River of Time

by Naomi Judd

  As Dr. Mona Lisa read the side effects, I could check almost every one: severe insomnia, weight gain of twenty pounds, hair loss, memory loss, fatigue, blurred vision, constipation, and loss of libido. The side effect that really caught my ear was “hostility events.” The only emotions I felt anymore were despair and anger. The Naomi my dear friend Dr. Lisa knew, the woman who loved humor, humanity, physics, learning about genetics, and hearing about the latest findings in neuroscience and healing techniques, was now a woman who would probably be kicked off an airplane for her foul mouth.

  My husband, Larry, would cringe at my crude language as he watched me spiral down day by day. The genteel lady who used to walk out of movies that were too risqué or used foul language now yelled obscenities at the least little provocation. I’d make fun of people I didn’t even know. I’d make disparaging remarks about someone taking my parking space and then feel mortified I had expressed those thoughts out loud. I couldn’t explain why. It was almost as if a rebellious and infuriated teenager had taken over my mind. This gave me one more reason to stay at home, in familiar company. The rage that was right under the surface at any given moment was a complete 180 from who I had always been: happy, thoughtful of others, and tolerant.

  Dr. Mona Lisa left Franklin to return to her practice in Maine, vowing to be there for me, and making me promise that I would keep her updated on my treatments. She advised me to look into finding a different psychiatrist locally. What I learned from Dr. Mona Lisa’s well-educated perspective is that my depression and anxiety was a very delicate balancing act to treat, one that was so complicated it might take some time to resolve. A structured intense therapy would help with the psychological and social aspects of depression, but the biological changes were beyond my control.

  Depression has a profound affect on the neurotransmitters. Only in recent years have there been intensive studies of the biology of depression, but what researchers already know is that a reduction in dopamine and serotonin, the “happy chemical” in your brain, and norepinephrine, a hormone released by the sympathetic nervous system, which controls our “fight or flight” response, is common with depression. Depression and anxiety go hand in hand with high levels of stress hormones, which can have a variety of negative effects on a person’s biology, especially the adrenal glands. Even though none of this was good news, I was at least grateful to have some information. I knew there had to be some logical reason I was finding myself in such a dark and scary place.

  I was reminded of the healing aspect of having a doctor who can take the time to listen first, give helpful information, and have a respectful dialogue with the patient. Dr. Mona Lisa told me that most doctors listen to their patients only for an average of nineteen seconds before interrupting and diagnosing. As an RN, I had observed this, too. If your doctor doesn’t have time to listen to you, then you are not being served; you’re being serviced, like a car that gets another oil change and is sent out the door. No mechanic cares about a car’s feelings. They just fix what they think needs to be fixed. That shouldn’t be true of your doctor. Ever.

  Before the depression had descended on me in full, I had signed on to play the character role of Rita in a Hallmark Christmas movie Window Wonderland, which was to be shot in Vancouver in early 2013. I had not given it much thought because I was certain that I would be back to feeling like myself long before a full year and three months had gone by. But, the truth is, I was feeling worse than ever. I’ve never been one to neglect a commitment, even though I was concerned about being able to keep up mentally and physically on the movie set. Airline tickets were arranged and I packed for my acting job. Usually I would be thrilled to be spending time on a movie set, but I worried that my professional peers would be able to see that I was struggling with major depression and anxiety.

  Each day I arrived on the set with my lines learned and a big smile on my face. I would spend an hour or two with the makeup and hair crew as they got me ready to be on camera. They would hug me and tell me jokes and stories about their lives and by the time my makeup was on, I would feel uplifted enough to get through the rigorous day. It reminded me of how crucial social and physical contact is to our sense of well-being. I don’t think they had any idea how much I counted on their supportive chats and lighthearted humor to jump-start my day. I began to feel a confidence and a sense of belonging.

  There was an unexpected upswing to my state of mind, which I noticed about three days into the filming schedule. I had something to look forward to, a distraction that gave my tumultuous mind a reprieve from unbearable depression and loneliness. I definitely wasn’t back to feeling like myself, but luckily for me I didn’t have to play myself. Being able to step into a role and become a woman named Rita for those three weeks was a calming respite. Pretending to have a different life, even for a day, was like being in the still eye of the emotional hurricane that was ravaging my mind. While I was in character, I could let go of Naomi and all the issues that came along with being me. I would flip a switch and not think about anything except the fun part I was playing.

  At night, in my hotel room, I would think about the scenes we had shot that day and review my lines for the next day. Then I would go to sleep early. It was interesting to observe that I slept peacefully all night with no panic attacks. Being on location for filming, alongside an enthusiastic cast and crew and the “family vibe” on a set, gave me the same comforting, secure feeling as being on tour.

  However, like a tour, filming a movie also comes to an end. It was a rude awakening to go back to having no character to escape into every day. Once again, on the plane ride home, I found myself fighting back the tears. I scolded myself with harsh thoughts: Naomi Judd, what is so wrong with your everyday life that you dread going home? The only answer I could come up with is that there was nothing wrong with my very fortunate world, there was only something wrong with my brain.

