coffee for the apocalypse

I got my mother across town to the mental health crisis center for evaluation. The lobby was on the second floor of the building and there was no elevator. It took me a while to get her up the stairs and into a chair in the crowded lobby. I checked her in with the man at the front desk. He had seen how she seemed ready to fall over and she was saying things that made no sense. After telling him what had happened, he asked me a few questions and told me to take a seat.

We were waiting for about two hours as she did things like start to get up to walk to the water fountain to fill her cup even though she wasn’t able to walk. When I told her that I would get it, she thanked me profusely as though it shocked her that I wouldn’t let her struggle her way over to the water fountain.

The thing that finally got her seen was me attempting to practically carry her to the bathroom. A man who had been seeing patients came out of the back and saw me and helped her get into the bathroom then brought a chair over while she was in there. His first assumption was that this person was extremely sick and needed to go to the hospital. I explained to him that this only started after I told her I was bringing her in.

When she called for me from the bathroom we all worked together to get her into a small meeting room off the lobby. The man who had checked us in started to talk to her and explained that they couldn’t help her because she was not “independently ambulatory”. He asked what she thought they should do. She would not answer the question but kept looking at me. “What do you think, Jenn?” He finally explained that the decisions had to come from her. She decided to go get checked out at a nearby hospital. I explained that I didn’t think I could get her down the stairs.

They had me call an ambulance. The EMS arrived, evaluated her, and loaded her up. I followed in my car. At the hospital I was losing my cool. I knew then more than ever that I could not handle whatever was happening, real or not.

Because she told the drivers of the ambulance that she thought she was having a stroke but showed no signs of a medical emergency, she had to wait for hours in the ER. It had gotten pretty empty and they still hadn’t taken her back so I approached the window and explained that she had attempted suicide recently and had just been released from another hospital. I also told them that these symptoms began after she got angry with me. Taking that in consideration, they triaged her differently and took her back.

In the back a social worker came to talk to us and I followed him out of the curtained area. I, once again, repeated the story and let him know that the physical problems had only happened when I told her I was taking her to talk with IC. He said that because she wasn’t currently suicidal they couldn’t force her to go anywhere. Also, because she was having “trouble” walking, they wouldn’t take her anyway because she was a fall risk. That still pisses me off. There have to be people with disabilities who need mental health assistance.

I couldn’t help it, for the first time all day I cried. The social worker leveled with me about the reality of the situation, recognized I was in a rough spot, and apologized for not being more help. I felt frustrated, alone, and forced to take her home where she would just do more of this same stuff.

While the doctor ran some tests to cover all the bases, I went outside to call my husband and an aunt who had experience with situations like that. It came down to telling her she could walk and go with Integral Care who could monitor her and set her up with a place to stay or she would end up living in her car but she could not come back to my house. She needed more help than we could give her.

When I went back inside I felt like I was going to throw up. I am not a confrontational person for the most part (though my husband might disagree) but telling my mother that she had a choice to make felt like marching into the gallows. I feared another tirade like the one she’d unleashed on my front yard when I told her she had to move out. I sat next to the bed and told her the options. She refused to make a choice and just repeated “I want to go back to the house.” The doctor came in a said they were releasing her because everything came back perfect.

Trying to reason with her again while they got her discharge papers in order only made her snap at me in anger. After begging her again to get up and go with the social worker she told me to “Give me my shit, I’m leaving.”

I called my husband as I drove home and told him to get the kids ready so I could drive her car up to the hospital and they could take me back home. At 9:30 on Christmas Eve- we’d been gone from the house since 1pm- he got them all ready to go. I got her stuff out of our office/guest room, put gas in her car, bought her cigarettes, a phone with three months of service, and $300 in gift cards. It took nearly 45 minutes to check out at the store because everyone was buying last minute gifts. The kids waited in our car with their dad.

We got back to the hospital and she had walked out ON HER OWN to smoke at a bench nearly a block from the hospital. After saying all day that she was completely unable to get around on her own so she could get some help, she did just fine. I gave her the stuff I’d brought and her keys then told her to be safe and call when she got the phone set up to give me her new number.

When we got home it was close to midnight and I sent the kids to bed. I bawled my eyes out while putting out their gifts. I wondered if my mother hated me, if I did the right thing, if she would try to kill herself again. The next morning I tried to put on a happy face for the kids but everything made me feel extreme guilt. The breakfast we ate- does she have food? The warm blanket I snuggled under with my kids- was she cold or lonely?

We went to my sister in law’s house for Christmas dinner and my mother called to tell me she’d gotten the phone working. There was no acknowledgement about the day before. Her demeanor was light and she had gotten a nice dinner with the money we’d given her. She could get internet on her phone in the hospital parking lot. She was happy as a clam and wished us all a warm Merry Christmas as if the past week was just a nightmare I’d had. I hung up from that call very confused.

That was almost ten months ago and she is still homeless. She went to a short term living facility with Integral Care for less than two months. She said that someone told them she was smoking in the bathroom and she got reprimanded about it but it was a mean person who made it up because they didn’t like her. I’m not sure what to believe about that but when we visited family in the winter a while back she smoked in her bedroom in a no smoking home because she didn’t want to go out in the cold. I have a hard time with anything she tells me now. She left Integral Care to live in her car again because she didn’t want to stay at a place where people lie about her.

All of these, among other smaller things, have made me pull away. I still check on her but since all of that happened my anxiety/panic symptoms are through the roof and when she calls I get nervous before I answer. A few months after she chose to live in her car she called and told me she felt like I didn’t want to be as close to her as we had been in the past. Then she told me that we could either have a close, happy relationship or none at all and if it was none at all, she would kill herself. I had had enough of the threats. I put her choices and actions back on her own shoulders and reminded her that nothing I do or don’t do would make me responsible for that choice and she hasn’t threatened me with it again.

It has been hard struggling with the guilt this last year. I am still sober as far as alcohol goes but I have turned to food again and gained back about 35 of the 120 lbs I lost. I look back at the picture of the night she went missing and feel like I don’t know that happy, healthy, joyful person any more.

I am working on it. I hope to be that person again but it is really hard. I see her car every day when I take my kids to school. There have been a couple times where I have told them to close their eyes as we pass. I don’t want them to see her on the corner panhandling. My teenage son knows she is homeless and why but my daughter isn’t old enough to understand and she worries enough as it is.

The car doesn’t run anymore and my mother has to gather people to help move it from place to place when the businesses she parks it near tell her to move or be towed. Integral Care would have her back, she chose to leave, but she won’t go. They just opened a new apartment complex for people in her situation but she won’t go through the steps to get there. I don’t know why. I can’t come to a conclusion about the situation that makes any sense to me.

She gets food from food pantries and kind people who see her around. She always has cigarettes. She just got new glasses and she has all her medications filled through the medical program with IC. Early on they were trying to set her up with a therapist but as far as she’s mentioned she has only been to see the medical doctors. She says she doesn’t need therapy, she needs physical help.

We can not control what other people chose to do, even if their choices are hurting them. I’ve begun to look at our situation as similar to someone who loves an addict. You can’t make them get clean, not lie or steal from you, or decide to take care of themselves. You can just hope they find something within themselves that gives them the drive and courage to say they don’t want to live like that any more.

I didn’t share this story to embarrass anyone or make anyone out to be a bad person. I shared my story because I feel that telling someone, even strangers, what really happened will help me get past it. Just like telling people that I am a recovering alcoholic helps take away the dirty secret aspect. Secrets keep us sick. As a kid there was so much talking in circles in my family- so and so said this but don’t tell them I told you- and it was just screwed up. I am learning that I don’t have to keep secrets…

and neither do you.