I haven't wrote much about my Mom since she died. It's been almost a year. A friend gave me a book after she died that said I should journal, and I really haven't much. So, here goes...this is the story of my Mom.
My Mom was physically and sexually abused by her father and her brother as a child. When my Mom was 15 years old, she dropped out of high school as a sophomore at Enid High and ran away from home. She also started drinking and smoking as a 15-year old. When my Mom was 19 years old, she was raped in a bar and that is how my oldest sister was conceived. She never knew her father. My Mom was married 6 times before she met and married my Dad. I have two older half sisters who are half sisters to each other and never knew their fathers. I have one "real" biological sister and we are very close.
My Mom was an alcoholic until I was 5 years old. She physically abused my oldest two sisters, especially the oldest one. I remember them running away as a child and I remember my Mom violently spanking them with a belt. One vivid memory I have is of the day me and my sister ran away when I was only 5....same age as my daughter. My Mom had ordered pizza from Pizza Inn and back then you could order a 6-pack of beer with it and she did. I remember when I saw the beer I was afraid, "Mommy gets mad when she drinks..." I thought. So me and my older sister made a pact at the front door, "If Mommy drinks the beer and gets mad, we run..." and I remember standing at the front door holding onto the handle with my sister and we looked at each other like, "If you go, I go...we're in this together..." and we did. My Mom came through the dining room to the living room yelling, and we ran. We ran all the way up Tyler street to Oklahoma street and stopped near the intersection of Cleveland and Oklahoma by Oklahoma Floral. That's when the police car drove up next to us and the police officer took us home. I don't remember what happened after that. I do remember having many dreams as I was growing up that I was running away from home and my feet were like mush and I could hardly run. My Mom went to AA meetings down the street at the Tyler House, it's still there. I remember her taking us to a Halloween Party there once and we bobbed for apples and a woman showed us some cool art with her cigarette lighter and fire on paper. I remember after my oldest sister moved out on her 18th birthday, a DHS lady came to our house. I remember she wore a tan long coat and she talked to us in the backyard and asked us if my Mom ever hurt us or if we were afraid to live at home.
Growing up, I didn't really realize there was anything wrong with my Mom until I was about 8 or 9. I knew my Mom got "sick" a lot and was in the hospital a lot. My Mom was probably in every mental hospital in Oklahoma and surrounding states. My Dad tells stories of her running away a lot. My sister remembers a time when my Mom tried to drive us across the border to Mexico and my grandpa and Dad had to come get us in Laredo, TX. My Dad remembers too. I remember some of these times vaguely. Little did I know, she was actually off her medication. She would drive to a place, abandon the car, and hop on a bus to the next town my Dad says. Sometimes she was gone for days. I remember going to look for the car one time and finding it along a dirt road in a field, but my Mom wasn't there. I remember going to visit her in the hospital and we'd have to drive a long way to get there. I remember when she went through a phase of drawing tornadoes all the time and writing strange poems. These pictures and writings were all over one of her hospital rooms. I remember as a child thinking that when my Mom came home from all these places, she was better, she was healed, but it would never last.
The worst memory I have growing up was my Mom's first overdose. I was 8 or 9 years old and my Mom was homeschooling us at the time...I was in what was supposed to be 3rd grade I think. I woke up for school and my sister told me to go back to bed because Mom wasn't feeling well so we weren't having school today. I remember hearing the sound of my sister vacuuming the floor. Then, I remember her waking me up telling me that "mom fell down and was shaking". My Mom was having a seizure. I remember waking up and walking into the living room and my mom was laying on the floor between the living room and dining room by the furnace. I still remember the shirt she was wearing. I remember looking at her and seeing what looked like blood coming from the corners of her eyes. I really don't know if it was or not, but it's what I thought I saw and it's what I remember. My sister and I were completely panicked and especially since we did not have a home phone at the time, it got cut off. So, my sister told me to stay with my Mom and she ran out the back gate of our backyard and over the hill to the convenience store Bill's on the corner of Van Buren and Garriott to call my Dad at Durheim's where he worked. To this day I still wish I would have been the one to run and call Dad. My Mom ended up waking up and getting up and walking around. She was very disoriented and it scared me to death. I remember that she picked up my toy plastic blue phone and put it in the dishwasher and I was so scared because I thought, "Something is not right with her." Then she walked to her bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed and picked up a wire hanger and started to try to comb her hair with it. I was totally freaked out, but I said, "Do you want me to comb your hair Mommy?" because it was something we did for her a lot after she would wash her hair. She got up and about fell down again so I said, "Mommy, why don't you lay down Mommy..." but I was too young to know that is probably the worst thing you can do, I needed to keep her alert and awake. My sister came back home and said my Dad was on his way. He got home and he tried to convince my Mom to get in the car to go to the hospital. At first, she did not want to go. We were all packed in the car, me and my sister in the backseat. I remember all the way there, my Dad was looking at my Mom and saying, "Stay with me honey, look at me, stay awake Amy, stay awake..." We drove to St. Mary's and waited in the ER while my Dad went in with my Mom. He came out and told us that while she was sitting on the examination table, her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she fell off the table and had another seizure so they asked my Dad to leave.
