparked conversations about topics ranging from love, abortion, marriage, divorce, romance, and what it’s like to cram for finals in college. (Hint: It will destroy your ability to remember anything, especially faces and names.)
As I was walking up the stairs I got a text message. I turned on my phone to see who it was from. The rectangular white screen read “Ranger Hamilton.” I opened it and looked down to read this:
“Today was a ‘sacred’ experience for me. Seeing you lying there, completely in the 0 abyss, I have never been more proud to be your brother. You have so much courage and so much fight in you. Your experience has now taken you to places I can’t imagine. Please know that I say this next bit in total honesty—there were long-passed loved ones in the room watching over you. I felt them there and recognized them, as sure as I know I was there.”
I had to lean against the countertop to steady myself. I knew exactly who he was talking about, the one person who immediately came to mind when Dr. Bushnell initially told me about the treatment. Her name was Minnie Ann McGuire, and she was my great-grandmother, the mother of my mother’s mother. She bore nine children, two of whom died, and she spent the majority of her life in what was then referred to as a mental institution in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. My mother and her siblings have often posited that she suffered from ongoing postpartum depression that wasn’t ever able to heal because she continued to get pregnant, and the deaths of two children only compounded her sorrow.
A journal entry written by Granny Boone while Minnie was still alive reads:
“Some day I’m sure my mother’s mind will be healed and she will know the true gospel and she will be awarded according to her wonderful works in this life. The love I have for her can never be put into words on paper. When she reads this with a clear understanding may she find joy as I have found in writing it.”
Tragically, Minnie spent her final days in that mental facility and died there in 1968. The nurses told my grandmother that they loved Minnie and that she was “the sweetest patient and the easiest to manage in the ward.” Granny Boone once told one of my cousins, “Back then there were no counselors and therapists like there are today. They would just take them to Hopkinsville to the mental institution. Sometimes my mother would just sit for hours and stare. It seemed as though she was thinking. Sometimes she seemed emotionless. Other times she could be violent. At times she would lose her memory.”
I had thought in the brief moments after learning about this treatment, Will I be the one who ends up dying in a hospital? Despite the immediate hope that the promise of the treatment had given me, I remember being struck by the idea that I was the craziest of all who had descended from Minnie Ann McGuire. Of course I was. Of course it’d be me. Heather, the Fuckup.
Her legacy is why I have fought so hard to get better each time my depression has reared its unforgiving head. Because back then there were no counselors and therapists like there are today. She didn’t have access to the care and the help that I have access to, and she died long before she could ever get it. What was my eighteen months of hopelessness compared to the decades she spent locked inside an institution? All of this overcame me in that moment, especially the idea that here I was given another chance at life, and it had worked. If this long-passed loved one was in that room watching over me, I would want her to know that I think of her every time I reach for my bag of pills at night and how lucky I am to have them. Her legacy is the fight I have inside of me. Her legacy is a mother holding on for the sake of her two young girls.
SEVENTEEN
INTO THE INNER SANCTUM
I DON’T REMEMBER MUCH between the sixth and seventh treatments, only that my mother wanted to invite my father and stepmother to witness one before the study was over. Would I mind if they were in the room? I didn’t see why not, only that everyone at the clinic would think, Did she really bring an entire Southern state up here? And I need to say this without it being read as unkind: my stepmother can sometimes make unintentionally hysterical commentary during, well, always. One of my first memories of her was in their living room in Arlington, Tennessee, where I was watching an early-morning news show. She passed through the living room, saw Bryant Gumbel interviewing some movie star, and said, “You know he looks just like a bar of milk chocolate. I kind of want to eat him.” Not in jest, not with any sarcasm. It was just an observation she needed to make, out loud. I love this about her.
I was still managing to work half-time for the nonprofit that had been the source of so much of my anxiety. The day after t
he sixth treatment I saw my boss’s name on my phone and I felt a giant pang of anxiety grip the upper half of my body. The treatment had cured me of wanting to be dead, but the Pavlovian jolts of anxiety would continue to be a side effect of my depression that I’d need to learn how to manage.
