“To us, family means putting your arms around each other and being there.”
Barbara Bush
Wow! It’s been ages since I’ve posted a new blog. I am so sorry for my absence. Life has been tough especially the last 6 months. It seems like every time I think things are normalizing, a wrench gets thrown into the mix and everything goes topsy turvy again.
On June 1, my mother passed away and has left a huge void in my life. I miss her every day. She was my rock and my anchor in life. The one person I could always count on when I needed someone to talk to. Although she thought I didn’t take her advice, her advice always influenced my decisions. I have felt very lonely without her these past 6 months. One of my hardest moments came this fall. For the last 19 years I have always called her on my way home from the first day of school just to tell her about my day. Come to think of it, I did that even in elementary, middle, high school and college. I actually picked up my phone to call her and realized that I would never again get to hear her voice on my first day of school. I had to pull over to the side of the road and cry.
My sons feel her loss too. She was their port in the storm and always made them feel loved. Even when she was fussing at them. My youngest son feels the loss the most. She watched him after school his whole life. When he started middle school, he would just walk to her house since she lived just across the street from his school. There he would get a special snack–mostly junk food, but that’s what grandma’s do, but he would also get help for his homework.
I can’t imagine how devastated my father is. After almost 48 years living with the same person leaves a huge hole once they’re gone. Mom always worried about what would happen to him if she passed first. You see, my father suffers from manic depression and schizophrenia. I love my father dearly and remember the early years of my life when he was young and carefree–before the disease really took hold on him–before the hospitalizations.
You see, I have been living with a loved one with mental health issues my whole life–especially since I was a 2nd grader. That was when Dad was first hospitalized. In the beginning, I didn’t understand really what all was happening with Dad, but I was always told he was sick–that it was an illness. At first, nobody talked about what was happening–especially my extended family. It was the late 1970’s for goodness sakes! People weren’t talking about mental health openly at that time. Heck, mental health wasn’t the only thing not discussed openly at that time. Over the course of the next 5 years, my father was hospitalized 4 or 5 times. The older I got, the easier it became to recognize the symptoms and triggers that would set things off. I always felt bad for my younger sister. She never really knew the fun side of our dad since she was only 2 when things went haywire.
I remember one time I was talking to Dad about life in general and how I always worried that I would be “crazy.” He gave me some good words of advice. He said, “If you think you’re crazy, you aren’t crazy because when you’re really crazy, you don’t know you’re crazy.”
I think that’s why God gave me my oldest son. He knew I could handle the “crazy”; that I was prepared and experienced to navigate that road as a parent because I walked it as a child. I will admit that this fall, I’ve struggled to handle my son’s mental health issues because I’m struggling myself with tremendous grief, but someway, somehow, we will overcome this obstacle too. It’s my job to provide guidance for my oldest who has mental health issues and to comfort to my youngest who has to live with a loved one with mental health issues. I’m just glad that we live in a world where we can be more open about mental health struggles. Through my journey, I have met more and more parents and people I know who are struggling either with mental health or with a loved one with mental health issues. I want to help others who are walking this path as well.
I see that as my purpose in life.