We’d joked about committing her before, but this time I could tell the conversation was serious. Lately my mother had been getting out of hand, and all three of us were afraid for her physical well being, as well as our own mental states. We decided that something finally had to be done. After years of talking about it with sarcasm and slapstick, the air of severity had begun to thicken around the subject. It was no longer funny to wag your tongue and talk gibberish like mom would claim she had done the day before at her work in a call center. Something about the computer screens and Visa balances made her tongue tied, and she would have what she called an “episode,” and have to go home early from work. This put great stress on dad who’d already had one heart attack and was working on a second. He worked two jobs because hers didn’t count as a full one. Her heart was stronger, and the irony was that with all her health issues she would probably outlive him.
We met at a Mexican restaurant. My sisters munched on the free chips and salsa and ordered water while I needed a cold cerveza to ease this meeting along. I knew where this was going before it began, but I hoped perhaps this time it would be different. That is the power of my family. We are all such good cons that we actually convince ourselves that we will get better and change along with her. I’m alone in thinking that zero contact with her will do the trick. Hoping was just a delay for denial.
“Listen, mom needs help.” Hannah was the first to bring everything back down to the table. She had a way of doing this. An unfortunate umbilical residue from my mother’s womb. Laughter at any event would be going along at a pretty good clip, and she would bring up homeless people or war refugees. We would be playing cards, joking about how mom would invite her doctors and their families on our family vacation, but Hannah found a way to turn it into something darker about mom’s own immediate family and how they never accepted mom who was just searching for others to fill that need. What about us?
“Ever since the stroke she has been spiraling further down. She won’t get off the pain patches, and she calls off work every other day,” Hannah continued her assessment with no real idea of a solution. I’m quick to correct this in my head. She did not have an actual stroke. The word is a substitution for a long drawn out conversation that I’ve seen many a former family friend glaze over during and magically drop off the face of the earth afterwards. My mother cried wolf so many times in the ER that she inadvertently put herself into a medically induced coma after aspirating stomach bile caused by a colostomy bag blockage that may or may not have existed. She developed a fever which caused hypoxia which burnt out parts of her brain. We say stroke because it’s easier, but the end results are different. Another word was thrown around, but we always avoided it: Munchhausen.
“The truth of the matter is mom does not want help. People need to want it before they can begin.” Ah, June, self-proclaimed surrogate matriarch to us all. Somewhere in our sordid history this woman became a mother of two and the glue that kept our holidays together. It meant a lot to her and to some extent the rest of us, and so she continued after mom was no longer able or willing to cook a turkey. This just gave mom more time now to lie on the couch moaning about something she ate. A Christmas tradition.
“I think we need to hold some type of intervention.” Hannah again. “We can’t commit her against her will, but perhaps she will listen to us if we sit her down and actually lay out what we see and how it is affecting us and dad.” That is the central conundrum right there, Han. Mom is not certifiable. She is not what any clinician would call crazy. But what she does wreaks havoc in our lives. How can a selfish hypochondriac be allowed to walk the streets? I agree she needs help, but I just sit and listen. I learned this when we were all in family counseling. No one spoke up, so I did. I ranted to the counselor and to my mom that no one trusted her anymore. She made things up out of thin air. Stories from my childhood changed dramatically from one day to the next. It wasn’t a mix-up of kids, they were complete fabrications. Mount Saint Helen’s did not erupt on my birthday. Not even a tremor was felt for another month. The story she told me became a story I told others, and it was false. I found out by watching a news ticker on the 28th anniversary of the event. The fireworks that, according to her, accompanied my birth never happened, and that soft insulation that all children have in thinking they are special was snuffed away. Just as well though, there wasn’t much left anyway. She lied about little things, too, and lifetimes of impressions would come to sudden and baffling ends by the simple crawl of red lights and “this day in history.”
After my harsh stab at the truth in the session everyone gasped and my mother started to cry. At the time, I still lived at home and here I had to go back in their blue Pontiac wagon. My mother already obsessed in the car as it was. She would ride in the passenger seat and flip the visor down so she could watch the cars behind her in the visor mirror. This time all she did was stare at me. She was silent until we pulled in the driveway when she looked at me and said, “You betrayed me.” To this day I don’t know if she was embarrassed by her son or ashamed because what he said was true. I do know that I have kept quiet ever since. I walked out onto a tree limb, and my entire family watched as it broke. Hannah even shamed me for the words I yelled on the way down.
June piped in again, “So when are we going to do this?” I honestly didn’t think we’d get this far. We might actually set a date. I looked at them both and shrugged my shoulders. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I was my dad’s son. Always excited by the possibility of change, but never thinking too much about the steps or consequences involved. All I knew was that my mother’s illnesses and her ouroboros-like lies confused me, and I didn’t know how to help her.
Hannah was the first to dissent. “Well, John and I are trying for a baby. What happens when all this comes to a head and there I am pregnant or with a newborn? John has already said to me that if we get pregnant he doesn’t want me to stress about her.” We had gotten farther than usual, but the brick wall was just ahead.
“You know, with two kids of my own I can completely understand, but if we wait much longer I’m afraid that she’ll kill dad with another heart attack.” At least June was being honest. Hannah was always afraid of confronting mom, but it still bothered her that she was descending so fully. If she were pregnant then she would have an excuse to bow out when things got ugly, and once the initial shock wore off it would get downright nasty.
“Honestly, I think we should all talk to mom on our own. I already have and I feel I’ve made my peace with her even though she hasn’t changed. I don’t see any of this making a damn bit of difference,” June clipped. We had been talking like this for years, but there was something arrogant and mom-like in her tone. We younger siblings were being trivial and petty, and she had already cleaned this from her mind. The first child always races to be first. Apparently, since she made her peace, the rest of us would have to go on with only half-hearted peace-filled support from her.
So there it was. We’d actually peered over the dark precipice, blinked and stepped back. No one was willing to fight a losing battle for little gain. We would talk about it still and hash over the latest crazy mom story, but to do something was never really an option. I drank the last swig of the beer I’d been nursing and picked up the menu.
“So what do you think?” Hannah looked at me, already defeated and relieved. June picked up a chip and dunked it in some salsa. I looked at both of them and let out a long sigh. It was over for now.
Andrew is an academic advisor and adjunct faculty member at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is a graduate of Xavier University and this is his first published story. He lives with his wife Kristen and their cat Mia.
Photo by HeatherHeatherHeather.
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