Chapter 14

The next day at the hospital, my mother seemed a bit more at peace.  This is the magic of medication.  While my mother ate her breakfast, we met with the hospital social worker.  She was a very kind woman in her mid-forties and had a comforting disposition.  I asked Vicki to take notes for me so I could just sit with my mother and help her answer any questions.  Somehow my childhood and our relationship came up in the conversation.  My mother told the social worker that they took me away from her because she didn’t have enough money to keep me.  Tears sprang to my eyes and I saw Vicki write something down to show the social worker.   “Abuse” was the succinct and accurate note for her to read without my mother knowing.  So there it was.  My mother had wiped all my truth from her memory.  I decided on that day that I could live with that.  She had enough in her head to darken her thoughts; she didn’t need my darkness too.  The social worker said she would look into a residence in Iowa that housed the mentally ill.  I was so grateful for her on that day.  She saved both me and my mother in one fell swoop.  After our meeting, we walked my mom back to her room.  My mother asked if Vicki and I would go to her house.  She had about $2,500 in a gym bag buried in her closet.  $2,500 seemed too much for me to leave behind, so off we went to my childhood home to collect it.  When I was 8 years old, we left the apartment and moved into a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom house on Indian Road in Davenport, Iowa.  It sat in a row of other small homes that sat at the top of a steep hill.  You had to climb about 25 steps to get to the front door.  Phil loved lawn decorations and barely a foot of grass was left uncovered by some adornment.  It was quite the sight.  After we climbed the stairs, we got to the front door.  The outside of the house was in great disrepair.  That was nothing compared to the inside.  As my luck would have it on this journey, the key my mother had in her purse would not open the door.  Seriously, you have got to be kidding me.  I turned to Vicki who suggested maybe the kitchen window was open.  “Vicki, I am NOT climbing through a window in…” I couldn’t even finish the sentence and Vicki had catapulted through the kitchen window.  That’s friendship.  “Okay, meet you at the front door” was my quick-witted response.  She let me in and I immediately had Viet Nam flashbacks of my life here.  Only now, the house seemed uninhabitable.  There was dust an inch thick on every surface in the tiny living room.  It was obvious Phil spent his last days on the couch.  There was clutter and junk everywhere.  There was food on the floor and on the counters.  I walked into the hallway that faced my bedroom and suddenly felt the panic overwhelm me.  “Vicki, I can’t be here ~ I can’t do this” I whispered.  Vicki had already begun climbing the piles of clothes that had once been my bedroom searching for some kind of gym bag filled with money.  I saw mold covered the wall next to the bed I used to dream in.  I never dreamed this is what would become of my mother.  No one deserved to live like this.  Suddenly, the sight of the bag in Vicki’s hand brought me back to the task at hand.  Inside was approximately $3,000 in crumpled cash.  Mission accomplished.  Now get me out of here.