  I was lost to myself. I had re-created and reinvented myself from the time I left Ashland at age eighteen. I had figured out who and what I needed to become to survive. I had become very good at doing that. I didn’t stop to look back, because I didn’t have time to do so. Stopping would have meant starving, or being put out on the street. I had to take care of my two daughters and myself. Whatever hurt me, including most of my childhood, was squashed down under the surface, locked away where it couldn’t damage my chances of survival. But now, with nothing but time on my hands, my past trauma was back with an agenda.

  The Naomi Ellen Judd who was emerging from the background of a life full of disappointments and tragedies was determined to take center stage and speak her mind. Naomi Judd the superstar would have to settle for a back-row seat in the audience. But I wasn’t ready to switch places. The stubborn optimism that had carried me through thick and thin didn’t want to listen to the frightened and abandoned young girl I had long left behind. I had worked too hard to build a world for myself. All I knew was that I had to find a permanent solution to get back to a healthy frame of mind, ignoring the fact that my world was still spinning out of my control.

  Not only was I trying to contain a brewing rage from my childhood and young adult years, which I had never resolved. I also had yet to come to terms with my current life and the fears I had about my ongoing lack of connection with Wynonna. I felt that our relationship was getting more and more distant by the day. She was unaware of my struggles with depression and continued to focus on her new marriage and the formation of her new band and a huge remodeling project on her house. How could she have any idea of what I was going through, since I wasn’t telling her? When we had toured together, we were always in sync in terms of knowing the other’s emotions, the good ones as well as those of sorrow, frustration, and worry. I thought that our lifelong symbiotic relationship would override any differences we had at the end of the Encore tour. Why wouldn’t she intuitively know that I was spiraling downward emotionally and reach out to me? As the months went by, I grew increasingly lonely for a connection with h
er. No one else could fill that space for me. But I was caught between an unresolvable rock and a hard place. As her mother, I didn’t want to appear weak and vulnerable, but I still wanted my daughter’s emotional support. There had been a time when we could practically read each other’s minds; not so much now.

  Once I returned home from filming the Hallmark movie, I struggled to stay afloat, like a bug that has fallen into a bucket of rainwater. But like the bug in the pail, I just treaded water, going around and around in circles, not getting anywhere, and sensing that I would soon drown in my own depression.

  I found myself unmotivated to get dressed or even prepare a meal. Larry would come and sit on the kitchen couch next to me and try to talk me into going out for dinner or a movie, but I didn’t have any interest in leaving the house.

  My dog, Maudie, who is about as close to human as a canine can get, would gaze at me with her sympathetic deep brown eyes and then rest her chin on the couch cushion near my face. She can read my mind and can tell what I want her to do without me saying a word. She has always been protective of me, but she clearly felt uneasy about what was going on. I was becoming a stranger to her. I believe that dogs can recognize human suffering and I know that is true for Maudie. I rescued her as a scrubby, red-coated, mutt puppy in a large litter, but throughout these years of depression she has returned that favor a million times. She became my “therapy dog.” She loves me unconditionally. Maudie rescued me on many dark days by staying nearby, like a four-legged guardian angel.

  Everything started to bother me now that I was home, and, once again, an inner rage began to surface in ways that felt unpredictable and scary. Each new day was a repeat of the previous one, with me smoldering in frustration that there was nothing I could do to lift this baneful depression. I would feel another bout of strong anger coming on, but I didn’t have an outlet for it. Often I would go up into the bedroom, shut the door, and punch pillows.

  One afternoon, I had so much restless despair about my situation, I could no longer languish on the couch. It was gray and dull outside and I felt closed in and forgotten. Larry had gone into his home office to work, leaving me to myself. I wanted to do something dramatic, to shake myself up.

  My body took action, getting me off the couch and upstairs. I decided to take Larry’s substantial collection of guns for a test drive. I think my brain was so overloaded with overlapping prescriptions of antidepressants, now working counterproductively. Instead of bringing me a level of calm from the storm, they brought on a rage like I had never felt before. I had to let it out somewhere and somehow. I opened the safe and packed a duffel bag with the guns and ammunition, including the guns with clips. Then I slung it over my shoulder, snuck out the back door, and walked into our valley. My feet slid precariously beneath me on the damp earth and mud began to cake around the edges of my slippers. I almost laughed out loud thinking about what I must have looked like: a woman in her silk pajamas and an orange hunting cap, treading awkwardly down a slippery grass slope, with a bag of loaded firearms.

  A rotted tree had become uprooted during the winter and had fallen over, resting heavy against a nearby living tree. It seemed to represent how I felt about myself: no longer grounded in her true self and slowly dying, rotting from the inside out.

  I set the duffel bag on the ground and took out a Ruger 357. I fired all six of the bullets into the dead tree. The sound of the gun discharging carried me out of my own thoughts and made my heartbeat quicken. The noise made my brain feel like it was snapping awake and I felt truly alert for the first time in a year. When the first gun was out of ammunition, I took another out of the bag and repeated the process. The dead tree shook with the force of the bullets, but never fell to the ground. The branches of the live tree held it upright despite the barrage that should have toppled it. By the time I got to the fourth gun, Larry came racing over the crest of the valley. We allow hunters on our property at certain times of the year, but he suddenly realized that the noise on our property was not coming from a regular hunter. He took the gun slowly from my hands and gently led me back up to the house. We walked in silence. I think he knew that words weren’t necessary. He only held his arm around my waist, like the strong tree, keeping me from collapsing to the ground.

  Larry decided, without consulting me, to hide all the guns following this incident. What he didn’t know was that, days before, I had put a small Ruger in the toe of a boot in my closet. I wanted to have options when I was certain I couldn’t go on one more day. I had the bridge, the gun, and enough pills stockpiled to get out of pain for good. I still thought about it every single day.

  When Larry and I went to bed that night, I warned him that I didn’t know how much lower I could possibly go and that I was sorry and felt so guilty for putting him through this miserable time. He had unselfishly stayed by my side supporting me through my three years of recovering from hepatitis C.

  He told me that helping me through that physical illness was easier than seeing my mental and emotional pain. He confided that he didn’t feel as powerless then, because we had the diagnosis and we could take actual steps to help heal my ailing liver. The brain is a different story, the most mysterious part of the body. I know we both felt that finding an antidepressant that would finally help me was the only hope.

  In April 2013, Larry sat on the edge of our bed and delivered the news that our neighbor and my country music hero George Jones had died. To me George was the true king of country music. When I was a starving nursing student in Marin County, California, I saved my change in the corner of my top dresser drawer. When I read in the paper that George Jones was performing nearby, I dug out the change to buy tickets for Wynonna and me. We sat in awe of this country music icon, listening to his distinctive voice glide from tenor to baritone and back. No one could sing of heartbreak and hardships like George. To this day, I think his talent surpasses any male country singer who ever lived. He would never have agreed because he was extremely humble.

  Years after attending that concert, following an awards show, when the Judds were new to the country music scene, he invited me to visit him on his tour bus. Here was this rather crotchety and gruff man who was cuddling a tiny, pure white Maltese puppy that he wanted to show off. He had named her Star. Seeing him with that little dog, I gained an even deeper admiration for George and we became friends.

  He didn’t give two hoots about the accolades or awards. His only passion was to sing. He was certainly not an easy person to be around, but he was an authentic one. The news of his death devastated me. I felt as if any interest I had in country music might go to the grave with George.

  I pulled the covers up and turned over. I didn’t get out of bed that day. I didn’t eat a single thing and I drank very little water. I didn’t get out of bed the next day, either. Or, for the next five days. I didn’t bathe, brush my teeth, or change my pajamas. I had no idea if it was day or night or how many days had passed. Larry tried to encourage me often to eat something, to sit up and watch a TV show. I waved him away, refusing the protein smoothies he brought to my bedside.

  Larry told me I had been asked to speak at George’s memorial service. That was impossible. I was slowly becoming incoherent. I wanted to fall asleep and never wake up again. At one point, I started to hallucinate, seeing flashes of painfully bright light or dark figures approaching from my peripheral vision. I saw my brother, Brian, and then later, my Daddy. I wanted to see them both again. I was certain they had come to visit because I was near death.

  As I squinted toward the blinding light in the corner of the bedroom, trying to determine if I was hallucinating, I thought about the last days of my father’s life in 1984. He had received a kidney transplant a year earlier but it failed rapidly. His body was rejecting the donated organ. I went to his hospital bedside in Lexington, Kentucky, but he was already going in and out of a coma. I wasn’t certain if he recognized me, or knew I was there. My heart was aching. There was so much that had been left unsaid between us, for
so many years. I wanted to bury my face in his shoulder and weep. I wanted Daddy to wrap his arms around me. I doubt he could have ever verbalized what was in his heart.

  Daddy, like Mother, was a product of cold and distant parents. His father, Ogden Judd, never gave him any signs of affection and so my daddy had no experience of how he could show that he cared about any of us, although I know he did. He adored his granddaughters, Wy and Ashley, but his way of letting them know that he cared was to take out his wallet and hand them each a crisp twenty-dollar bill.

  A couple of days before he passed away, I was sitting at the foot of his bed when his eyes slowly opened and he turned his head toward me. His final words to me were, “Honey, you look like a beautiful princess, sitting on a white horse.” For that one moment in time I got to be a “Daddy’s girl” again. I had wanted nothing more than to be his princess throughout my childhood. His opinion mattered more to me than anyone else’s. He could uplift me with a nod of approval and devastate me with a frown. Most of what I tried to accomplish was in the hope that Daddy would feel proud I was his daughter. I tried so hard to carry the Judd banner with pride. I was hoping for a final connection that would heal the distance that had grown between us. As the Judds, Wy and I were starting to gain increasing popularity in the music industry. I wish that he had lived long enough to see our hometown of Ashland rename a public area the “Judd Plaza.”

  On the day of my father’s funeral, Wy and I had to perform in Memphis. We were under contract and it was a sold-out venue. As soon as the funeral was over, we had to jump on our tour bus and hit the road to make our gig. I never had time to grieve for Daddy. That sorrow stayed unprocessed, shoved down into my subconscious, for years and years. But, like other memories, it was coming back to break my already grieving heart.