STRANGER IN RESIDENCE

As told to Leah Gebber

Courtesy of Mishpacha Magazine

If only I would’ve understood how and why things were different.  If only someone would have talked to me about what was going on, taught me about my mother’s illness.  I think that I would have more easily been able to forgive, more easily been a supportive daughter like my mother and father needed.

But no one told.  No one explained.  Which left me mired in confusion, shame, hatred, and pity.

My mother was different.  In some ways, that was good, even great.  In some ways…

Sometimes, of course, she was just regular.  But there were times—as I grew older this happened more frequently—when she had endless energy.  She couldn’t sleep at night, and I’d come down at 3 a. m. for a drink of water, and find her scrubbing the fridge or sitting in front of the computer, working, or endlessly snapping photographs of things like a bare branch of a tree, a fruit bowl, a butternut squash…  My mother is very artistic; some of these images turned out so sharp and clear that we framed them;  some, she even sold.  I was disturbed, though.  I didn’t think that other people’s mothers did things like that.

There was the time that she organized a surprise party for me.  She called up all my friends, cooked and baked, decorated… the works.  It wasn’t even my birthday.  My friends thought my mother was really cool—to have a party just because… For myself, I added another item on the list I’d made in my head, entitled: Mommy’s Weird Behavior.

And then there were the downs.  The times when, no matter what I said, no matter how quiet and calm and obedient I tried to be, I was snapped at, criticized…or simply ignored.  The down times.

It was confusing.  More than confusing, it was hurtful.  Horrific.  I protected myself by building a shell around myself, by withdrawing from her.  None of my friends realized;  I was as lively as ever in school.  I hid my fear.

As the years went by, my mother’s behavior grew more extreme.  The highs became more extreme, overdone, exhaustingly exaggerated.  She would go to a bookstore and return with thirty, forty books that she insisted she needed.  She didn’t sleep.  She cleaned, cooked, and talked to everyone like she was their best friend.  It was excruciating to watch and I could see my father floundering, unsure of what to do with the stranger who had taken residence in my mother’s body.

The downs had her weeping in bed for days, refusing to move, to eat, to even wash.  One day, I came back from school and she was standing in the middle of the living room, broom in hand, yelling and screaming.  There was no one else there.

With a shaking hand, I picked up the receiver and asked for an ambulance.  I didn’t know what else to do.  When the paramedics arrived, they gave her a shot and she started shaking and crying.  They took her to the hospital, where she was admitted.  She stayed there for thirty three days.  I didn’t go to see her, nor did I tell anyone where she was.  I think I was traumatized by the whole experience.

One day, my father came home from visiting my mother carrying a white envelope.  He left it open on the table and I couldn’t help myself but to take a peek.  As I had suspected, it was a medical report from the professor dealing with my mother’s case.  I carefully slid the paper out of the envelope and scanned it hungrily.  Bipolar disorder coupled with paranoia, was the diagnosis.  The recommendation?  Long term use of a chemical called lithium, along with psychotherapy and biweekly visits to a psychiatrist, until her situation was under control.

I cannot tell you what a relief it was to read that diagnosis.  It meant that my mother wasn’t simply a stark raving loony, but that there was actually something wrong.  It told me that she wasn’t going to be admitted to a mental institution forever, but that she would be coming home.  It meant that she wasn’t doomed to be crazy for the rest of her life, but that they were searching for a cure.

That night, I went to bed and allowed myself to cry.

In school the next day, I cut math and went to find the student guidance counselor.  I told her about my mother, and somehow felt relieved.  She said that she would arrange for me to see a therapist about it, and she also encouraged me to find books that explain the disorder.  So, after I left the stuffy little room that served as her “office”, I went straight to the library and check out four books on bipolar disorder.

I learned that bipolar disorder, or manic-depressive illness, results from chemical imbalances in the brain.  It is characterized by manic episodes, when the person is on a high and feels like he can do or be anything, followed by a depressive stage, when the patient might even think about committing suicide.  Sometimes, the patient suffers from what is called a mixed state, kind of like feeling high and low at the same time.  There are times when the patient can also see hallucinations in what’s called psychotic episodes.

