How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Where was I? Oh yes, a working, emancipated minor in high school.

Freed from the constant worrying about my mother’s mental and emotional condition, I began to distance myself from her. She got better, got the marriage to Harold annulled and went back to what passed for her "normal" life: living on Social Security Disability and food stamps in public housing, taking city buses for transportation, visiting my grandmother from time to time. I saw her on holidays, but I seldom sought her out.

Over the next several years, she had many more schizophrenic breaks, usually accompanied by paranoid delusions. She attempted suicide several times. (I often wonder if my inability to understand these acts motivated me to volunteer for a decade at the local suicide prevention hotline.) Most often, some religious zealot would convince her that drugs were bad and God was the answer to her problems. So, fierce in her faith, she would stop taking her meds and jump headlong into the abyss. Oddly, the zealots were never around to clean up the mess, to her Mom back into a treatment program, to get her stabilized on meds while making sure her bills were paid. No, they were always off praying while my brother and I cleaned up their mess.

I can’t say I ever stopped loving my mother. But, as my own career developed and I traveled the world and established a life of my own, it just became easier to put even more distance between us. (Perceived distance, not physical distance – we still lived in the same area.)

Then, a couple of years ago, my Mom called me in the middle of the night and wanted me to take her to the hospital because she thought she had ruptured a bladder repair operation she had earlier that year. She said she was bleeding. In my dazed state, I suggested it might be better for her to call an ambulance, rather than wait for me to get dressed and drive over to pick her up. She hung up on me.

When I was a kid, my mother and grandmother would play the “hang-up” game. One would call the other, start an argument and hang up on the other. They would then repeatedly call, scream and hang up. Sometimes it went on for hours. I still get a knot in my stomach, thinking about it.

Within minutes of my mother’s hang-up, my brother called (she had obviously called him after slamming the receiver down on me) asking me what was going on. I told him that I thought she should get an ambulance, but I would go over to her place if she refused. Tom shouted, “Don’t bother!” and hung up on me. A little switch flipped in my head. I was done with this game.

For the next several years, I stopped taking calls from either my Mom or my brother. They could both rot as far as I was concerned. I simply refused to be a part of their manipulative passive-aggressive game. It hurt me to miss my nephews’ birthdays and Christmas, but ultimately, I think it contributed to my own sanity.

Then, about a year ago, I started to soften to the idea of reestablishing contact with my family. My mother would leave these long, tearful pleas on my answering machine, begging me to call her. Eventually, I did, although I was always guarded in my conversations with her. Work and life kept me busy, so we communicated infrequently. In the spring of this year, there were several long messages on my machine from her, raving and delusional and clearly in the midst of another breakdown. I stopped answering my phone again.
Recently, she seemed better and we had a few decent conversations. Then, I got the call from my brother’s dispatcher last Tuesday, saying that Tom needed me to call me right away. I knew the truth immediately.

So, here I am. I’m conflicted because I know that in recent years, I wasn’t a particularly good son. I never stopped loving my mother, but I can’t honestly say I liked her very much. I hurt with her loss, but I’m not sure if it is because I know she’s gone and our relationship will never be repaired or because I’m deeply hurt that she never gave me the kind of childhood most of my friends had.

And I feel guilty. I feel guilty because amidst the shock and sadness at learning of her death, a small part of me felt… relieved.