When I felt that raw emotion, I immediately called my therapist to make an appointment. I needed more encouragement from an outside party to help me leave the job. Managing my anxiety would mean I’d have to learn to say no and engage in conflict and pretty much reverse certain lifelong behaviors. If I quit that job, I’d be removing the biggest stressor in my life. Intellectually, I knew this. But I had tried once before and my boss talked me out of it. If you’ll recall, I will apologize to you if you pee in my cereal because I will feel so bad that something in your life made you angry enough to do so, you poor thing. I couldn’t get an appointment to see her for a few weeks, which was fine. I needed to die four more times anyway. Never a dull minute around here.
By the time I got in for my seventh treatment, I had fasted for over eighteen hours. If I’d known we were going to have to wait an extra hour after our arrival time, I would have taken a few swigs of water a little later than I had that morning. Luckily, Molly was the phlebotomist working that particular Wednesday. Unfortunately, the anesthesiologist listed on the whiteboard was the one who had let my eyes stay open during the entire fourth procedure, and this turned my mother up to eleven. I was warning Molly that I might be super-dehydrated, given that it had been so long since I’d last had any water, while my mother worked her way through the entire staff of the clinic to make sure that everyone there knew that my eyes needed to be taped shut, even people who did not need to know.
Molly and I were laughing about the bats in my vagina when Dr. Bushnell poked his head around the corner of the room.
“I thought I heard your laugh!” he said, his face a beam of sunshine.
“Hey!” I said. Since we hadn’t yet gotten to the actual insertion of the needle, I jumped up to give him a hug, and he embraced me back.
As I sat back down, he took a seat next to the door, put his hand on his chin in a thoughtful pose, and said, “I heard you texted Dr. Mickey on Saturday. Hope you don’t mind that he shared that with me.”
“I don’t mind at all!” I blurted. “I mean, I wanted to text the entire world, but I thought I’d start with him.”
“He was happy that you reached out to him.”
“Oh? Good. I didn’t want to bother him on the weekend, but what I was feeling was just so significant that I thought he should know.”
“It’s good that you did. You know, there are no rules to this.” Then he laughed. “We’re making this whole thing up as we go along.”
“Is that right,” I said more than asked. Dr. Bushnell and I share the same sense of humor, so I had to bring him into this whole having-to-talk-about-my-sex-life nonsense. “Just so you know, I have to reveal each time during these needle intake interviews that I do not remember the last time I took my Macrobid prescription, meaning I don’t remember the last time I had sex. Now everyone here knows that I am not getting laid. This isn’t embarrassing or uncomfortable at all.”
He chuckled and I prepared for him to respond in kind. “With the way you’re glowing, Heather, I wouldn’t be surprised if you showed up next time with a phone full of unsolicited pictures of men in repose, shall we say.”
Dr. Bushnell looked over at Molly. “You see why we get along so well, yes?”
She nodded and smiled. I didn’t tell either of them that I’d actually kissed someone for the first in ages, because they wouldn’t understand the significance. I’d enjoyed being around someone, and although it technically hadn’t been a date, I didn’t want to flee. He hadn’t made me feel like I wanted to die. And here several days later the feeling of that kiss lingered, if only because it had left me feeling hopeful.
“I’ll let you get back to what you’re doing,” Dr. Bushnell said as he stood up. “I just couldn’t resist the chance to say hello when I heard you. It’s really good to see you like this.” Then he walked over and squeezed my left shoulder before he left the room.
About an hour and a half later—after the gurney and the warm blanket and the Velcro wire and the giant vial of propofol and my mother’s echoing refrain of “You are going to tape her eyes shut, yes?”—I woke up, blinked until I could focus, and exclaimed, “My mother married Satan, and when he’s here next time you’ll see exactly why she divorced him.”
And then after my mother made sure I was feeling okay, I got my name right, and confidently told the nurse that the year was 1979. We did the usual awkward dance that had at this point become a ritual, as much a part of the treatment as the anesthesia itself. The numbers unfolded in my brain and I realized, Oh, wait, it’s 2017.
As I came out of my drunken state, I turned to my stepfather, who was sitting to my left.
