Chapter 15

When I was 11 years old and freed from that house, I never looked back.  That time was over.  I had escaped.  I chose to leave it behind and with it, my mother.  That is why I wanted to jump ahead in time and let you know what happened to the people that never escaped that house of my horror.  Phil smoked packs and packs of cigarettes a day.  He worked in a dark, dank foundry until he was laid off a year before his death.  His end was not pretty.  He suffered into death and I wish I could say this made me feel for him.   I did not.   However, for my mother, I made his funeral arrangements and saw to it he had a proper funeral with his family.  It was difficult speaking with the reverend about his life and hobbies.  I chose fishing and painting.  I had to fight my gut to tell the reverend what his real hobbies were.  My mother’s mental illness struck her with breakdowns about every 8 years.  Her first followed my birth.  Her second I witnessed at about age 8.  I remember visiting her in the same hospital I took her to almost 20 years later.  I remember her screaming at us in the bright hospital hallway.  She was in her nightgown and bare feet begging us to take her home, holding her empty suitcase while it fell open.   When I was away at college, my grandmother called to tell me she was in the hospital again.  I did not care to visit her at this time.  I was too caught up in the selfishness of late adolescence.  Her next breakdown occurred in November of 2007.  I was now a full-fledged adult and had to decide the path I was going to take.  I was her only child whether I liked it or not.  She still had Phil at this time, but he was not capable of dealing with her health in the right way.  I did not trust him to take care of her.  That feeling was my answer.  It was time for me to step in and care for my mother.  The past had to be the past.  She was sick.  She was always sick, but as a child, I just knew she wasn’t a good mother.  I didn’t know she had a good reason for her lack in parenting skills.  I headed to Iowa and I got my mom to the hospital.  I got her checked in and the déjà vu was unbearable.  There she was again, screaming at me from the same hospital hallway, being pulled away by the nurses.  “Don’t leave me!  Debbie, please!” she pleaded.  “Mom, I have to.  I’ll come back and see you tomorrow.”  In a few days, she was released to her husband with a prescription she would never fill.  She went back to her life until the last time she would breakdown over Phil’s death.  My mother now lives in a state-run facility for the mentally ill in Davenport, Iowa.  She is medicated and monitored on a 24-hour basis.  She is safe and well fed.  I talk to her weekly and visit as often as I can.  I am her power of attorney and handle all her affairs and finances.  She is my mother and I am her only daughter.  This is where we are today.  Tomorrow, I’ll go back to 1984.