Shortly after that, I remember my Mom being in Meadowlake Hospital, back then it was for adults. I remember going to visit her there and eating with her in the cafeteria. I remember going to the big house out front for a meeting with some doctors and psychiatrists. That's when I remember hearing the words "bipolar disorder" and "schizophrenia" for the first time. They talked to us about all of her pills. My Dad remembers them telling him, "It's not your fault, there's nothing you can do." ... ... I still remember the names of some of her medications. Halcion? Haldol? I still remember the name of one of her doctors, Dr. Robert Adleman. Basically, in the 80's mental health had not advanced very far. They didn't know as much as they know now, but all they knew to do was medicate. They made a guinea pig out of my Mom and tested her on all of these medications. Meanwhile, her children and her family had to deal with all of the side effects.
I remember my Mom sleeping all the time. When I came home from school, she was sleeping. My Dad took me to school every day. My Mom never did, not once. I can count on one hand the number of times my Mom picked me up from school. My Dad usually picked me up or I walked, but I rarely walked. My Mom was always up late at night and she slept during the day. I remember she used to talk in her sleep. She would yell my name, I would ask her what she wanted, she'd ask me to fix her a Coke in her cup, it was pink with a white rim (stained from Coca-Cola) and then she'd wake up later and say, "Why is this Coke all watered down?" and I would say, "You asked me to fix it for you earlier..." and she'd say, "I must have been asleep..."
I remember watching her sleep and checking to see if she was still breathing. I remember one time I didn't think she was, so I went and got my sister while she was sweeping the utility room floor, and I said, "I don't think Mommy's breathing..." so she took my hand and we went to check. I remember trying to wake my Mom up and having to drag her across the floor off the couch to get her to wake up. I remember her dumping 13 pills out onto the bed and taking them all at once. I remember the kitchen counter looking like a small pharmacy. She would come home from these hospitals with 10 new medications and ask us to make a list of all their names and when she was supposed to take them. She had those daily reminder pill boxes everywhere with the NMTWRFS on them for the days of the week. She had bottles of pills everywhere...all over the kitchen, all over her bedroom, all over her bathroom, and all inside her purse. I remember asking my Mom for toys at the store and she would tell me "no" and then she would ask me to go grab a carton of Winston cigarettes for her for $27-$36 a carton.
When I was in the 8th grade, my Mom had a stroke. She forgot who I was, she forgot how to write, she couldn't drive anymore. I got my first F in school that year in Math. I grew up being really angry. I was angry that my Mom was sick and I was angry that she couldn't take care of herself or me. I always thought, "If you really loved me, you'd get better." Then, as I grew up I always held onto the hope that she would be well someday. I was angry that my Mom was different and not like other people's moms. I never brought my friends over to my house because I was embarrassed. I know my friends knew something was wrong with my Mom, but I never really told any of them everything. No one understood. All my friends knew was that they never met my Mom and that I loved music so much because it got me away from home. Growing up, I had a hard time picking out Mother's Day cards for her in the store because none of them said what I felt. I didn't have a Mom like the one described in the cards.
In 2000 my Mom was seeing a psychiatrist who started taking her off of all her meds. Her mind became more clear and she told me that when I was 9 months old, she and my Dad got a divorce. Because they lived together for six months after, they were common-law married. She told me this when I was 21. She showed me the court documents she had saved in a drawer. It was true. I moved in with a friend and my mom had a sheriff visit me while I was working at a daycare and serve me papers that said I had to get all my belongings out and stay away from her, and shortly after that I moved to California for six months to get away from it all. I got married on October 11, 2003 on my Mom's birthday and did not invite her to the wedding, we were estranged at the time. In August of 2005, my Mom went to jail for trying to hit a police officer with a car when he asked her to move it from in front of our house. She was off her meds. My son was born in 2009 and I thought, "Surely she will get well for him." She didn't. In fact, she spent time in Fort Supply and in the hospital for pneumonia, and rehab, and nursing homes. She was well for a few years, and then the same cycle continued about every three to four years. In the hospital, out of the hospital, on the meds, off the meds.
My Mom had her final overdose in January of 2013. She overdosed on valium...or Diazepam. After that, she went to a nursing home in Tulsa where one of my sisters lives. She came home after 5 months. She was on oxygen for COPD and emphysema due to a lifetime of smoking. She also walked with a walker due to osteoporosis. She was in prison in her mind and her body. She was a slave to prescription drugs. I finally had to realize she was not going to get well on this side of eternity. After a lifetime of being in and out of the hospital and after several medical emergencies with my Mom, my family was not prepared for what happened in October of 2014...
To be continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment