coffee for the apocalypse

It was getting late and I didn’t have the umph to cook dinner. No one wanted pizza so my husband went out to grab everyone dinner. Our toddler is very brazen and adventurous so we have a lock on the top of our front door. It’s meant to keep someone from kicking the door in but we use it to keep the three year old inside. As I was locking the lock behind him when he left, I had the sinking feeling that I was going to get the call while I was alone with my kids.

He hadn’t been gone more than 15 minutes when the phone rang. I rushed into the bedroom and saw that it was an unfamiliar number. I never answer numbers I don’t know but I just knew in my bones that this was it. I stood in the middle of my pitch dark bedroom and pressed the answer button.

“Hello ma’am, I’m with the county sheriff’s department…”

If I remember correctly I took a step to the left so that if I collapsed forward I wouldn’t hit my face on the bed frame.

“We found your mother.”

“Is she gone?”

“No ma’am. She’s not in good shape but we’re gonna get her to the hospital. She allowed me to call you.”

I was shocked and relieved. She was alive. I was shaking like a leaf and once I was done talking with the deputy I hung up and just walked around in a daze until I heard my husband pull up. I walked out the door without waiting for him to make it up the walk and told him the news. We both broke into tears.

I had said that she couldn’t stay with us ever again but this was something different. She was angry that the people had stayed with were “being mean to her about getting a job” and she said that I hated her so she decided to just quit. I tried to remind her that I go through the same kinds of thoughts and feelings but they are our mental illnesses- anxiety, depression, personality disorders, etc- lying to us. It was just assumed that she would come live with us. When I called the hospital for an update the social worker just started giving me instructions on what to do when she got home.

I made it very clear to my mother that there would be some non-negotiable guidelines if she came back to our house. Healthy food, leaving the house to walk, eventually getting a job. I also made it clear that it would not be forever. She agreed to all of these things.

I left the house at 6:30am to begin the drive out to San Angelo to get her. For some reason the tow truck the sheriff’s department called took the car all the way back to Big Spring. That added a solid $200 to the fees and it had just built from there over the week that she was in the hospital. I paid over $980 dollars to get the car back.

When I got to the facility they said I couldn’t come in until noon. I went back to the car and sat in the driver’s seat. I had cried most of the four hour trip and I was exhausted mentally, emotionally, and physically. I was messing around on my phone to pass the time and for some reason I opened the camera and took a selfie. I am wrapped in one of my husband’s hoodies, the seat is back, and I look… detached, devastated. I don’t know exactly what anyone else would assume by looking at it but looking at that photo now I wish I could go back and just give myself a hug.

When I went in she still wasn’t ready to go. The led me to a chair in the hallway and I realized quickly that I was basically on the ward. There was no separation between me and the patients. The cafe doors were open and people were coming and going from their rooms. It concerned me that I was just hanging out there with everyone while the nurses were locked into a small room surrounded by windows.

I door buzzed to let us out into the cold air and I got her settled into the car. I put all of her things into the back of the car. Then we started the extra two hour drive out to Big Spring to get her car and to collect her things from where she had been staying.

She wanted to be dropped off at the fast food restaurant in town, she didn’t want to see the people she’d been staying with ever again. I said that was fine and I headed out to their house alone. They greeted me warmly and I gathered her things then sat down to talk for a minute. I said that she had seemed sad that she didn’t have the money to come to my town for Christmas and one of them stopped me.

“I offered her all the money she would need to go see you but since you said it was rough when she left I said that we needed to make sure it was okay with you first!” Make of that what you will but I never brought it up with my mother. Eventually I knew I had to go. It would already be really late when we got back to the house and we still hadn’t retrieved her car from the impound lot.

That night she drove 8 hours, most of it in the dark, and when we got to my house everything seemed fine. The next day was when the trouble started.

She needed her medicine and instead of just asking us to pick it up she was going on and on about how she didn’t think she could walk that far. We have never, ever made her walk to get anything. There are no buses near us and no sidewalks on the small but busy road out of our neighborhood. My husband got her medicine and stopped to pay several hundred dollars to save her storage bin from auction. Once everything was paid for and she had what she needed she was fine again.

On Christmas Eve morning she said she needed something else, I don’t remember, probably cigarettes, and that she couldn’t use her debit card. I asked if I could look at her account online and see if they had put a hold on her card when the police were looking for her. She said that was fine. As I looked I saw that her card “wasn’t working” because she was a few hundred dollars overdrawn. When I suggested she cancel some of the things that came out automatically so they didn’t charge her a fee for each one she began yelling at me out of nowhere. I left the conversation, hoping that was the end of it.

I had been inside, baking bread with the kids when she came back in moaning loudly. She went to her room, walking fine but slow, then when she came back through to go outside she was moaning and yelling “God, help me, someone help me. I need help, oh God.” Then she went outside and my daughter watched the whole thing, eyes wide and shaking.

I left the kitchen to tell my husband what was going on and ask him what he thought I should do. My daughter followed me to the door of my bedroom only now there were tears streaming down her face. “Is [grandma] going to die? Is she okay? Why is she yelling?”

I looked into her eyes and I knew that I couldn’t have my mother scaring the shit out of my kids in their home. I knew that I refused to have them walking on eggshells, constantly worrying about what was next. I called Integral Care Austin, who are in charge of helping her get access to the assistance she needed. They said to bring her in to one of the clinics for evaluation but that it could be quite a wait because it was the day before a big holiday.

When I hung up with them and went to her room to tell her that we were going to get some help, she said couldn’t walk despite having been going back and forth through the house for the past half hour. My husband and I managed to get her to the car and off we went.

Part 3 shortly.