So that is what I had seen in my mother.  All those strange, puzzling things started to click into place.  If only…if only someone would have talked to me, explained what was going on.  If only…

How did I manage with my mother away?  Truth be told, by now I was a dab hand at coping.  When my mother had gone through her downs, when she’d closed all the curtains and refused to do anything but rock, silently, in her bed, I’d learned how to cope.  Made supper.  Done the dishes, even the laundry.

Now, with such an extended absence, I started experimenting in the kitchen.  I got tired of frozen pizza and parve sausages.  Raw chicken cutlets grossed me out, but I learned to dress up ground beef; chili flavor, Mexican flavor, sloppy joes…you name it.  I found it fun, kind of therapeutic.

When Mommy came home, she was very quiet, subdued.  She didn’t talk much.  I think that she was very shaken up by what had happened.  Many months later, she confided in me that it was very hard for her to accept that she had to take medication, perhaps for the rest of her life.  Not only were the side effects difficult to deal with, but she missed the incredible highs, when she’d felt like she could do anything at all---even jump to the moon if that is what she set her heart on.  She also had managed to get a lot of work done.  She would stay up all night writing ad copies that she sold for a lot of money.  She said that she got more done in three days when she was on a high than three weeks when she was feeling just regular.  The medicine left her feeling like her brain---her most prized tool---was somehow blunted.

She understood that the deep, dark abyss that followed every peak was intolerable, that it pushed her to the edge—and further—but still it was hard for her to accept the treatment.

I know it sounds cruel, but I didn’t feel much sympathy.  I was too horrified, too shaken up by all that had happened.  Besides, I was left with too many questions.  I was confused: who was my mother, anyway?  If it was the chemical rushing around her brain that made her act so, who was she really?  Was she a person with tons of energy, or was she sluggish?  Was she tearful or cheerful?  I felt that I had been living with a stranger for the last sixteen years of my life.  So I kept Mommy at arm’s length.  I didn’t want to come too close.  I didn’t trust her.

I think that Mommy understood that, and she didn’t try and push me.  But every leil Shabbos, when she’s light the candles, she cried.  I went straight to my bedroom, to lose myself in a book, or I went to my neighbor’s home.  I know that hurt her, but I didn’t feel able to do anything else.

One week, she decided to talk to me about it.

“You know, I really would like it if you’d stick around and keep me company.”

I stiffened.

“It gets pretty lonely here by myself, waiting for Daddy and Yossi to come home from shul.  Maybe you’d sit here and read to me?”

“Read to you?”

Mommy nodded.  “Didn’t I tell you that I can’t read more than a paragraph or two?  The medication affects my vision.”

I plopped back down on the couch.  I hadn’t known about that.  I looked at my mother and sudden tears pricked my eyes.  My mother loved books.  She was always in the middle of three or four different books at a time.  Did the medicine deny her this pleasure, too?

I looked at her.  All of a sudden, I didn’t see someone who I’d labeled as crazy, as embarrassing, as a travesty of a mother.  I saw someone suffering.

I picked up the nearest book:  A Tzaddik of Our Time, by Simcah Raz.

It’s the story of Reb Aryeh Levine, ztz”l, known as the tzaddik of Yerushalayim.  It’s an old book, but a good one.  In 1965, I read, on Reb Aryeh’s eightieth birthday, he was honored by a ceremony  in the courtyard of the old central prison in the Russian Compound, the prison whre he used to go to visit the prisoners, to guide and encourage them.  “I do not know if I shall be privileged to be with you again like this,” he said.  “All I ask of you is this:  Tell your children:  There was an old man in Jerusalem that loved us very much!”  With that, Reb Aryeh burst into tears.

I stopped reading and sat thinking.  Thinking about this man who mixed not only with political prisoners, but with cold blooded murderers.  And, still, he saw the best in them, looking only to love the spark of a Jew that lay buried inside.

If he could look past so much evil to see the good, I thought, why can’t I look to see the good in Mommy?  What she does is not even her fault—it’s the result of chemicals swishing around her brain.  So why do I treat her like an outcast, like a prisoner, like a stranger?

“Why did you stop?” Mommy asked me.

I startled.  “Oh…just thinking.”

“Want to share?”

I shook my head.  “Not just yet,” I said.

But maybe…maybe some time in the very near future.