“Rob, I can’t believe I just said that about my father. Along with taping my eyes shut, please have them tape my mouth shut when Dad is here. Oh my God.”
“Are you kidding? I’m going to be standing right here next to you, provoking you with a cattle prod.”
Later, in the early evening, my parents left. Marlo worked through her homework with Lyndsey, and Leta practiced piano. I sat down and entered the passcode on my desktop computer. I pulled up the email account for my nonprofit job and hit the red COMPOSE button. I didn’t enter anything into the “To” or “Subject” lines and skipped directly to the body.
Hey there, I want to talk about this in person, of course, but I need to give you a heads up that I have been going through something pretty heavy and important. And it has changed the trajectory of things for me. I can continue consulting for the remainder of this month and through the end of April, but after that I need to commit to some other projects for the sake of my mental health and my family. Although you convinced me to return the last time I announced my need to depart this work I really do need to head in a different direction. You know I have loved this work and truly believe in the mission of this organization. I have loved the professionalism and camaraderie I have shared with my coworkers, and the staff you’ve amassed is well-equipped to effect the change that has to happen with regards to the welfare of animals. Thank you for letting me be a part of it. I’d love to schedule a time to sit down and talk, so let me know what works best for you.
I wanted to get some words down now that I only had three treatments left. The looming end of the study made me feel an urgency. It wasn’t a panicked or anxious urgency at all. It made me feel like I had the energy to start making the changes I needed to make. To take full advantage of the momentum of the light that I now felt on every part of my skin. I closed my eyes and immediately imagined the week ahead of me. There’s that old cliché: “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” Whenever someone points that out earnestly, I feel like mauling them with a rake. We all know today is the first day of the rest of our lives, but that doesn’t make whatever problem we were just agonizing about go away.
But what I felt right then, sitting at my desk and drafting an email to my boss giving notice—an email that would mean the end of a steady paycheck and months and years ahead of hustling to pay the bills—I felt like this was my second chance at life. It was such a glorious gift. The idea of losing that paycheck had fueled my anxiety for months, and now that thought no longer scared me. It no longer controlled me. It wasn’t even a consideration.
I would not squander this gift.
I let the draft sit overnight so that I could read it the following morning with fresh eyes. It was a Thursday. I dropped off both girls at school, making the hour-long round trip first to the middle school and then to the elementary school while listening to music, marvelous, marvelous music. Then I sat down at my desk and read through the draft. Without changing a word, I entered my boss’s email address in the “To” field and “March and April” in the “Subject” field.
; When I hit SEND I felt a rush. I hadn’t needed Mel’s backup. I had entered into conflict willingly.
This was the beginning of the rest of my life.
* * *
The following morning my father and stepmother showed up at my house about twenty minutes before we needed to head to the clinic for my eighth treatment. They hadn’t seen the house since they’d helped me move less than a month previously, and they wanted to have a look around. My mother and stepfather were already there, of course. All of my parents get along well, but we always experience an unacknowledged nervousness when all five of us are in the same room together. It stems from a fundamentally different way of looking at life. Even though all four are Mormon and staunchly conservative, my father and stepmother are more concerned about etiquette and formalities. That’s not a wrong way to approach life, it’s just different from my mother and stepfather. I don’t have to worry that my very character is being judged if Marlo farts in front of my stepfather, even if she cups her hands around her butt and pretends to catch it. I didn’t teach her this, although I wish I could take credit. If she were to do that around my father? I’d quickly rush her out of the room. When we have a holiday meal with my mother, we use paper plates. When we’re at my father’s house, we use ironed cloth napkins.
We made some small talk after they walked around and looked at each of the rooms—Marlo’s and my own in the basement, Leta’s room and my office on the ground floor just off the living room. This was by far the smallest house we had ever lived in. We once bought a 12,000-square foot house that I like to call the Beginning of the End of My Marriage, and I’m going to let you in on a secret: a big house does not bring happiness. You know what it might bring? Divorce! The smallness of this house was so surprisingly comforting that in the short time we’d been living in it Leta had declared that she’d never felt more at home. I felt exactly the same.
The Valedictorian of Being Dead Page 18